As I'm wrapping up a visit with my relatives in Switzerland, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Philipp Schroeder of DIN15 / Information Architecture & Interaction Design. I first met Philipp when he visited CIS earlier this summer through the Swiss Silicon Valley Association. Philipp is a motivated open source developer and energized about Web 2.0 culture and opportunities here in Switzerland. We ate at Lilly (no website) which is a delicious little Asian-fusion spot right next to the Riffraff Theatre (an alternative film house) on Langstrasse (also very close to the main train station).
During our 3 hour lunch we chatted about everything from what's happening here in Zurich in the open-source software movement, to coding in drupal, to the art of film-making and photography and how those are changing with internet distribution, to the education system which differs significantly in Switzerland from that of the U.S., to Creative Commons in Switzerland. Philipp also pointed me to OpenLaw.ch, which just happens to be the same group behind the Creative Commons for Switzerland. (Small world!) (As I write this, I'm totally regretting not having gotten in touch with CC Switzerland before I arrived... something I'll need to do on my next trip!)
Philipp later emailed me about the super interesting history behind his shared office space at Din15 (which I visited). It used to be the headquarters of the artist (culture jamming) group Etoy, which gained much notoriety because of the 1999 "toywars" (a trademark and domain name dispute between the Etoy artist group and eToys Inc., a U.S. toy retailer). eToys (the retailer) eventually dropped the suit and the artist group claimed total victory. (Learn more about the Etoy artist group and the toywars here and here.