Mike Stopforth

Without a doubt the coolest part of my ‘job’ is the people I get to meet on a daily basis. Last Thursday I had lunch with Heather Ford, Executive Director of iCommons. She inspired me to not only share with what it is that she does, but also share the many interactions I get to have with extraordinary people in the course of my work. Hence this post, the first in a series on ‘Interesting Innovators’ (according to me!).

Mike: So, Heather, people have heard of Creative Commons and of iCommons, but few (me included) seem to be able to distinguish the two - what’s the deal?

Heather: Creative Commons (CC) is an organisation based in the US that has developed a set of copyright licenses that allow people to share digital content under less restrictive terms than default copyright - basically it’s a legal framework. Creative Commons started iCommons in recognition of the growing global movement around the use of their licenses in multiple sectors that needed co-ordination, support and management. iCommons did that job. The arrangement stood until end of last year but iCommons has since broken away from Creative Commons.

Mike: Ok then what is iCommons now, and what does it do?

Heather: iCommons is a non-profit (UK charity) which is about the entire infrastructure of digital and cultural innovation - CC, Wikipedia, global phenomena - analysing how all these tools can be used to develop more transparent and innovative societies. It is a huge honour that iCommons is based in Rosebank, JHB. JHB is the international headquarters.

The goal was to break away from CC, become an independent organisation, and sign on significant organisations as members. These now include CC, CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility), Free Software Foundation Europe, Overmundo Brazil, MI2 (Multimedia Institute) and more.

Mike: Cool. What is the iSummit all about?

Heather: The iSummit is an annual event produced in partnership with CC and a host country (Croatia was the host last year, and Brazil the year before), this year it’s Japan and next year will be a surprise (smile). It’s punted as the most exciting and progressive event around the sharing of global digital innovation and the development of digital culture. It’s nNot like any other conference - i.e. not exclusively business-focussed, extremely accessible compared to the likes of TED, diverse in content, and really all about doing instead of just listening.It’s about participation - giving practical expression to what participatory culture is all about. Anybody can go, anybody can participate.

Mike: Smart people like Dave Duarte talk about ‘The Commons’ a lot. It’s a funky, trendy geek term, but what does it actually refer to?

Heather: It actually refers to the pool of knowledge and culture that is free for people to take, remix and reuse for their own purpose.

There’s a common misconception here though - most people think the Commons is a free for all, all of the time, but that’s not the Commons - that’s the public domain (totally free and legally free for anyone to do anything with). The Commons however is ’semi-private’ in a way, because there are degrees of choice in terms of freedom of use and who gets to use it by the owner of the IP.

Thanks to Heather for her time and for being patient with my questioning. Here’s my conclusion: in many ways iCommons is simply ahead of it’s time, but not in a negative sense. It’s not precious, religious or radical. It’s completely logical because ownership is so central to the vast majority of meaningful discussions dominating business and society today. It is however a paradigm shift - political in a sense - everyone these days wants conferences to be horizontal, companies to be horizontal, users to create content for free, but do they really want that? Are they just paying lip service to a trend? Have they considered all the implications of this new open, collaborative digital culture?

iCommons considers all these possibilities and it’s champions are almost, in some senses, the custodians of this evolution. It’s no surprise then that iCommons employs some incredible people, and of course that it’s headquarters are in Jozi!

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