What makes a 'great' conference? Is it a 'great' conference when people like Cory Doctorow say: 'I've been to a lot of conferences and this was truly amazing'? Is it a 'great' conference when the event makes the front page of the New York Times Arts and Culture section and when the local media print too many stories to count? Is it a 'great' conference when you hear people saying that 'all their heroes are here' and that they are having way too much fun to call this 'work'? Is it a 'great' conference when there is real debate like the one initiated by Professor Niva Elkin-Koren?

I've been asking myself this question repeatedly for the last few years as I've attended conferences, workshops, seminars and summits, but I didn't know the answer until last Sunday the 25th of June. I knew the answer when I looked out at the participants of the Rio iCommons Summit and saw a packed room where the enthusiasm and energy of the 250+ participants was palpable. I have never been to an event where almost every participant remained engaged, enthused and present until the last second. I have never been to an event where I've been really sad to leave everyone and absolutely thrilled knowing for certain that I will keep in touch with them because we're going to be working together so closely in the coming months.

And the funny thing is that we really did achieve a great deal ' and we set out some practical goals for the next few months including declarations on Open Access, Digital Rights Management and the Broadcast Treaty (to be finalised next week), a resource kit for open science with Science Commons; a framework for selecting and compiling video and audio for Freedom Toaster distribution; indigenous knowledge licencing research project with the Alexandria Institute; a cultural hot spots iCommons node led by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture.

Projects like these will become iCommons 'nodes', described by iCommons Board Member, Larry Lessig as follows: 'Nodes are self-organizing on any relevant topic. The critical thing is that they focus on projects.' And by Chairman, Joi Ito: 'This is an incredibly diverse group. Our purpose is to support diversity.'

By all accounts, this year's iSummit was an incredible success, and the beginning of an exciting future for iCommons. A community this diverse, this passionate about making the change towards a stronger, more vibrant, truly global digital commons can only be successful.

Pic by Fred Beneson on Flickr (cc Attribution Share-Alike 2.0)

tags: other

extracted from: