Data wants to be free

Abstract:
More and more people store their personal files and documents in cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive or iCloud. The reason is that they provide convenient features to sync your files between devices and share them with others. We are heading full speed into a future where a huge piece of the personal information of the world is stored in very few centralized services.
Questions emerge what the impact on user privacy, surveillance, lawfulness of content and storage cost will be in in the long run.
I don't think that a world where most of the personal data of the world is stored on servers of a hand full companies is a good one.

This talk will discuss the problems of a future with centralized cloud file sync and share services and will present ownCloud as a possible solution. It will also give an overview how ownCloud can be used in the education space and can be scaled to hundred thousands of users.

ownCloud is a free software project that offers a decentralized alternative to proprietary cloud services where everybody can run an own cloud service comparable with Dropbox but on own hardware and with full control. ownCloud provides all the features of the proprietary services like syncing to Mac, Windows Linux, iOS and Android, sharing files with others, photo gallery, media player and more. But ownCloud is free software, available at no cost, can provide all the state of the art cloud features, full privacy and run on personal hardware.

About:
Frank Karlitschek is a long time open source contributor and former board member of the KDE e.V. He managed engineering teams for over 10 years and worked as head of unit and managing director at different internet companies. In 2010 he started the ownCloud project and is leading the community project since then. In 2011 he founded ownCloud Inc. together with Markus Rex and Holger Dyroff from SUSE to offer commercial services, for enterprises around ownCloud.