What were five hundred folks from 30 countries doing in 40+ different sessions running concurrently in three rooms of two gorgeous buildings in Ciudad de México? They were showing, sharing and learning from the best of each other’s work utilizing open data, pushing governments to adopt open policies, and hacking for social, environmental and humanitarian change in Latin America and the Caribbean. Condatos may be the most important regional conference on open data held in Latam, but it is undoubtedly a showcase of the diversity, ingenuity, vibrancy and perseverance of the changemakers in that historic yet energetic region.

Creative Commons was invited to a panel discussion on user licenses. Some of the innovative sessions that stood out were on Migrahack, health education in favelas in Brasil, a session on the Internet of Things, a hacking workshop, and mapping labs including one on using drones for mapping.

The two buildings of the conference venue were definitely symbolic of the dynamic nature of the gathering—the historic and gorgeous Biblioteca de México with Octavio Paz looking down on the young crowd and its high stone walls inscribed with words from the giants of Mexican literature were like bookends in time; the soaring, modernistic architecture of Cineteca Nacional were a nod to the exponential change in thinking and practice that was being hacked by the young crowd.

We are grateful for the chance to present our vision for a public commons of information that can both drive and be driven by the energy and innovation on display at the conference, and are thrilled at the new partnerships that hold promise for further expansion of the powerful concepts of open and sharing.

To the extent possible under law, Puneet Kishor has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to all photos and PDF in this blog post.

I’m writing to announce that Creative Commons is closing its office in Mountain View, CA.

For most people reading this, the news will hardly come as a surprise. We’ve always been a virtual organization. Although we have a group of staff in the Bay Area, we have full-time staff in six US States and two Canadian provinces, not to mention the regional coordinators and affiliates all over the world.

The photo above was taken a few weeks ago, at the September CC Salon event in San Francisco. There are a few people missing, but I still love it because it’s the closest thing we’ve had to a complete staff photo since I’ve been with Creative Commons. It’s also a reminder that we’re a diverse, global organization.

Being a distributed team lets us spend more time interacting with the people who use Creative Commons tools and share our mission. We’re embedded in communities of hackers, lawyers, artists, and social change activists, all communities that our mission relies upon.

See our Contact page for updated contact information. If you have any questions about the change, feel free to drop us a line.

On Monday California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 609–the California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act. The law requires that research articles created with funds from the California Department of Public Health be made publicly available in an online repository no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. AB 609 is described as the first state-level law requiring free access to publicly funded research. It is similar to the federal National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy. The bill has been making its way through the California legislature since being introduced by Assemblyman Brian Nestande in February 2013. Nestande’s office announced the passage yesterday.

The law applies to grantees who receive research funds from the Department of Public Health, and those grantees are responsible for ensuring that any publishing or copyright agreements concerning manuscripts submitted to journals fully comply with AB 609. For an article accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, the grantee must ensure that an electronic version of the peer-reviewed manuscript is available to the department and on an appropriate publicly accessible database approved by the department within 12 months of publication in the journal.

Congratulations to California, the leadership of Assemblyman Nestande, and the coalition of open access supporters who worked hard to make this law a reality.

Yesterday at the United Nations, President Barack Obama marked the Open Government Partnership‘s (OGP) third anniversary by announcing that in addition to the commitments outlined in the current U.S. OGP National Action Plan, “The United States will take additional steps to make our government more open, transparent, and accessible for all Americans.”

Among the multiple new commitments: “Promote open educational resources, to help teachers and students everywhere.”

The multi-pronged commitment to promote OER is described as the first item in the updated National Action Plan Commitments document (638 KB PDF):

Creative Commons licenses put the “open” in OER and we stand ready to work with governments everywhere who wish to update their OGP National Action Plans with commitments to support Open Educational Resources, Open Access, Open Data and Open Policies that require publicly funded resources be openly licensed.

It’s time to celebrate the Web We Want / CC Colombia / CC BY-SA

This Friday, School of Open and Creative Commons affiliates in Colombia are throwing a celebration of the Web We Want that will highlight open licensing, copyright reform, and free culture. The event takes place as part of the Creative Commons Film Festival in Bogotá. Its purpose is three-fold:

1) To launch a campaign to promote fair use in copyright reform that is pending Colombia. This campaign is named, Liberen la cultura or Let’s set culture free.
2) To support the Colombian biologist Diego Gómez, who is facing a criminal case against him for copyright infringement. This campaign is named #CompartirNoEsDelito or #sharingisnotacrime.
3) To promote live music, books, magazines and films under CC licenses.

As part of both campaigns, affiliates will hold a Licenciatón, a day of awareness, learning and practice for open licensing and its relationship to free culture. This activity incorporates portions of the School of Open course, ABC del derecho de autor para bibliotecarios de América Latina (ABC of Copyright for Librarians in Latin America). Promotional material about the course will also be shared.

Colombian volunteer Maria Juliana says,

We are pleased to announce that as part of the Creative Commons Film Festival, the program will include a Celebration of the Internet, a space that seeks to unite all of us who are interested in an open web where we can contribute and share content freely — a space to celebrate the Web We Want!

We will be celebrating with our friends “Radio Pachone” and our special guests will be: “La Real Academia del Sonido” and “Radio Mixticius”.

The celebration takes place thanks to “A Year of Action” campaign of Web We Want, this campaign convocated organizations around the world to generate actions to celebrate 25 years of the web; we are one of the organizations which benefited.

Event details

Date: Friday, September 26, 2014
Time: 4pm-11pm (Bogotá, Colombia time)
Location: The Raid (Calle 17 No. 2-51 La Candelaria, Bogotá.) Free entrance.

Learn more about the event and its partners at http://karisma.org.co/?p=4609.

About the School of Open

The School of Open is a global community of volunteers focused on providing free education opportunities on the meaning, application, and impact of “openness” in the digital age and its benefit to creative endeavors, education, and research. Volunteers develop and run courses, workshops, and real world training programs on topics such as Creative Commons licenses, open educational resources, and sharing creative works. The School of Open is coordinated by Creative Commons and P2PU.