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Wouter Tebbens (WP6 Leader)

Bio

Wouter Tebbens received a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Twente, Netherlands. His final research project was in the group of Production and Tebbens Operations Management led by prof. dr. W.H.M. Zijm.

For 15 years Wouter has been active in Free Software, developing his company, and later dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and awareness of shared knowledge, open standards and commons based peer production. He has done so from the Internet Society Netherlands, within several Europen Commission funded projects in the areas of research and development and lifelong learning.

In 2007 he became co-founder of the non-profit foundation Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), where he serves as president of the board. Under the umbrella of the FKI Wouter has participated in a considerable number of events and has helped organise some, like the Free Knowledge Free Technology Conference (2008), the Free Culture Forum (2009), the Open Knowledge Conference Berlin (2010).

His vision is a world where people can freely engage in creative and enterpreneurial work, without artificial monopolies such as patents and copyrights, while society will strike a balance between individual and collective freedom, constructing knowledge more and more shared as a (mostly digital) commons, while liberated or freed markets encourage people to exchange under socially benefical rules.

In this sense the paradigm of digital DIY and Open Source Hardware empower people to transition into that direction. Since 2011 Wouter has started to develop this vision in his (low frequency) Microfactoria blog, and more on the general aspects of a (free) knowledge society on the FKI blog.

In his personal life, he's participant of several cooperatives to supply energy, food and other basic needs. He also works part time as freelance ERP consultant, with the free software community called Odoo/OpenERP. And he is locally active to engage people with digital fabrication.