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Download the LCGC page (pdf) from the iSummit '08 Annual
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What this meant practically, was that a core group of writers, publishers, translators and activists coalesced around the lab, which meant that we were able to continue discussions beyond each session, and use all three days to discuss the challenges faced by all participants and explore possible solutions as well as planning activities for the months to come.
Drawing from research of an ongoing project between organisations in India, Brazil and South Africa, one of the Lab's mail objectives was to present a diverse range of social, economic, cultural and political contexts in which people create and share knowledge and creativity on the internet - with a view towards initiating new projects that support active local content creation from an informed vantage point.
Specifically, the various sessions looked at (amongst other issues) the role of knowledge-sharing platforms such as Wikipedia in growing local language communities on the internet; how bloggers are leading the move towards building an active pool of online creators in the developing world; how local publishing is moving online and what are the intellectual property challenges; and at the new business models for publishing online that enable developing countries with limited infrastructure to join the global knowledge economy.
The methodology used in running the lab was a combination of Open Space (a method that is more participatory than traditional facilitation methods, and favours a group-led, rather than a facilitator-led discussion) and traditional presentation methods. These presentations were modelled on the Petcha-Kutcha-style of presentation, which holds each presenter to using only 20 slides for 20 seconds each, resulting in short, creative presentations that engage the audience and allow for more content to be fitted into short time-frames.
The lab was extremely well attended, with anywhere from between 15 and 40 people in each session. Attendees were from every region represented at the Summit: from North and Southern Africa, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, North and South America, Asia and the Far East. Because of the open nature of the sessions, a good rapport within the group was quickly established, and this proved useful not only in keeping discussions lively, but in keeping communication clear - many of the attendees were able to act as interpreters and translators.
It is also worth noting that much of the planning and discussion around the content of the lab took place in the months leading up to the Summit. Participants were invited to submit proposals for sessions within the lab and from these submissions a general programme was shaped. Once the programme had a basic shape, all participants were invite to add to, comment on and refine the various session, so that by the time everyone had arrived in Sapporo, there was a distinct sense that the lab belonged to the participants, rather than to iCommons.
Three main areas of discussion came out of the labs: publishing, translation and opening up public sector information.
Within the publishing discussions, several issues were raised, specifically the challenge faced by content producers who struggle to make their material stand out in the vast expanse of information currently available online. Chris Salzberg, an editor and translator at Global Voices, ran the open translation session. Along with researchers from the Shiitake Project and Digital Silk Road Project in Japan, and editors and translators from Global Voices' Lingua translation project, he lead a discussion about the challenges faced by translators working on the Internet. In a web of open content and collaboration, it is often assumed that simply setting your information "free" is all you need to promote it to the world. Often times -- especially on an international level -- this takes much more effort, and translators often face the challenge of evaluating whether a work is worth translating, then translating and contextualising it. Human-translation is far better than mechanised translation systems like Google translator, but this is a drain on time and resources. Leonard Chien presented on Chinese translation on the Global Voices site, and Hanako Tokita did the same for Japanese. Kyo Kaguera talked about his QRedit tool for translating English texts to Japanese, and Mohammad Daoud presented how machine translation is being used by the Digital Silk Road (DSR) project. Shun Fukazawa finished with a presentation of the Japanese Wikipedia and Wikia sites.
While the discussions focused on diverse topics, many themes came up on a regular basis, and everyone agrees that 'the commons' is a multicultural, multilingual environment. While statistics are difficult to obtain, it appears that less than a third of the web's users use English as a first language, and only a third of all websites are in English. Unfortunately, building a multilingual web is more complex than simply using an automated translation service. Computers have yet to understand local contexts, cultural references, and do not have a proper grasp of grammar.
The 'Public Sector Information' discussion focussed on how various groups and organisations have partnered with government to open up access to public sector information in countries like Hungary, India and Australia. David Kitzinger, from the John von Neumann Digital Library and Multimedia Centre in Budapest explained the challenges of making public sector information available under strict EU copyright rules.
In the final session the group worked together to articulate a set of achievable goals and outcomes that could be worked towards in the year between iSummit 2008 and iSummit 2009. Participants decided that within the next year, iCommons should specifically showcase best practices in media creation, indexing, and discovery. This should result in a wish list of tools and resources for the community of creators, bloggers, publishers, and consumers, such as ones that facilitate the translation, localisation, and finding of content. A related suggestion is to create a case studies resource for the Asia Commons.
Resources
Pictures: Scenes from the LCGC lab by , CC BY-SA 2.0 and the iCommons '08 Annual LCGC page by Infiltrate Media, CC BY 3.0
Videos: The report back session (top) sees representatives from the labs giving feedback to the iSummit '08 audience on what they achieved during the three days of the event. The Nailing the Commons videos by Andrew Garton (courtesy of APC) and addresses the question: 'What is the commons?'
Drawing from research of an ongoing project between organisations in India, Brazil and South Africa, one of the Lab's mail objectives was to present a diverse range of social, economic, cultural and political contexts in which people create and share knowledge and creativity on the internet - with a view towards initiating new projects that support active local content creation from an informed vantage point.
Specifically, the various sessions looked at (amongst other issues) the role of knowledge-sharing platforms such as Wikipedia in growing local language communities on the internet; how bloggers are leading the move towards building an active pool of online creators in the developing world; how local publishing is moving online and what are the intellectual property challenges; and at the new business models for publishing online that enable developing countries with limited infrastructure to join the global knowledge economy.
The methodology used in running the lab was a combination of Open Space (a method that is more participatory than traditional facilitation methods, and favours a group-led, rather than a facilitator-led discussion) and traditional presentation methods. These presentations were modelled on the Petcha-Kutcha-style of presentation, which holds each presenter to using only 20 slides for 20 seconds each, resulting in short, creative presentations that engage the audience and allow for more content to be fitted into short time-frames.
The lab was extremely well attended, with anywhere from between 15 and 40 people in each session. Attendees were from every region represented at the Summit: from North and Southern Africa, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, North and South America, Asia and the Far East. Because of the open nature of the sessions, a good rapport within the group was quickly established, and this proved useful not only in keeping discussions lively, but in keeping communication clear - many of the attendees were able to act as interpreters and translators.
It is also worth noting that much of the planning and discussion around the content of the lab took place in the months leading up to the Summit. Participants were invited to submit proposals for sessions within the lab and from these submissions a general programme was shaped. Once the programme had a basic shape, all participants were invite to add to, comment on and refine the various session, so that by the time everyone had arrived in Sapporo, there was a distinct sense that the lab belonged to the participants, rather than to iCommons.
Three main areas of discussion came out of the labs: publishing, translation and opening up public sector information.
Within the publishing discussions, several issues were raised, specifically the challenge faced by content producers who struggle to make their material stand out in the vast expanse of information currently available online. Chris Salzberg, an editor and translator at Global Voices, ran the open translation session. Along with researchers from the Shiitake Project and Digital Silk Road Project in Japan, and editors and translators from Global Voices' Lingua translation project, he lead a discussion about the challenges faced by translators working on the Internet. In a web of open content and collaboration, it is often assumed that simply setting your information "free" is all you need to promote it to the world. Often times -- especially on an international level -- this takes much more effort, and translators often face the challenge of evaluating whether a work is worth translating, then translating and contextualising it. Human-translation is far better than mechanised translation systems like Google translator, but this is a drain on time and resources. Leonard Chien presented on Chinese translation on the Global Voices site, and Hanako Tokita did the same for Japanese. Kyo Kaguera talked about his QRedit tool for translating English texts to Japanese, and Mohammad Daoud presented how machine translation is being used by the Digital Silk Road (DSR) project. Shun Fukazawa finished with a presentation of the Japanese Wikipedia and Wikia sites.
While the discussions focused on diverse topics, many themes came up on a regular basis, and everyone agrees that 'the commons' is a multicultural, multilingual environment. While statistics are difficult to obtain, it appears that less than a third of the web's users use English as a first language, and only a third of all websites are in English. Unfortunately, building a multilingual web is more complex than simply using an automated translation service. Computers have yet to understand local contexts, cultural references, and do not have a proper grasp of grammar.
The 'Public Sector Information' discussion focussed on how various groups and organisations have partnered with government to open up access to public sector information in countries like Hungary, India and Australia. David Kitzinger, from the John von Neumann Digital Library and Multimedia Centre in Budapest explained the challenges of making public sector information available under strict EU copyright rules.
In the final session the group worked together to articulate a set of achievable goals and outcomes that could be worked towards in the year between iSummit 2008 and iSummit 2009. Participants decided that within the next year, iCommons should specifically showcase best practices in media creation, indexing, and discovery. This should result in a wish list of tools and resources for the community of creators, bloggers, publishers, and consumers, such as ones that facilitate the translation, localisation, and finding of content. A related suggestion is to create a case studies resource for the Asia Commons.
Resources
- Coverage of the Local Context Global Commons lab by the summit bloggers, available here.
- More photographs of the lab during the iSummit '08 and the preparation meeting in Johannesburg in January '08, available on .
- Wiki notes recorded during each session available here.
- The detailed programme outlining the who, what, where, when and how of the lab, available here.
Pictures: Scenes from the LCGC lab by , CC BY-SA 2.0 and the iCommons '08 Annual LCGC page by Infiltrate Media, CC BY 3.0
Videos: The report back session (top) sees representatives from the labs giving feedback to the iSummit '08 audience on what they achieved during the three days of the event. The Nailing the Commons videos by Andrew Garton (courtesy of APC) and addresses the question: 'What is the commons?'
