The iCommons Summit 2008 was held at the Sapporo Convention Center.

The Convention Center was opened in 2003 and was built to accommodate a full range of events from meetings to exhibitions. This building was designed as an optimal user-friendly space for participants, and showcases the natural surroundings of Sapporo to their best advantage. It certainly suited the interactive summit programme, which offered different modes of participation during the three-day event.

To serve the needs of our tech-savvy summit participants, the Convention Center offered excellent, high-speed Internet access. Other highlights of the venue included the breath-taking conference hall which was inspired by scenes of falling snow that symbolises Sapporo's location in the northern part of Japan, the serene wood-panelled meeting rooms and the large outdoor exhibition space and gardens.

The conference hall

The 700-seater conference hall was used as the venue for the keynote sessions in the morning and afternoon slots, as well as for the Frontiers of Openness in Japan lab. This hall was equipped with simultaneous translation booths and seats with receivers, which made it the Japanese-English translation hub for the duration of the event.

The theatre

This wood-panelled room featured a 180-inch screen, as well as simultaneous interpretation booths, which made it perfect for showing movies.

Seating 200 people, the the second half of the Creative Commons International legal day took place in this room on 29 July and it also hosted the DIY Video Lab.

Meeting rooms

The Center also offered a host of smaller rooms with capacity ranging from 20 to 170 people, where parallel sessions and workshops took place within the lab times.

A variety of these rooms were also be made available for spontaneous meetings that arose between like-minded Commoners.

Pics: Exterior of the Convention Centre by CC BY-SA 2.0, main hall by CC BY 2.0,, restaurant by CC BY-SA 2.0,, theatre by, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, and meeting room by CC BY-SA 2.0