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Revisioning iCommons
In 2005, iCommons was established as an outgrowth of Creative Commons with an objective to ‘advance the wider dissemination of non-commercial sharing of scientific, creative and other intellectual works by the general public’. Creative Commons was the sole member, guarantor and sponsor of the charity, providing organisational and financial support.
Today, iCommons has a small,... more
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Let's Tear Down the Top-Down Conference!
Neeru · Oakland, Cambridge, Fremont (United States) · Jun 17th, 2007 6:17 pm · 49 votes · 27 comments
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NOTE: A number of people talked to me about this today and these ideas are mostly "stolen" from those conversations.
Creative Commons, in some respects, is a movement about meritocracy. One in which, those who are talented are able to self-publish, gain recognition, and become valued for their talents. Without this opportunity, those from the ground are not able to shine. In addition, those voices that are currently not heard from, are able to tell their story.
Why then, do we continue to follow the top-down structure of conference presentations? The current version of conference presentations includes an assembly of panelists by conference organizers, who then deliver their opinions on a chosen topic to an audience of attendees.
These panelist are generally esteemed citizens who most people actually would like to hear talk. Thought that's true, we ought to consider the issue of "access," "star status," and the "unheard voices from the ground."
Though I can't prove it (!) those who have access to the conference organizers, or are well-known (star-status), are more likely to be chosen to present on a panel. This morning's keynote education panel is a great example of this. Though the panel was about education around the world, the members of the panel were all White men based on North America, none of which were teachers. Those in the audience, who were more diverse, had only a limited opportunity to ask questions. However, even those in the audience weren't a representative sample of the public.
How does this happen? It clearly is not intentional, however, it often happen because of the social networks we inhabit. Often, our social networks determine our opportunities in life and are a significant source of power. When a strong tightly knit network exists, it is often difficult to pull in unheard voices from the ground who do not have access to the networks, and often, we end up hearing the same voices over, and over again. Or we just talk amongst ourselves.
If Creative Commons is about freedom, democracy, bottom up, and building off of each others' works, then why in our own conference do we replicate the demographic power structure that seems to pervade every other sphere of life?
I would offer two reasons: one, we probably just haven't thought to challenge the traditional conference format, and two, busting through the confinements of social networks is not easy. It's true, amongst a certain type of person (and may I say, a VERY COOL person) that Creative Commons is very well-known, however, in the other social networks I inhabit, when I mention CC, people's eyes often glaze over. We need to make a greater effort to reach out to other people, those of different geographies, classes, and cultures.
As for the conference, my point, which I haven't actually made yet, is that the open educational track was trying to address some of these issues by offering a very interactive and different kind of conference structure. True, it is also being run by White men, but isn't everything?! All joking aside, they did make a great effort to change the top-down conference structure and I hope that we can seriously analyze power, access, and status in our own communities so that it better reflects our ideals as a movement. This, of course, is nothing new. Many high-tech companies, though they can build high-powered international networks that can transmit information faster than a pin drops (that you can't hear), they can't get their own projectors to work in their meetings. Somehow, the universe determines great irony for us. We're all just doing our best making an effort to continually make things better, in society and amongst ourselves. Everything is a work in progress. This is the true spirit of social activism.
tags: dubrovnik croatia education politics gender class race community summit07
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On a related note, the way some chairpersons ran the question & answer part of their panels really irritated me. Here is a selection of bad practises:
1. Asking their own questions to the panel first, further excluding everyone else in the room and cutting discussion time down to barely 10 minutes in some cases;
2. Inviting contributions from people they knew in the audience, particularly well known individuals, rather than randomly selecting people (or even picking out voices we hadn't heard from yet);
3. Giving too much time for the panellists to respond, rather than inviting multiple comments from the audience.
Can we produce guidelines for chairs that try and maximise opportunities for participation?
A huge thanks go to John Willbank for bucking each of these trends and facilitating a really varied discussion at the philosophy of the commons panel! And since I'm as guilty as the next person in helping to organise a panel with three white, western men on it, I'd like to thank Heather for her work in starting to tackle these issues. It would be good to produce maps like this one to represent the distorted representation of particular countries and regions, and to keep track of how it improves over the years.
I also want to echo Andrew's call for affirmative action. But the next iCommons will be in an expensive, inaccessible part of the world, with an explicit focus on mainstream business. How can you expect to get broader participation with that set-up? I hope the iSummit 2009 is somewhere cheap, easy to reach and with a much broader focus! I'd also like to see regional summits to build regional confidence, reduce financial barriers and generally increase participation from those who don't want to fly vast distances on the off-chance that the event will be interesting.
tchance · London (United Kingdom) · Jun 18th, 2007 5:49 pm
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The conference was interesting to me, as it was really the first of its kind that I have attended. I have been to lots of conferences and festivals, whether youth political parties and green movements, juggling festivals, Esperanto congresses and summer camps :) But not this kind of international thing where you have both people who have never been to an international summit, and received scholarships to attend - and others who are just touching down between TED, O'Reilly and all the other conferences on their schedule.
During my first time, I was split between wanting to attend the educational track, which is perhaps my main interest (although I am very interested in the other tracks as well), and some of the bigger presentations - because I kind of (childishly) wanted to see big names I've read so much about - Lessig, Cory Doctorow, Jimmy Wales, etc etc.
But after a while I realized that I could download (hopefully?) all those presentations later, and my experience would not be much different, but the intense small group discussions that happened in the education track, and some of the hopefully really cool long-term projects growing out of them would not be easy to replicate offline.
(When it comes to price and distance - CC is growing a lot in Asia, and I guess it's great that a lot of people there will have access to the conference much cheaper. But I agree to the call for regional conferences as well).
I also thought a lot about the use of language during the conference, but I think I will start a new article about that (still coming to terms with how this new site works for discussing / publishing news / sharing resources).
But thanks for a great event! I still feel my head spinning with thoughts and ideas that I will need quite a while to process...
Stian · Hamar (Norway) · Jun 18th, 2007 9:51 pm
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So, I like the idea here. However, I spend a lot of my time at conferences, and the ugly truth is that the top-down conference is a structure that has evolved as one of the more successful ways to run conferences out there. Most of the non top-down conferences I have attended have been lousy. I think the structure is, however much it sucks, one of the few that turns out to work for a large number of people.
FOO camps work, but registration is cut down to 100 and ruthlessly enforced. The OER track worked because it was just that, a track. People come to conferences for lots of reasons - some of those reasons are to see the Lessigs and Benklers, some are to drink beer with colleagues, see old friends, or try new conference metaphors.
I would ask: how many people actually contributed to the icommons planning wiki in advance? How many of those are from the US and Europe? At the philosophy of the commons session I stopped the discussion and asked for comment from countries of the south. No hands went up. That's not a problem that new modalities of conference organization can fix.
That's it for my cynicism and my defense of top-down organization. Now for a suggestion. Why don't we blend the top-down elements and, if a track emerges because people use this website to build tracks, let them split off on their own? Because then there's proof of enough motivation and will to make a track work, something that isn't always there.
As for the keynote panels, well, Neeru's flat-out right there.
Also, can we please get some science into open business discussions? Between BioMed Central and Hindawi there's $15M USD per year in revenues there and no one ever listens to me when I mention them :-)
/end rant
wilbanks · Boston (United States) · Jun 20th, 2007 1:29 am
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The summit could still be structured according to both thematics and methodologies, and also times for participation:
1. keynotes: keep top-down conference at the beginning or the end of the day. Sending keynotes presentations or even rough notes or links in advance may indeed foster interaction and help non-native english speaking audience to fully enjoy the lectures.
2. workshops: have mostly nodes, working groups, break-out sessions in between, submitted on this website to prepare the programme as it has been done, but proposing potential speakers, attendees and anyone to send contributions and comments.
Reading working groups contributions before the summit would allow to allocate less time for speakers presentations, and leave more time for productive discussion and collaboration.
3. one or two plenaries to report on raised issues and achieved work within the working groups, and allow participation for next steps: maybe a first one to kick-off the summit and share experiences of the past year, and definitely a second real (not 5 minutes) plenary to close the summit and organize collaborations opportunities beyond pre-existing networks.
melanie ddr, CC France (France) · Jun 20th, 2007 11:08 pm
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I guess my point is that icommons is an organization, and isummit is (or at least has been) a conference. If that should change, that's fine - it should change here, on the web site, through those who want that change to happen by taking charge and building their own tracks.
Conference planning is hard, thankless work. Eva and Tessi from CCi, and the entire SA team at icommons, did enormous work. I didn't hear a lot of people saying thanks - which is not unusual, so I'm not accusing anyone here of anything! - but it's important to realize that all of these ideas have to be instantiated by real people. Even bottom-up tracks require planning, rooms to be booked, projectors to be arranged, bottles of water to be in place.
So it's important that this set of ideas not dissipate over the next year. That those who want change work for change. That those who want bottom up tracks work to create those tracks ahead of time, to get speakers and define needs and define objectives. then the real people that have to do the real work in advance know their tasks so that the bottom up work can take place.
I'm all in favor of this. But I am leery of broad statements that place more pressure on staff without a concurrent commitment to do that hard work on planning in advance. And so I repeat, if you want change, work for it. Outline potential frameworks. Work for funding in your own community to bring new people.
And here's the big one for me. Challenge yourself to attend panels that are outside your own sphere of interest. My primary issues with isummit are not the top down structure, though I understand why that would be the case for some. My issue is the self-segregation along lines of interest that prevent cross fertilization. If I'd planned a science track, I'd have seen nothing but science. And I already know about science. I spent my time learning a lot I didn't know, and I came out pretty happy with my conference as a result.
My sincere hope is that next year, business people go to non commercial panels, that educators go to podcast panels, that photographers go to open science panels. That eastern europeans and africans talk about all these issues from the front microphones, not the audience. That each of us challenge ourselves to sit at tables with people we don't know already, and ask them open-ended questions.
A side note on chairing: chairing or facilitating is very, very hard. I don't know how we can train people to do it in a day. My own experiences (I am not at lessig's level of speaking engagements per year, but closing in) have taught me a fair amount of how I want it done, and I was lucky this year to have two great panels to facilitate. But it depends more on what the panel is about, who's on the panel, and who is in the audience. That is something that can be done here.
That is why this new site was built. Build your own conference idea. Make it happen. You have a whole year to plan, organize, write papers, raise money, find people, and execute. And I know from my own experience that iCommons will listen to you, will happily take in all that programmatic ideas. I'd like to see this thread turn into a proposed program for next year as soon as possible. And from the conference planning perspective, that'd be a pretty cool thing too - it makes the work on the ground a lot easier than trying to set an agenda from the head office.
Great discussion though :-) - no surprise it's Neeru stirring the pot!
jtw
wilbanks · Boston (United States) · Jun 21st, 2007 1:10 pm
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Thankyou Joi for your comments, I think that you are correct in identifying these lapses in terms of communication about decisions that are made.
As regard the invitation to business, and the corresponding statement that the focus of the conference might be more business-oriented, it seems to me that here iCommons is standing on its head. I am in no way suggesting that business should not be attending (indeed it should be a real melting pot), however, generally speaking social movements get on with being social movements first and foremost. If funding is an issue, then it is clearly time to move to a cheaper location (rather than an even more expensive one). By pre-framing the agenda of the next iSummit as pro-business I think you do a real disservice to the iCommons and Free Culture more generally.
Regarding Scholarships, it is one thing to get sponsorship that is open and transparent and placed in a central repository to pay for the event and so forth (although here Tom Chance is completely correct in surmising that iCommons should seek to spread income equally between private/business and charity funding). But it is quite another to assume that therefore more business should therefore be invited, or allowed to frame the conference. In any case, there is little that is more boring, conservative and lacking life and vibrancy than a corporate conference.
My belief is that the conference should be organised around its core values, it should be committed to developing free culture and getting people interested in these issues together (this is how 'community' is developed, regardless of the claims of the social networking and techno-utopians). Then a call for participation can be circulated within the terms of Free Culture and iCommons aims. I like John Willibanks suggestion of mixing it all up so that you don't fall into the trap of having streams which preclude the very mixing of people and ideas that allows creativity to emerge. We all know that a lot of the conference activity takes place in the interstices, (I liked Rufus Pollocks' idea of a conference built around interstices ;-) so the key is to let the conference to be more emergent and less corporate.
For example, I would suggest is that it would be better next year if the birds-of-a-feather were allowed to emerge *during* the conference in real time. People can then make break-outs to discuss mutual issues and report back to the conference somehow. I have seen this take place at a number of conferences that were much more open to random chance. Secondly I would urge that the keynotes by the big beasts are in the morning, that way they serve the dual purpose of setting the agenda for the day, giving a good talking point and allowing us more time to discuss and break-out...
Best
David
ps. Preview on this iCommons system would be a vast improvement, as would a text box larger than a postage stamp to write replies ;-)
david.berry · Swansea (United Kingdom) · Jun 27th, 2007 1:09 am
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I think this discussion is great, but I would like to challenge David's comments - particularly about funding and location, and his comments around decisions by the community.
Firstly, I would like to say that it is an incorrect assumption to say that having the summit in a 'cheap' location means that we would not have to rely so much on high fundraising challenges. Our number one priority in the initial stages of this conference is to be able to do it in countries where there is local support. Both Brazil and Croatia had strong local teams who co-organised the Summits without us having to pay them the vast salaries that this would ordinarily require. I can say confidently (having organised a number of events in a number of countries - both developed and developing) that if you don't have in-country support, your budget will sky-rocket because of lack of infrastructure. But that isn't the worst of it. Without dedicated in-country programmes, you'll be doing your conference in the back-drop of Ghana without any Ghanaians.
Secondly (and I'm about to write something about this on the site) in my experience, it is hardly ever the case that finance from business equals less flexibility. In almost EVERY case, in fact, money from business has enabled far greater flexibility than from foundations. This is definitely not always the case because there are some incredibly dedicated programme managers out there, but in many cases, I've seen that there are foundations who commit to funding and then force radical changes in projects because of organisational politics and bureacracy and who don't pay on time. This can be disastrous for young organisations.
More useful, I believe, than talking about balancing different funding priorities is for iCommons to have as diverse a range of funders as possible, and for iCommons to stick to its statement of principles and core values in funding agreements.
Finally, a note about decision-making. iCommons has *always* been open to decision-making by the community. From the very beginning, we have asked for community input - but have asked that that input be constructive. We have gone even further to develop an easier platform (this site) to enable people to take ideas and initiatives (such as different formats for workshops, translation issues etc) and make them a reality. iCommons is a very small organisation - we don't even want to grow because we believe very strongly that *real* community input will have people getting their hands dirty and getting involved.
We've created the open frameworks, we've invited participation. In turn, we've received support that sees some individuals commenting on this blog post and then getting involved to change it, and then others who point out the problems as if we didn't know that they were there ;)
Alek, I can tell you how the open education track was successful: mostly, by telling every single person who wanted to give a 'presentation' around education at the summit that they should come and participate but that there wouldn't be presentations. And secondly, by having a team of incredible, experienced facilitators (Gunner, Karien and Mark) to work on this track months before the event.
This is a great story actually. Remember I asked for suggestions for workshops - asking that people look towards a goal, outcome etc in developing their plans? Very few people actually proposed real, working sessions. Almost 100% were presentations by a few key people with very little time for questions. The education track was an experiment. Bravely, Gunner, Karien and Mark engaged everyone in this track and scrapped the presentations. If we had had the resources and capacity to do this with all the tracks, we would have. That is why I made the comment in the beginning of this thread about training facilitators.
So, this is my challenge: I see a couple of issues that we can't take on on our own.
1) Bringing in more 'newbies' and developing the diversity of the participants
2) Making sure that this conference isn't "pro-business"
3) Working on the English-language bias.
I've taken on board your BOF suggestion, David - thank you. And I'll be working on the facilitation. But the rest of the Summit will be up to you all to decide. I do hope that you will start a node on some of these and help us :)
David, please report a bug by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.
Heather Ford · Johannesburg (South Africa) · Jun 27th, 2007 2:21 am
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David,
I don't think I'm really disagreeing with you too much. I don't think the focus next year will be business and I think first and foremost, the focus on iCommons should be a community event. Also, I think that it is possible to get sponsorship without allowing those businesses to exert any influence on the program. I think the key will be to get funding while at the same time, protect the spirit of the conference.
The one thing that we do need to be aware of is that "the community" is very diverse and core members of the community disagree on how much they want to hear from corporations. Any participation, however, should e done in a tasteful way that is consistent with the tone and style of the meeting.
I think that we might want to make a separate track for educating new users and corporations and this may also be another way to shield the core meeting from an onslaught of "outsiders". I do think that we need to keep pressure on the "rest of the world" to try to promote our cause and we can't do that by shutting everyone else out.
I do like the idea of a BoF or other system that emerges during the conference.
I definitely think that we need A LOT of input and interaction with the community as we develop the program and the plan. And just so you know, the Japanese team are reading this thread and trying to understand how contribute without damaging the spirit of the conference.
As for location. Yes, I think we should move around to different regions to make it easier for different people to participate. I agree that Japan is unfortunately more expensive than some other places and this should probably be taken into consideration when determining the location in the future. Having said that, I think we do also have to weight the amount of support we're getting as well.
Joi · Inbamura (Japan) · Jun 27th, 2007 2:30 am
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Great watch this conversation. Alot of creativity here ... which is exactly the fuel that will lead to better events and a stronger movement.
Heather said: "If we had had the resources and capacity to do this with all the tracks, we would have." She is right on that creating a dynamic, emergent event takes resources and intent. It doesn't happen by accident (even if you 'tear down the walls').
Looking towards iSummit 2008, I think we should be making the commitment -- and looking for the resources -- to add more community and emergence into the event right from the beginning. This doesn't mean dumping the keynotes or the inspirational theatre, but rather carving out big chunks of participatory learning and creating, and then feeding them in and out of the larger event with a few big shows and rich report backs. I'd be happy to lend some brain power on how this might happen.
On the location issue: it's always tough. But it's rare that you get a city government willing to stand up and say: "we want your movement here", which is what I say Sapporo saying. That matters alot, and not just in terms of the local organizing piece that Heather mentions. We need more cities in the world to be excited about the commons movement.
Anyways, lots of creativity here, as I say, which makes me hopeful for 2008.
Surman (Canada) · Jun 27th, 2007 6:22 am
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I must agree that there is excellent feedback, constructive criticism, and interesting conversation going on in this thread...
On behalf of the Sapporo team, let me reiterate that we are strongly committed to cooperating with the CC/iCommons teams to work through issues and concerns regarding iSummit 08. I think I can speak for all of us - meaning all members and participants involved in iCommons - that each of us has the best interests for the community at heart, and is putting in the best effort to have a successful iSummit next year.
With that being said, unfortunately we do realize that Sapporo is further (hence pricier) for those community members located in North America and Europe. However, by hosting in Sapporo, several members who were unable to attend the previous sessions will have access (such as those in Asia, etc). At the end of the iSummit 2008, we are hoping that an active creative commons community will be established in Sapporo that exhibits the same amount of dedication and enthusiasm that was witnessed at iSummit 07. The city also has its intention when the 2008 iSummit is over, a remote city somewhere in the world emerges as a model city where experienced, not only by the city administration but by the citizens as a whole, the best practice which CC offers. We think, at least, this will be an effective way to export CC to other parts of Japan.
Over the course of this year, we are hoping that these kinds of collaborative efforts, like those found on this forum, will provide us with more opportunities for improvement, so that we can give iSummit 08 more than just a mere off-chance that it will be interesting.
Rick Inoue · Sapporo (Japan) · Jul 13th, 2007 1:35 pm
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