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resources .: David Bollier: iSummit '08 keynote address

2008-9-12T21:33:50Z

Social Movements on the Commons

The Commons is one of many social movements active in the world today. Many of them share characteristics with the Commons, but there are significant differences. What can the Commons learn from other social movements and vice versa? Is there a more effective way of doing things and has someone been doing it for ages without the Commons noticing?

See the slides from this presentation, here.

resources .: Joi Ito: iSummit '08 Keynote Address

2008-9-22T18:28:49Z

Status of the Commons

Creative Commons has evolved from a great idea to a series of licences to a global movement of a variety of projects quickly becoming ubiquitous in technical, social and academic circles. Ito will provide an overview of Creative Commons and its projects and explore the opportunities and challenges ahead.

resources .: Johanna Blakley: iSummit '08 Keynote Address

2008-9-22T17:44:03Z

Ready to Share: Fashion and the Commons

More than any other industry, fashion treats most of its creative output as a commons - shared resources that can be freely reused, recreated and recombined. How does the fashion industry manage to thrive with virtually no copyright protection?

resources .: Adam Haupt: iSummit '08 Keynote Address

2008-9-19T21:00:19Z

Enclosing the Commons - for Dummies: Creativity, citizenship and media ownership

In his address, Haupt argues that legal threats issued by SAB Miller and Wiley Publishing to culture jammers Laugh It Off Media and Mail & Guardian Online, respectively, provide important perspectives on democracy and commons enclosure. Both the Wiley "for Dummies" and SAB Miller "Black Labour White Guilt" cases offer insights into corporations' tendencies to employ narrow understandings of IP to protect their own interests - often at the expense of the public interest. However, we should be wary of reducing both media incidents to 'David and Goliath' struggles. The story of commons enclosure and limitations on free speech is not always as dramatic. Media ownership offers one example of the ways in which democracy is perverted and the South African media landscape is no exception in this regard.

See the slides from this presentation, here.

resources .: Jessica Powell: iSummit '08 Keynote Address

2008-9-19T21:00:24Z

Building connections in the Literacy Community

Many believe that the Internet can play an important role in promoting literacy and education efforts worldwide. It was with that aim that Google, LitCam, and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning launched The Literacy Project, which provides a platform through which literacy organisations and teachers can connect and share best practices, tools, and information. This talk will look at the promotion of best practice sharing through the site, as well as address some of the challenges faced across this field, including Internet connectivity, new media literacy, and cultural and language differences.

See the slides from this presentation, here.

resources .: Jamie King: iSummit '08 keynote address

2008-9-12T16:01:23Z

No License for these Territories

As innovative and forward-looking as the Commons is, the real world is still one step ahead. As comprehensively as open content is documented, there are territories of sharing that have yet to be pinned down by lawmakers of any description and it is here where the cutting edge of the Commons has yet to be felt. Who's going to get there first?

See the slides from this presentation, here.

resources .: Rishab Ghosh: iSummit '08 Keynote Address

2008-9-15T17:56:42Z

Collaborative Creativity: How innovation together has stood the test of time

Innovation as a product of an ivory tower of individual ownership is not so much a thing of the past as an obsolescence. Many minds sharing freely solve problems faster.

See the slides from this presentation, here.

resources .: Rebecca MacKinnon: iSummit '08 Keynote Address

2008-9-15T17:49:14Z

Free Culture and Free Speech: Why strong and vibrant free culture communities are important for freedom of expression

In the democracies of today freedom of expression is often taken for granted when it is particularly fragile. It is a right that needs to be continually exercised, because if it isn't, the space that society provides for it shrinks until the next time someone exercises that right. The communities that subscribe to the ethos of the Commons are important actors in the creation of the space for free.

See the slides from this presentation, here.

resources .: Communicating Disasters: Building on the Tsunami Experience...

2008-2-24T22:16:50Z

A new Asian book published this month takes a critical look at the communication lessons of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, and explores the role of good communications before, during and after disasters.

Titled 'Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book', the multi-author book discusses how information, education and communication can help create disaster resilient communities across the Asia Pacific region, home to half of humanity.

Coming out in time for the third anniversary of the tsunami, the book carries an entire section which reflects on the communication lessons of that mega-disaster.

Drawing on the tsunami, Kashmir earthquake and other recent disasters, the book concludes: adequate planning by media and disaster managers can help avoid communications disasters when communicating about disasters.

With focus on the appropriate use of media-based communications, the publication covers rapid on-set disasters such as tsunami, earthquakes, cyclones and landslides as well as those that unfold slowly, such as drought.

The book, co-published by the non-profit media foundation TVE Asia Pacific and the UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok, brings together 21 authors most of them from Asia who share their experiences and insights on effective communication related to various disasters.

It was released during the Third Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 11 to 13 December 2007. The role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in disaster prevention and early warning was discussed during the event, attended by 1,700 people.

Communicating Disasters was edited by two leading Asian journalists Sri Lankan Nalaka Gunawardene and Indian Frederick Noronha and carries a foreword by Sir Arthur C Clarke, inventor of the communications satellite.

"Communicating disasters -- before, during and after they happen -- is fraught with many challenges," Sir Arthur Clarke says in his foreword. "Todays ICT tools enable us to be smart and strategic in gathering and disseminating information. But there is no silver bullet that can fix everything. We must never forget how even high tech (and high cost) solutions can fail at critical moments. We can, however, contain these risks by addressing the cultural, sociological and human dimensions."

The book's contributors come from backgrounds in print and broadcast media, photojournalism, the UN system, civil society, academia and the humanitarian sector. They draw on their rich and varied experience in either preparing disaster resilient communities or responding to humanitarian emergencies triggered by specific disasters. Five chapters are written by leading Asian journalists who covered the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

"This book comes out at a time when both the media industry and the global humanitarian sector are undergoing rapid change," says co-editor Nalaka Gunawardene, who is also Director of TVE Asia Pacific. "Our contributors are among the 'change agents' leading or consolidating these changes, and thus able to offer insights from the cutting edge in their respective spheres."

Whenever a hazard turns into a disaster of any kind, journalists and humanitarian workers are among the first to arrive on the scene. But their needs and agendas are different: journalists have to access and verify real time information, and get their story out ahead of the competition, while the priority for humanitarian workers and disaster managers is to provide relief to affected people.

resources .: iSummit 2008 Planning Workshop - Presentation by Japanese team

2008-1-29T18:19:09Z

At the Summit planning workshop, the team from Sapporo City, Digital Garage and CCJP gave a presentation on the Summit venue, the city of Sapporo, and some of the other practical and logistic considerations for the Summit. This is the audio version of the presentation, you can see the slides here

resources .: iSummit 2008 Planning Workshop - Summit Design Discussion

2008-1-29T18:19:06Z

On Day 1 of the Summit Planning Workshop, all the participants were asked to design their dream summit venue, using toothpicks, sweets, straws and other materials. This audio clip is of the feedback session afterwards, when each group explained their designs and why they chose to do what they did.

You can read more about this session here, on the iCommons blog, or watch the video of the session here, on the video Fumi shot.

Note: The sound on this clip isn't uniformly good, so the blog and video will help give you a better idea of what happened...

resources .: iCommons Annual '07

2007-6-28T17:57:51Z

For this year's Summit, iCommons decided to create an Annual, a
collection of some of the best and most interesting writing around the
Commons. Writers were commissioned from all areas of the Commons and
stories that had originally appeared on the iCommons site were updated.
The annual was designed by Johannesburg design company Infiltrate
Media, and the finished annual was distributed at the Summit in
Dubrovnik, Croatia. For those who were unable to attend the Summit, or
anyone who would like to download, remix, share and distribute these
stories, we have archived them here as PDFs. They're licensed under a
CC BY-SA 3.0 license, so feel free to get creative and spread them
around.

Click here to read the articles.

resources .: Who Are We, and Where Do We Come From?

2007-7-12T17:33:30Z

Bringing people together is a great way to generate discussions, and one of the most interesting, and ongoing areas of discussion to come out of the iCommons Summit is that of diversity. Issues around representation - who gets to come to the Summit, and why, and more importantly, who doesn't and why not often carry on for long after the Summit ends, and often start up again just before the start of a new Summit every year.
It's really important that we have these discussions. Without them, we may well lose sight of who we are and what we're doing. But it's also important that when we have these discussion, we have the right facts.

So, in order to help us understand who we are and where we come from, and to help us figure out where we should be going, and where we should be coming from, we've managed to aggregate information from the last 3 Summits. It's fascinating stuff!

Summit05
Location: Boston, USA
Number of Attendees: 92
Countries Represented: 37
Google Map Link

Summit06
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Number of Attendees: 236
Countries Represented: 44
Google Map Link

Summit07
Location: Dubrovnik, Croatia
Number of Attendees: 453
Countries Represented: 58
Google Map Link

resources .: iSummit '08 programme structure

2008-2-27T21:32:31Z

Submissions for programme session proposals at the iSummit '08 opened on 1 March. This PDF document shows the suggested basic structure for every day of the iSummit, by displaying the times for keynote addresses, general sessions/panels, and 'labs', which are a new addition to the Summit programme.

A lab is a space dedicated to a specific theme, project or medium, which are overarching tracks that will run during the iSummit programme.

Please note that the structure is malleable and may be changed as submissions dictate. If you have suggestions and requests for changes to this structure, please send them to james 'at' icommons 'dot' org

Download the document and refer to this programme key:
- Sessions: Time that is dedicated to submissions. The sessions are run in sequences called 'labs' that are discipline specific.
- Programmable Space: A space that you can book for any ad hoc meetings that arise.
- Keynotes: One person talking to many people for no longer than 20 minutes.
- Free Culture House: A space where people can hang out, hold informal meetings and listen to good music by DJs.

resources .: iSummit Interviews on dotSUB

2007-7-09T10:47:49Z

Check out these iSummit interviews from dotSUB, that have been captioned.

Heather Ford, iCommons Executive Director talks about CC and film in South Africa

iCommons on Film: Samuli Torssonen, the producer of Star Wreck, talks about a recent trip to the Cannes Film festival.

John Buckman from Magnatune and Bookmooch talks about why the industry should use CC licensing.

resources .: CD Insert - Creative Commons License Agreements

2007-12-05T18:15:07Z

This archive contains 6 Creative Commons license agreement cd-inserts along with the template file I used. The template file is a GIMP XCF file. The finished license agreement files are in PNG format.

I hope that people find it useful.

resources .: The iSummit 2008 in Sapporo: presentation by CC Japan

2008-1-28T15:58:53Z

At the iSummit 2008 planning workshop held in Johannesburg on 17 and 18 January, Yuko Noguchi presented 'The iSummit 2008 in Sapporo', which outlined the practical conditions and consequences of having the iSummit in Japan, and identified issues which need to be addressed during our planning event.

For feedback on problem-solving and brainstorming that took place at the event, read the workshop page on the iCommons wiki, for full notes and report-backs.

resources .: Unlocking the Potential through Creative Commons

2007-8-30T23:09:39Z

In November 2007 the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) hosted the CCau Industry Forum, a research-focused industry engagement event. The event was organised by the CCi Creative Commons Clinic and Creative Commons and Open Content Licensing research projects in response to the Australian Government's 2005 Digital Content Action Agenda. It was designed to follow up the Action Agendas recommendation that industry engage with work occurring in the area of alternative approaches to intellectual property licensing, such as Creative Commons.

Focusing on the government, education and the creative industries sectors, the Forum aimed to evaluate understanding of and attitudes towards copyright, open content licensing (OCL) and the Creative Commons initiative within Australia. With the rapid growth of digital technologies over the last decade has led to a revolution in the creation and dissemination of knowledge a revolution that has created unprecedented challenges for copyright law. The all rights reserved model of traditional copyright law, with its complex legal concepts and requirement for permission for even the most common and non-controversial of uses, does not fit well with an environment which both enables and requires reproduction and communication on an unprecedented scale. From a legal perspective, one of the most significant responses to these changes has been the development of new OCL systems designed to open up access to and use of protected material. These OCL models preserve the creators intellectual property rights whilst giving permission in advance for the content to be used more broadly than would be permitted under default copyright law.

The Unlocking the Potential Through Creative Commons report evaluates and responds to the outcomes of this Forum and presents a strategy for continued research into Creative Commons in Australia. Full copies of the report can be downloaded at http://creativecommons.org.au/unlockingthepotential and may be used and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia licence.

resources .: Free High School Science Texts and the Case for Continuous Learning

2007-11-16T22:23:39Z

A collaborative, participatory framework for teaching and learning, where teachers and learners take on the role of active researchers in the instruction process, was an important theme that drove discussions, informal talks over coffee, and several of the presentations at the 2007 OpenLearn conference in Milton Keynes, UK.

The presentation of the Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) project likewise created some buzz. The presentation by Cynthia Jimes of ISKME told the story of how FHSST built open content from the bottom up, and grew into a project that has inspired the South African Ministry of Education to consider a more broad-scale initiative to create open textbooks for all grade levels in South Africa.

resources .: The iSummit 2008 in Sapporo: presentation by CC Japan (pdf format)

2008-2-08T23:58:36Z