Wouter Tebbens


Wouter Tebbens, is a Dutch activist, researcher and social entrepreneur on Free Knowledge.

Career

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 Operations Management led by prof. dr. W.H.M. Zijm. In 2002 he founded the company xlocal.com, offering services based on free software to SME companies. Between 2004 and 2007 he presided the working group on Free/Libre/Open Source Software at Internet Society Netherlands.
Between 2006 and 2008 he was coordinator of the European Commission's FP6-funded SELF Project to design a platform for the collaborative construction of educational materials.
In 2007 he co-founds the non-profit foundation Free Knowledge Institute together with Hinde ten Berge and David Jacovkis to consolidate their activities and mission for a free knowledge society.
In 2008 Tebbens co-chaired the Free Knowledge Free Technology Conference, organised by the SELF Project and the Free Knowledge Institute.
The Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission awards the Free Knowledge Institute a grant to set up the Free Technology Academy together with the Open Universiteit Nederland and the Open University of Catalonia. Tebbens will lead the project and becomes the first director of the academy.
In 2009 Tebbens was one of the co-organisers of the Free Culture Forum in Barcelona, where he organised and moderated the Educational panel. The main working documents that were produced during the Forum led to the Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge. Kim Tucker and Tebbens have written a modified version for the Charter from a Free Knowledge perspective, drawing on the various working documents produced during the Forum. The Free Knowledge Institute has published a summary of that as Ten Points For Change.
In 2011 he was programme committee member for the Open Knowledge Conference in Berlin, organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Publications