CC is thrilled to be partnering with the Wikimedia Foundation to make Wikimania 2023 a reality. The gathering takes place 16–19 August both in Singapore and online. Whether you can make it to Singapore or not, register now to attend, participate, and access recorded sessions.

The CC and Wikimedian communities overlap in many ways and share common values and activities dedicated to building and sustaining open culture and knowledge. As a part of the program, CC team members are leading four sessions, outlined below. Many Wikimania attendees are also part of CC’s Global Network and platforms for copyright, open education, and open culture, or support CC in other ways. We celebrate this global gathering of people all working with shared values to realize common goals. Tune in to Wikimania with us!

Better Sharing in a World with AI: Creative Commons Looks Ahead

CEO Catherine Stihler and General Counsel Kat Walsh will kick off CC’s sessions with a joint keynote to guide participants through the journey CC has been on to understand how artificial intelligence (AI) intersects with CC’s 20-plus-year history of supporting open knowledge and culture globally with our licenses and legal tools. Then they will help participants look ahead to see how we can all advocate for policy and practices that ensure a world with AI will continue to support CC’s strategy of better sharing: sharing that is contextual, inclusive, just, equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable. Tune in: 2:00 UTC/10:00 SGT on Fri 18 Aug

Why Tackling Climate Change Needs Open Science and Open Culture

Open Climate Campaign Manager Monica Granados and Director of Policy and Open Culture Brigitte Vézina are leading a workshop about why tackling climate change needs both open science and culture. They describe: To arrive at solutions to climate change we need open access to knowledge. But climate change is caused by human activities, as such we also need open culture to understand why humans have caused climate change. In this workshop, we will remix public domain culture to raise climate awareness and highlight the need for both open climate and culture to solve climate change. Tune in: 3:15 UTC/11:15 SGT Fri 18 Aug

Building an Initiative for a Global Recommendation on Open Culture

CC’s open culture team will present how CC is building an initiative for a global recommendation on open culture. Team members Brigitte Vézina, Jocelyn Miyara, and Connor Benedict will report on what’s happening with the recommendation so far, including the May 2023 Lisbon meeting with global culture experts, and look to engage Wikimania’s broader and more diverse global participants in the initiative. Tune in: 6:55 UTC/14:55 SGT Fri 18 Aug

Exploring the Values That Will Shape AI for a Better internet

AI is deeply connected to networked digital technologies — from the bazillions of works harvested from the internet to train AI to all the ways AI is shaping our online experience, from generative content to recommendation algorithms and simultaneous translation. Representing the Movement for a Better Internet, co-founded by CC and other public-interest organizations, CC’s Director of Communications & Community Nate Angell is teaming up with consultant Shannon Hong to lead a workshop that will engage Wikimania participants directly in helping to shape how AI fits in to the Movement’s people-powered policy agenda. Tune in: 3:15 UTC/11:15 SGT Sat 19 Aug

The post CC at Wikimania 2023 appeared first on Creative Commons.

Are you thinking about how generative artificial intelligence (AI) intersects with creativity? Or how it draws from existing works and collections? Or enables new understandings of culture?

Join Creative Commons in NYC on 13 September 2023 for a full-day symposium focused on the intersection of generative artificial intelligence, cultural heritage, and contemporary creativity.

Bringing together cultural heritage experts, contemporary creators working with AI tools, and platform builders: Our focus will be on the relationship between access and reuse of cultural heritage and contemporary creativity, and an exploration of AI tools as a new means of creative expression building on the commons.

Hosted at NYU’s Engelberg Center, the symposium will feature a series of panels tackling critical questions, including:

• Can AI propel cultural heritage institutions through their digital transformation?
• Can AI help everyone enjoy culture as a global public good?
• Open sharing of heritage collections and data: bounty or bane for creativity in the age of AI?
• Fair remuneration of creators — Can AI be an answer?
• Diversity, inclusivity, sustainability, and cultural identity — What role for AI?
• Creativity, machines and the heritage commons — What collaboration opportunities are there?
• Users as creators and users — Is AI blurring the lines of creativity?

Spots are limited! Register now to make sure you are part of the live conversation.

Note: Proceedings will be recorded for later viewing online after the event.

The post NYC Symposium: Generative AI & the Creativity Cycle appeared first on Creative Commons.

At CC we believe that to solve big problems, the knowledge and culture about those problems needs to be open and freely accessible. In line with our Open Climate Campaign, which focuses on opening up climate research, we recently launched the Open Climate Data project, to facilitate better sharing of climate data on a global scale. Making climate data more open and easily accessible is a crucial step towards addressing the climate crisis.

We started this project by asking a fundamental question: “What climate data exists, and what can I do with it?” To reach an answer, we conducted a landscape analysis to better understand the permissible uses of existing large climate data sets. We surveyed a range of organizations that provide climate data on behalf of national, intergovernmental and/or global populations and are both publishers and sources of climate data. This approach enabled us to assess the current status of major sources of climate data and propose practical ways in which it can be shared more effectively. We hope this initial analysis provides clarity to researchers, policymakers, educators, civil society organizations and advocates.

Read our Landscape Analysis report to learn more about how we analyzed large climate data sources, in accordance with the FAIR data principles: findability, accessibility, technical interoperability, and reusability (as dictated by licensing terms).

As the primary aim of the Open Climate Data project is to facilitate better sharing of climate data, we analyzed a range of data-sharing approaches from multiple sources including: US government, global NGOs, regional international governments, European governments, and global intergovernmental alliances.

Landscape Data Sources

US Government

• Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Data Center (ARM)
• Envirofacts
• Environmental System Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem (ESS-DIVE)
• National Centers for Environmental Information at NOAA
• NASA Earth Science Data Systems

Global NGOs

• GEOSS Portal
• International Energy Agency
• Sensor.Community
• The World Bank Group Climate Change Knowledge Portal
• WRI Data

Regional International Governments

• 3CN Climate Database: Latin America
• Asia-Pacific Data-Research Center (APDRC): Asia
• Chinese Academy of Science Earth: China
• IGAD Climate Predictions and Applications Centre: Africa

European Governments

• Atmosphere Data Store (ADS)
• CEDA Archive
• Climate Data Store
• European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative
• Met Office

Global Intergovernmental Alliances

• European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
• European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)
• The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. Geographic Network
• International Renewable Energy Agency
• OECD Data
• UN Environment Programme Global Resource Information Database (GRID) – Geneva

FAIR Data Principles

Given the diverse range of climate data sponsors, publishers, and sources from around the world, we found a wide variety of methods for accessing climate data. Our goal was to understand how their climate data can be accessed in accordance with the FAIR data principles: findability, accessibility, technical interoperability, and reusability (as dictated by licensing terms). We examined how these climate data providers share their data today, and established a baseline of open climate data information by assessing each of these variables.

FAIR Data Characteristics

The left column lists four principles of FAIR data, Rows in the right column list characteristics associated with each principle.

Findability	Has its own search function
	Appears in external federated searches
	Uses DOIs or some standard PID on all its datasets
	Relevant metadata available for each dataset
Accessibility: Public Access	Available to the public
	All datasets are offered for free
	No registration/information required
Technical Interoperability	Every dataset is downloadable
	No special software required
	All their data is hosted on their site; none of the data requires getting it from an external site
	Machine-readable file types
Reusability: Legal Permissions	Licensed for public domain
	Okay for commercial purposes
	Specific license reference(s)

This project is dedicated to improving the sharing of climate data, and we place great importance on pursuing this goal collaboratively with the diverse range of stakeholders involved in addressing climate change. Our next step is to establish a dedicated working group of expert practitioners and representatives from regional and global climate data publishers and data source entities, and collectively, to develop a community sharing standard for open climate data. We hope to offer guidance to stewards of large open climate datasets and the broader climate data community — including those not involved in the original data creation — on best practices for sharing climate data in standardized ways that maximize accessibility, reuse and sharing.

We invite you to join us in our ongoing journey of learning and collaboration as we develop policies and practices to open up data for the advancement of climate research and innovation. Stay connected with us by emailing openclimatedata@creativecommons.org and subscribing to our newsletter.

The post Surveying the Open Climate Data Landscape appeared first on Creative Commons.

Watch A Special Episode of the Open Culture Voices Series, Part 1

In this Special Episode of the Open Culture Voices series, CC hosts a conversation among five open culture experts from around the world:

• Dr. Andrea Wallace, Professor, University of Exeter Law School, United Kingdom
• Dr. Nkem Osuigwe, Director, African Library and Information Associations and Institutions, Ghana
• Medhavi Gandhi, Founder, The Heritage Lab, India
• Evelin Heidel (Scann), Program Lead at Wikimedistas de Uruguay, Uruguay
• Michael Peter Edson, Founding Director, Museum of Solutions, USA/India

This second part of the conversation revolves around several topics related to open culture, such as digital interactions, the climate crisis, and the challenges faced by the open culture movement. Our guests discuss the potential of open knowledge and culture in addressing environmental concerns, promoting diversity and access, and influencing policy changes.

Some of the other key points discussed include:

• The material impact of digital technologies on the climate crisis and the need for more sustainable approaches to other societal challenges and the position that cultural institutions — like galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, or GLAMs — should not shy away from digital for fear of the digital footprint.
• The pivotal role of cultural institutions as actors of change to promote open culture — as well as the huge cultural participation culture outside institutions. The universal fundamental right to participate in cultural life can be very hard to enjoy — openness can be a tool to help people engage with culture.
• The importance of collaboration and organization across institutions to achieve common goals — sharing and comparing experiences can lead to institutional standards that can in turn influence policy in meaningful ways to advance open culture.
• The challenges and ethical considerations surrounding the participation of individual creators and artisans in open culture — it is also important to reflect on who open culture might be pushing away and whose livelihoods it might threaten.
• The importance of funding for institutions and the need to support open culture initiatives financially.
• The potential for working with platforms to incorporate licensing options and improve copyright awareness.
• The potential impact of open culture in shaping and influencing society during times of change, such as the climate crisis.

These points reflect our guests’ perspectives on the challenges and opportunities within the open culture movement and their suggestions for realizing its potential.

Here’s what our guests believe needs to change if we want to realize open culture:

“I think that cultural heritage institutions need to move away from a risk-based approach into a transformational one…They have a lot of leverage on changing the conversation around copyright and I think that they need to use it.” — Evelin Heidel (Scann)

“Making sure that we elect people who fund the public sector, fund institutions, set up funding schemes for artists, for creatives, for people to do research and really cool projects around some of these things.” — Andrea Wallace

“One could take the point of view that the toolkits are there, that there doesn’t need to be some massive intervention. It can be used, reapplied, remixed, to solve local problems, policy problems, execution problems at any scale… I still see this as a point of inflection. We’ve built two thirds of a bridge, and we’re curious why people haven’t crossed that bridge.” — Michael Peter Edson

“Support in funding, especially for institutions which do grapple with whether to open, whether it will take away from their monetization practices…It’s nice to have web monetization going and maybe support that” — Medhavi Gandhi

Closed captions are available for this video, you can turn them on by clicking the CC icon at the bottom of the video. A red line will appear under the icon when closed captions have been enabled. Closed captions may be affected by Internet connectivity — if you experience a lag, we recommend watching the videos directly on YouTube.

Want to hear more insights from Open Culture experts from around the world? Watch more episodes of Open Culture VOICES here >>

For more information on CC’s Open Culture work head to our information page or join the platform.

The post A Special Episode of the Open Culture Voices Series, Part 2 appeared first on Creative Commons.

As part of our #20CC anniversary, last year we joined forces with Fine Acts to spark a global dialogue on what better sharing looks like in action. Our #BetterSharing collection of illustrations was the result — we gathered insights from 12 prominent open advocates around the world and tasked 12 renowned artists who embrace openness with transforming these perspectives into captivating visual pieces available under a CC license.

Each month throughout 2023, we will be spotlighting a different CC-licensed illustration from the collection on our social media headers and the CC blog. For August, we’re excited to showcase “Sharing Is Growing” by Olga Mrozek. The piece, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, was inspired by a quote from Medhavi Gandhi, founder of The Heritage Lab:

“To me, with better (open) sharing, comes the promise of equality.”

Meet the artist:

Olga Mrozek is a multidisciplinary designer and an illustrator who finds interest in issues, development, structure, and functioning of human society. She enjoys creating concepts that challenge and provoke the viewer as she believes that the change begins with the thought.

Follow Olga on Instagram: @omrozill

The full #BetterSharing collection is available on TheGreats.co to be enjoyed, used and adapted, and then shared again, by anyone, forever. View the full collection >>

The post CC’s #BetterSharing Collection | August: Sharing Is Growing appeared first on Creative Commons.