Building Digital Commons

On & Off Welcome!!!! Benvinguts i benvingudes!!!

The Building digital commons (online & offline) event took place in Barcelona 29-30 October 2011.

Videos of the Building digital commons sessions are availeble here.

A folder with pictures of the Building digital commons is availeble here and here.

Building digital commons aimed to create entrance doors and give projection to collaborative communities building digital commons, encourage the mutual learning and support between digital commons critically following similar values and principles, building bridges between action and research, and address new frontiers and cutting-edge questions.

The new technologies offered a big opportunity to create, innovate and collaborate to share and build information and knowledge resources. Still the emergingcommons forms have limitarions and ambivalences. Furthermore, we are living challenging times, with an ongoing growth of the enclosure of the digital commons.

Goals were:

Stress the makers & creators approach – To increase the visibility and address the specificities of collaborative communities around the building of digitals commons as part of the overall free culture and digital rights movement.

Mapping digital commons and promote common actions – identify initiatives, promote coalitions and find ways to support each other.

Systematize experiences & learn from each other (at the legal, infrastructural, sustainable, participation and governance levels). Learn from participative communities such as Wikipedia and others, and other sectors of social and collaborative production, such as cooperative.

Create procommons references –To remark the distinction between the governance of digital commons and other forms of corporate-providers communities and promote free and open infrastructure.

Build bridges between action and research on commons as a form of governance, production, and horizon of socio-political transformation.

How?

Working lines:

Mapping free culture and digital commons movements and facilitate a political strategic discussion

Participation and Engagement in peer-driven collaborative creation

Digital social economy: Sustanibility of collaborative creation and dialogue between the cooperative social economy tradition and common-based peer production

Outcomes: An ongoing digital commons wiki resource and the creation of a Catalan “Digital commons alliance/network“ were the resulting outcomes of the event. Videos of the Building digital commons are availeble here.

Participantion took place presentially and/or online. Catalan – English – Spanish translation was provided.

Amical Viquipedia and Institute of Goverment and Public Policies (IGOP) (Autonomous University of Catalunya) were the main event promotors, and Wikimedia Foundation was the main supporter.