Projects
Current projects
iCommons works on a number of projects and campaigns to help build the capacity of people around the world working to grow the awareness and availability of commons-based knowledge and culture. From Heritage Day sprints in South Africa, to the development of software to promote and organise commons-related projects/nodes, to the annual iSummit that brings together people from around the world to celebrate and build free culture and open knowledge, iCommons aims to build the network of the global commons into one that advances the goals of the free Internet.
- Pilot study of UK government sharing aspirations and practices
Completed projects
Open Video Project: Ford Foundation, 2009 – 2010
Free Culture Research Workshop
- 2008 1st workshop
- 2009 2nd workshop report by CC Taiwan
iCommons is proud to have been a co-organizer of the Open Video Conference. Held in New York City, the event brought together an international coalition of educators, entrepreneurs, technologists, policymakers, activists, advocates, remixers, artists, academics, and others in support of openness in video. The OVC served to launch an international movement for open video to push for cultural engagement and freedom of expression in online video. If you’d like to get involved in future conference events, contact the Alliance.
This project was funded by the Ford Foundation to develop leadership by countries in the South (Brazil, South Africa and India) to better understand and report on relevant issues around intellectual property in the developing country context.
Outcomes of the project included the BISA Copyright Review, iCommons website including the LCGC platform for community project development, a monthly iCommons Lab Report magazine, and Annual, as well as a workshop at the Summit in 2008.
Working with The African Commons Project, iCommons supported multiple programs to enable sharing of cultural and personal heritage artifacts including the development of an Open Cultural Heritage Platform.
iSummit 08
Our third major global event brought together leaders of the Creative Commons, free software, open education and access to knowledge communities to debate their vision for the future and discuss strategies for building a free global culture.
In partnership with the City of Sapporo, Digital Garage and Creative Commons Japan, the event was held in Sapporo Japan, in July 
Our community collaboration platform was developed with funding from the Ford Foundation to enable expansion of the icommons.org node programme. Nodes are individual projects that relate to building the digital commons. Features include personalised project pages, a project management back end to effectively administer projects, improved social networking capability and a way to easily upload resources to share with the community.
A monthly review of the research and writing on the global commons in countries around the world. Monthly features include an Organisation Spotlight and Commoner profile which showcase the work of organisations and individuals in the community, a Commons Toolkit which provides easy hints and tips on organising events or creating materials on topics related to the commons.
iCommons iCurriculum OER case study framework was produced in collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, to develop and coordinate a research framework with which to assess what makes an open educational resources project successful in developing low-cost, sustainable and effective resources. iCiC was supported by four of the most prominent donors to open educational resources: Curriki ‘ the Global Education and Learning Community, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the telecentre.org program at Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the Shuttleworth Foundation (TSF).
The iCommons Summit ‘08 planning workshop (January ‘08)
A group of representatives from the iCommons community met in Johannesburg to discuss the programme and help with planning for the Summit ‘08 to be held in Sapporo in July.
Amongst other activities, the participants built their dream summit venues out of sweets and toothpicks, and got serious with SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analyses on the different aspects of the Summit, from facilitation to translation. Find links to notes taken at the event, as well as audio clips, a video, presentations and photographs.
Innovation Series (November, ’07)
This is a series of events with influential speakers from around the world who have had a significant influence on the world of the Internet. On Tuesday, 13 November, we launched ‘The Innovation Series’ with a talk by Jimmy Wales, to raise funds for iCommons and the Wikipedia Academies, and to share some leading insights from the world’s digital innovators. Held in collaboration with IT Web, and with media partners Mail & Guardian Online and MindShift.
Wikipedia Academies (November, ’07)
iCommons and the Wikimedia Foundation partnered to launch a series of Wikipedia Academies to stimulate awareness and community around local language Wikipedias in South Africa. The first Academy was held on 10 November, where students participated in workshops to learn how to edit Wikipedia. The workshops were attended by Jimmy Wales and were run by a group of dedicated enthusiasts who are active in building the Swahili, German and Afrikaans language Wikipedias. iCommons coordinated these workshops with the aim of supporting and growing local communities who are building free and open resources such as Wikipedia. Click here to watch a short video showing highlights from the event.
iHeritage (September, ’07)
An online and real world campaign to build a repository of free cultural heritage resources around South Africa’s Heritage Day celebrations.
The results: WikiMedia uploads audio interviews and Flickr photos/. We heard some amazing stories that reflected the diversity of South Africa: about practising Zulu traditions in the city of Jozi, about the history of a Johannesburg street in 1950 that is now a bustling business centre, and about the adjustments of a Dutch immigrant family in South Africa.
Campaigns (July, ’07)
iCommons participated in two South African campaigns in July ’07. iCommons fellow, Paul Jacobson, participated in a local meeting that saw the South African Bureau of Standards reject Microsoft’s call to have xml the default standard in SA.
iCommons also made a submission to the South African government on the Publicly Financed Research Bill which could be highly detrimental for open access research in SA.
The SA Free Culture Tour (April, ’07)
This event was a celebration of free culture in South Africa at a Cape Town live music venue to get students and young people to become more aware of the importance of copyright policies in culture, cultural heritage and the cultural economy.
Jimmy Wales and Larry Lessig were special guests at this event. Also featured were the winners of the South African ccMixter’s SAfro-Brazil remix competition.
ccSalon Johannesburg ‘Remix Nation’ (August, ’06)
This event was a celebration of the pioneering local artists who are pushing the boundaries of the digital world and recognising how important legal remixing is to building a vibrant creative industry in South Africa.
Held at the Gordart Gallery in Melville, guest speakers were artist Nathaniel Stern, net.art duo MtKidu, as well as DJ and producer Richard tha IIIrd. They shared their creations by making their music and artworks available for download at the event, for the benefit of future remixing efforts by attendees.
Open Publishing edition of NGO-in-a-Box (July, ’06)
Along with Tactical Tech, we produced this toolkit of free and open source software, tutorials and guides for producing, publishing and distributing content.
The contents of the toolkit were selected by an editorial team made up of leading international practitioners working in DIY publishing, free culture, technology for social justice and the development and deployment of free and open source software.
iCommons has lectured at South African universities to grow academic awareness of the value of commons-based production (practice and research) in the academic programme.
Major conferences
