Stéphane Couture is a Professor at the Faculté des arts et des sciences - Département de communication at the University of Montreal. 

Referring to previous work done on hacker culture and free and open source software,  Stéphane's presentation will look at the cultures, practices, and power dynamics of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its sister and peripheral organization, the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). IETF is the main organization building Internet protocols, namely the formal specifications and standards that specify the rules and forms of computer communication on the Internet. He proposes to look at protocol development from the perspective of hacker cultures and practices described by authors such as Coleman and Kelty. Indeed, while the ‘protocol’ artifact is different than the software ‘code’ of hackers, many aspects of its development are reminiscent of hacker culture.