Commons Culture Communications - 2013

Concept

Side-Event to the „Economics of the Commons Conference – From Seed Form to Core Paradigm” (ECC), for further information on ECC see: Overview_of_the_Economics_of_the_Commons_Conference

Workshop of 20 persons (max) from different continents focused on discussing and defining actions related with communication, education and culture around the Commons paradigm, practice and Cultures of Commoning.

The main objective of the meeting is to gather different persons with skills on communication and educational projects in order to define plans and future initiatives to improve the communication about commons towards a broader public. Some future projects that could be discussed during the workshop include:

• Collaborative and distributed documentary film:

  During the last Latin America Commons Deep Dive, some ideas about creating some audiovisual pieces emerged as a way to reach large audiences: the two fundamental projects that was referred to in that moment were Remix the Commons (a multimedia platform with contents about the commons) and The Forbidden Education (a viral copyleft documentary produced in a collaborative way that reached millions of spectators in very short time).

• Open Educational Resources about the commons:

  While several "schools of commoning" are emerging in different countries, the production of high quality OER about the commons and practices of commoning would benefit and strength those educative networks

• Communication strategies:

  what ideas about the commons are the fundamental ones? what is the best way to communicate them? what languages can/has to be used in order to give a clear message?

  Which communication strategies (even from marketing/ publicity or advertising) can be used to strenghten our message?

  How to connect to other communication networks from Social Movements (as AMARC, Global Voices and others)

• Forming a "commons curation commons"?

  One of the suggested agenda items is that we identify and develop the conditions for the coordinated curation of directly commons-related news, events, literature, initiatives, reflected in all media, as they emerge.

  Curation is more than compiling lists of URLs of interesting stuff we come across. It's also about indexing, tagging, and annotating them The best work done so far is by Michel Bauwens and the P2P Foundation team. However their inclusion criteria is much broader than the commons, and with the rapid development of global ecosystem of commons-focused initiatives, no one group can keep up with the task. It requires the coordinated effort of all of us, who feel called to contribute to the collective intelligence and consciousness of the commons movement.

  Curation is also about making relevant knowledge more actionable, by organizing it so that it is extremely easy to call into live conversation, from anywhere, anytime, using any device. It requires well-coordinated collective action, by a curation team.... possibly, a commons curation commons. Please comment on this on the Discussion page, by clicking on its tab at the top of this page. (You have to be registered and logged in before you can do that.)

Date and Venue

• Date: 21/05 and 22/05. See agenda below
• Venue: Berlin, Germany
  • possibly Betahouse

Agenda

Tuesday 21

Session 0: Welcome - (14,00)

• Round of personal presentations
• Explanation of the day agenda

Session 1: The current situation - (14,30 to 16,30 )

• What are the commons? Why are they important to us?
• Who is talking about the "commons"? (mapping activity)
• Who are related with the commons concept and surrounding ideas?
• What communication projects / examples / pieces already exist?

Session 2: Communication strategies - (17,00 to 20,00)

• what ideas about the commons are the fundamental ones?
• what is the best way to communicate them?
• what languages/methodologies can/has to be used in order to give a clear message?
• Which communication strategies (even from marketing/ publicity or advertising) can be used to strenghten our message?

Session 3: Showcase of open communication projects (21,00 to ??)

• presentation of already existing projects related with communication and commons

Wednesday 22

Session 4: Communication and education projects (9,00 to 12,00) Possible projects:

• Forming a "commons curation commons"
• Bank of Open Educational Resources about the commons
• Audiovisual documentary film

Participants

List of participants (not finished)

1. Alain Ambrosi
2. Franco Iacomella
3. Santiago Hoerth
4. Frederic Sultan (Remix the COmmons)
5. Birte Friebel - Commonopolis, Germany
6. George Por - School of Commoning, GB
7. Samer Hassan - Asociación Comunes, Spain
8. José Ramos (filmmaker)
9. Wolfgang Hoeschele, CAN
10. Melanie Dulong
11. Ruben Martinez (Escuela de commons)
12. Enric Senabre (Goteo)
13. Prabir_Purkayashta
14. Samantha Slade
15. Marion Sylla - (ker Thiossane Afropixel)
16. Yves Otis

Invited, but self-financed

1. Gabriela Mafort
2. Marcelo Solervicens (AMARC)
3. Oya (Johannes Heimrath, Lara Mallien or other representative)
4. Sally Burch - Agencia Latinoamericana de Información, GB/Ecuador
5. Pablo de Soto (mapping the commons hackitectura.net, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) ++++
6. Julia Gechter, Germany - does documentaries and/or Dagmar Scholle, Germany (radio journalist)

With no funding

1. Leland Maschmeyer; http://triumphofcommons.com/main.php#intro
2. Peter Wintonick (Canada)
3. Nils Aguilar, milpa films, maker of voices of the transition
4. Connor Turland, award-winning, young Canadian film maker, maker of "Commons economy Rising"

Methodology

We can get input from Samantha Shade and Yves Otis from (Perbolab) to define a workgroup methodology.

Other ideas to define the "methods of animation" of the workshop:

• Circle
• Open Space Technology
• World Cafe
• The Proaction Cafe - World Cafe and Open Space Technology
• Collective story harvest process

Objectives

Some general objectives of the workshop:

1. Communicate what already exist in the field and also the observers/mappers that are already mapping the practices
2. Produce and enrich the community with new languages/processes,methods. Animate and engage the commoners identity
3. Provide a creative environment to come out with new projects, ideas and alliances to work in the commons communication future improvement

Dissemination

Invitation to participants

Dear XXXX, we are members of the organization and support teams of the ECC 2013, a gathering to which you was recently invited and that promises to be amazing to commoners like you and us. The ECC will start on 22th May.

Before that some side events will take place around Berlin. We would like to invite you a workshop called Commons Culture Communications that would gather in around 20 persons from around the world to discuss and sketch future communication projects around the commons concept. The invitation is to participate in a horizontal meeting filled by commoners, artists, filmmakers, advocates af the alternative communication ideas and others. We think that is crucial to start to think together better communication strategies to promote the commons ideas around the globe and to do this in the commons-way: avoiding external solutions and promoting innicitiaves builded by the rich and diverse commons international community.

The Commons Culture Communications workshop will take place in BetaHouse from Tuesday 21st's noon and will end on Wednesday 22st morning. The schedule is pretty open, sorted out in 4 different thematic sessions, since we want to engage the participants to actively participe. You can check the proposed agenda here: http://p2pfoundation.net/Commons_Culture_Communications_-_2013

We would really like that you participate in this meeting. Please, if you are willin to do it, consider the changes that this may imply in your travel and schedule arrengments. Also, we ask you to reply with your final decision about this invitation as soon as possible.