Icommons.org

The iCommons staff are back in their green-walled office in Jozi after a whirlwind SA Free Culture tour in Cape Town last week. In honour of Larry and Jimmy’s visit, the iCommons worker bees took a break from the Skype meetings, the e-mail back-and-forths and the iSummit registration system, and swapped our monitor tan for the real deal. Yes, for a short while we stepped away from our laptops and our ‘virtual’ community with whom we interact everyday, and took to the streets of Cape Town, to find a very different kind of community, but none the less ‘ a community, that we could talk to, laugh with, and party with, in real life, without having to press an ‘enter’ button.

Now this is not to say our online interactions are not appreciated ‘ without our community and the technology that glues us together, we would not be able to do even half of what we do - but let’s face the fact that at the end of the day, meeting in person is a type of ‘Prodigal Son’ experience. I suppose this is why the iCommons Summit is the highlight of our commons efforts every year. In fact ‘community’ is what we here at iCommons, are all about. That’s why the presentations at the Digital Freedom Expo were of such interest to us ‘ we could find out more about the workings of other communities around the world. (more…)

Who would have thought a Wednesday night could offer so much excitement? On 29 November, Creative Commons Australia (ccAU), in conjunction with Queensland University of Technology, the Australian Research Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi), and the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (iCi), held the first Australian ccSalon, a live showcase of Creative Commons art, music, film and text in Australia.

ccAU decided to take full advantage of the relationship-building opportunities of the Salon, making sure that there was a diverse group of attendees by tying the Salon to a series of industry meetings, which were held at the same venue in the afternoon leading up to the Salon. These meetings, which were dubbed the first ccAU Industry Forum, were designed to act (more…)

Creative Commons Salons have been held in San Francisco, New York, Warsaw, Seoul and Johannesburg, and now the city of Amsterdam will host its very own ccSalon too.

The first Dutch ccSalon will kick off on Wednesday 13 December at 20:30 in ‘De Melkweg‘ Amsterdam and will be focused on music and sounds.

The evening will start with an interesting talk by the Italian ’stand-up’ sociologist Sergio Messina about ‘How to Write a Song and Go to Jail.’

If you haven’t been detained by the local authorities after Sergio’s talk you can enjoy the presentation by Sara Kolster and Derek Holzer of Soundtransit. This project combines the passion of (more…)

The first ccSalon in South Africa proved to be less of a techno chat-fest and more of a learning experience for all involved.

You never really know what kind of people are going to turn up for a Creative Commons shindig.

It could be a collection of techno-experts (we don’t call them geeks in this community, thank you very much) who will baffle most people with discussions about Linux platforms and embedded systems.

Or you might run into the Cultural Freedom Fighters, who exist on the bleeding edge of the blogosphere and make culture like some people make money. Except, because they like to share their culture, a lot of the Cultural Freedom Fighters don’t make much money. But they do have nice (more…)

The first Creative Commons Salon (ccSalon), held in Seoul on 19 August, was all about sharing and enjoying music.

Hosted by Creative Commons Korea (ccKorea), more than seventy people attended the event, including international guests Tyng-Ruey Chuang from Creative Commons Taiwan (ccTaiwan) and Naoki Iguchi from Creative Commons Japan (ccJapan). Local participants varied from digital artists, bloggers and podcasters to social scientists and commons activists.

At 18:30, the Salon was opened with a promotional video clip about (more…)