Open Source Bridge 2012 - Keynote: Jason Scott
Channel: StumptownSyndicate
Date: 2014-11-19

Keynote: Open Source, Open Hostility, Open Doors. Jason Scott, a member of the activist preservation group Archive Team, describes how open source projects and outlook have helped and improved the achieving of the group's goals.

In 2009, a new force against the wanton deletion and destruction of websites and user content rose up: ARCHIVE TEAM. This loose band of archivists, activists, and preservation-minded developers have rescued millions of users’ content from dozens of shutdowns, while being as loud, furious and intense as possible. Jason Scott, official team mascot, has spoken extensively about the group’s goals, but now focuses on a different angle of Archive Team: the software.

An overview of the Archive Team’s approach to open source software, development tools, successes and failures will ensue, along with a waterfall of anecdotes, lessons and side trivia. The splash zone encompasses the first three rows.

Jason Scott is a historian, filmmaker, and public speaker who has spent decades collecting all manner of computer lore, stories, artifacts and knowledge. Through his site TEXTFILES.COM, he has provided gigabytes of BBS-era textfiles and web-era graphics and cd-rom data for over 12 years, and is now working with the Internet Archive (archive.org) as a “free-range archivist” to bring in even more historical data for preservation and online access.

In 2009, he founded the ARCHIVE TEAM, a rogue band of activist archivers downloading at-risk and closing websites of their user data to ensure the work of millions are not lost with the push of a pen on a spreadsheet. A wiki of projects and knowledge is at www.archiveteam.org.

As a documentary filmmaker, he has created two multi-episode series, BBS: The Documentary, and GET LAMP (about Text Adventures). He is currently in production on four more documentaries.