Icommons.org

I was in Geneva last week at the ‘Experts Meeting on the Internet Governance Forum’. The meeting was organised by the Consumer Project on Technology, the South Centre and the Third World Network, and we discussed the possibility of taking issues such as the Access to Knowledge Treaty to the newly formed Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

Remember the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)? Well, at the final session of WSIS, the delegates drafted the ‘Tunis Agenda‘ which asked the Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, to convene a ‘new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue’. Some say that the IGF was just a way for the US representatives to draw attention away from the impasse over critical aspects of the WSIS Declaration (including issues around intellectual property alternatives). But James Love from CPTech is determined that this isn’t just another talk shop ‘ which is why he brought us together in Geneva to talk strategy with regards to the upcoming (more…)

On Friday 21 July, Creative Commons Garden (ccGarden), a local Creative Commons (CC) promotion-oriented organization, in collaboration with Creative Commons Taiwan (ccTaiwan) will host a ‘Creative Commons Collage Party’ in Taipei. The concept of the party is to invite creators to bring their CC-released works to the party and encourage them to remix and collage their work with one another at the event.

At the Collage party, several popular Taiwanese musicians and digital artists will present their works live and share their creative experiences with the participants. The performers include Lim Giong, a dj
renowned for his Cannes-nominated music in the film ‘Millennium Mambo‘; Chu Yue Hsin, who released the very first CC-licensed album, ‘Jesus Rock!!!‘ to the Chinese-speaking market; Angelika Wang, a senior film planner, who also organised the ‘Taiwan International Children’s TV & Film Festival‘, the ‘Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival‘ and the ‘Purple Ribbon Arts Parade’.

A documentary related to ccGarden, made by students from the Department of Multimedia and Animation Arts of the National Taiwan University of Arts will be also played at the party.

Icommons.org will bring you a report on the party and ccGarden’s plans for the future, so stay posted.

One attendee of the iCommons Summit in June was happier then most. During the Creative Commons localisation discussion, Dwayne Bailey, acommons.org/wp-content/uploads/ South African and one of the co-directors of the WordForge project had the pleasure of seeing WordForge’s web-based translation tool adopted by Creative Commons (CC).

The tool, fondly called ‘Pootle‘, allowed Jon Phillips, CC’s Open Source Developer and Nathan Yergler, CC’s Software engineer, to easily enable anyone to translate the ccHost and ccPublisher software into their own language. Jon and Nathan were looking for a way to make it easier for people to translate (more…)

There has been some great debate about the governance of iCommons, in particular the articles by Tom Chance from Remix Reading and Free Culture U.K.; Judy Breck from goldenswamp.com and Becky Hogge from OpenDemocracy.

As we said in the final session of the Summit, iCommons is a new organisation and is committed to developing a structure that fits the needs and wishes of iCommoners. We would therefore like to invite you all to participate in a meeting tomorrow on the icommons irc channel to discuss the possibility of an iCommons Community Council. We have scheduled two times to try and deal with different time zones. We know its really soon but we would really like to get your input as soon as possible so that we can move this forward. So please meet us at:

GMT 8.00-9.30am on Thursday 13th OR
GMT 9.00-10.30pm on Thursday 13th

We really want everyone to be able to ask the questions they have and to talk about their concerns, but most important is that we come up with a (more…)

During the iCommons Summit held in June this year, Pedro Mendizábal and Oscar Montezuma from Peru were thinking about more than just the workshops to be attended, or the sights of Rio, or even the quality of caipirinhas at the evening events.

With the upcoming launch of Creative Commons Peru (ccPeru), due to take place just a few days after the iCommons Summit, the two Peruvians were preoccupied with the smooth running of the event. ‘I’ve been in constant contact with the team back home,’ Oscar said at the Summit, looking distractedly at (more…)

What makes a ‘great’ conference? Is it a ‘great’ conference when people like Cory Doctorow say: ‘I’ve been to a lot of conferences and this was truly amazing’? Is it a ‘great’ conference when the event makes the front page of the New York Times Arts and Culture section and when the local media print too many stories to count? Is it a ‘great’ conference when you hear people saying that ‘all their heroes are here’ and that they are having way too much fun to call this ‘work’? Is it a ‘great’ conference when there is real debate like the one initiated by (more…)