Call for Street Art Artists

op: 2012-01-30

On 28th of March 2012, we will be running a campaign for document liberation - Document Freedom Day 2012. On this occasion, we would like to ask you for help in promoting its underlying idea by means of your art.

DFD is a worldwide event celebrating Open Standards and raising general awareness about their importance for our daily lives. One of the most obvious effects of their opposites, the closed and proprietary standards, is so called vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in makes you as a customer dependent on a vendor whose products and services you use. This dependency makes you potential slave of the product you buy. Imagine that in twenty years you won´t be able to read your documents just because you did not use open standard. Sounds unrealistic? Libraries all over the world can not open and read millions of works because respective closed standards are not technically supported anymore.

Moreover, Open Standards are essential for interoperability. In 2004, during the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the rescue operators of different countries were unable to exchange information about the ongoing operations, because they all used different closed formats of documents. This massively slowed down and complicated the coordination of rescue actions. Lots of human lives were put into danger just because vendors did not care about use of open standards in their products. And this is just one example.

You can change all of this if you distribute our message further. There are endless ways how your street art could promote open standards. Think for a while about daily examples, funny or shocking ones, which could be portrayed on the street, and than take an action. It does not require a lot, just use your imagination. Afterward, take picture of what you have created and send it to us, so we can promote your work around the world. And who knows, you might inspire other artists and your work will became viral.

Use your creativity and help us promote Open Standards!

More about DFD 2012 at DocumentFreedom.org

Your DFD Team