This year's summit programme aims to be outcomes-driven and specifically targeted to the real needs of participants. Whilst previous years have provided participants with a fascinating pool of commons knowledge to dip into, this year hopes to focus participants within their various disciplines and encourage the development of strong outputs that will be sustainable within the community over the next year. Instead of the mantra 'build it and they will come' we're remixing it to 'come and they will build it'!
The keynotes - framing your day with big ideas
Each morning and evening will be contextualised with the keynote addresses. Old favourites, such as Joi Ito, will continue to inspire us as well as a new group of voices that will describe alternative perspectives. Adam Haupt, who will talk about copyright and the colonial inheritance and Erin McKean, who will talk about language as a commons, are just tow of the new vanguard that will challenge and motivate.
Read more about our powerful keynotes of the commons here.
The Labs - you are what you learn
There are five labs and one parallel track this year. The labs, which are in essence working groups, will gather for the duration of the summit - twice on Day 1, three times on Day 2 and once for a final wrap-up on Day 3.
The objective of the Labs is to provide participants with progressive, insightful information from which practical tools, guidelines or policies can be built for implementation within your own projects or initiatives. Participants will be encouraged to stick with a Lab rather than dipping into a variety of Labs in order to gain the most benefit to take away with you.
The Labs will report back to the entire summit team on Day 3, at which time the outcomes (tools/ resources/ ideas) will be shared with all participants.
Open Education Policy and Practice in a New Century: Implementing What Works led by Delia Browne and Ahrash Bissell, aims to build a checklist on practical OER implementation and to create a map of the OER project network, largely building on the important groundwork that was established with projects from last years summit.
Open Business led by James Cairns, aims to give entrepreneurs a headstart by providing solid gold in the form of insights, hints and advice from some of the most successful open business projects in the world.
Local Context, Global Commons: Open Publishing (LCGC) led by Rebecca Kahn, will showcase voices from the Global South and look at how to improve regional understanding and encourage cross-regional collaboration of the commons within different local contexts. Practical plans on how to implement 'openness' will also be created.
DIY Video led by David Harris, will build a checklist of what quantifies 'open video' as well as offering insights into lessons learned from video activists in promoting their message and ensuring impact.
Frontiers of Openness in Japan led by Yuko Noguchi, will provide Japanese commoners and newbies with introductory knowledge about the commons from trailblazers such as Larry Lessig and Joi Ito, and will also offer participants practical hands-on workshops on digital culture in Japan.
The First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture led by Giorgios Cheliotis, will be a gathering of commons academics who will formally present their peer-reviewed papers to the group and will discuss and debate burning issues relating to the commons and open licensing.
Your cultural journey through the Free Culture programme フリー・カルチャー・プログラム
Whether it is your intention or not, this year participants will find yourselves immersed within cultural diversity literally from your first step into the summit space. Walk-through installations, images and multimedia will encourage you to experience other cultural contexts that might be very different to your own.
All day long - A permanent photographic exhibition and mulltimedia installation will be viewable in the open spaces alongside an oversized experiential drawing that will call on participants' collaborative scribbling skills.
Conversation breaks - within the tea breaks there will be a variety of Japanese skills-sharing sessions such as a Japanese calligraphy workshop, origami paper folding and a traditional tea ceremony.
Events - a concert featuring Japanese rockstars, a sushi awards ceremony at the Sapporo Mayor's reception and a trip to one of the most beautiful parks in Japan are just some of the additional delights that await iCommoners.
The venue - where the action's at!
The venue of the iSummit is the Sapporo Convention Center. See pictures and descriptions of the key areas that will be hubs of Commons activity during the event.
Partner events:
CCi legal day
A partner event run by Creative Commons International, this will be a day-long meeting of Creative Commons legal and public leads on 29 July.
