From ICommons wiki

Heather report back:

We have a lot of different things here and we need to be realistic in terms of what we can focus on

Original focus: Japan commons - but maybe focus on Japan and digital culture overall

Then we refined this slightly. Going back to what all groups had in common (yesterday) - a circular concept for the summit with a social / collaborative core to hang-out and unregulated activities take place.

Then we thought about tracks. Best way to go about that is to look at the existing "tribes" who are already committed to using the summit to progress what they are doing throughout the year:

• Academy / Commons 101
• Research
• Free Culture - Practitioners (Artists, Business, etc.)
• Open Education
• Legal
• etc. ?

Different tracks can have different ways of developing their tracks.

A typical day:

• Morning - Start of the day is in the larger group to support informed choice. Elevator pitches on what is happening during the mornings. Then half-day track sessions (people stay in their tracks).
• Mid-day - Then everyone comes together again. People provide short feedback to the whole group and there would be discussions / elevator-pitches aobut what is happening in the afternoon.
• Afternoons - The afternoon is much more modular - we have rooms reserved and provide timings, but people are free to book rooms, organise (self-organise) meetings, workshops etc. Some of this will be organised prior to the event, other things might happen in realtime.

In addition there are a number of totally unregulated smaller spaces which everyone could use.

Comments / Questions / Discussions

There was a heated discussion about structure and content (sometimes mixing up the two). Some of the comments with answers:

• I like that the Commons101 is a theme so that newbies have a way to also join the rest of the community (in the afternoon)
• Is this too similar to what we had in the previous years?
• Is this open to people who want to just organise one session (not a whole track). Do we have to be organised and have a group before the meeting already? Answer - No. The structure is totally open to people organising one or two or many sessions on pretty much anything they want. There is a process to fill the open slots in the afternoon with content - that is open and not predetermined.
• Comment: The main point I am missing is the email that went out and said "we are looking for activities" as the starting point - rather than trying to fit things into themes already - Reply: I think we are mixing up apples and oranges - some people are drawing content lines, others are drawing methodological lines - so if we can agree on the containers/structure then we can move on from that and agree that we will still need to make a lot of decisions on the actual content that fills those containers.
• I am quite happy with what we have here. As a member of the local content / global context project we are interested in finding a place for us to participate - and in what was presented, I clearly see that space now. So, I am quite happy with this structure and we can move on from here.
• We need a way to allow everyone to participate in the content discussion. Reply: Yes, we have been trying to do that for a long time, linking with local groups etc. but we have obviously not done a good enough job. We need to talk about how we can improve that.
• Is Japan maybe too narrow a focus? What does digital commons and Japan mean?

Earlier rough notes taken during the discussion / mostly the same - some details in addition to the above

One question: How do we find balance between providing some focus (e.g. open educatino track), but let people move from one thing to another more than was the case in Dubrovnik?

Idea for the spaces:

• Lobby: Social space in the lobby, cafe, couches, lounge, show-case banners, people can sign up to things that then happen in separate rooms
• Medium sized room: for keynotes / academy (planned and regulated content)
• Set of smaller rooms that act as labs or rooms that a track occupies throughout the summit

Some tracks/themes (that run every day but half-days only so people still have time to do other things in the afternoons)

• we build on EXISTING TRIBES that people select themselves into; for example: academy - 101; open education; research / lawyers; practitioners / entrepreneurs, developers, business; free culture

[Rather than look at exact ways of running tracks, let's reach out to the community now around the themes that seem to be emerging and see what the best way to run them is (maybe half-day every day, or just one afternoon, or a separate day, etc.)]

One way to get both community-development (e.g. open education track) and diversity and trying out new things, run tracks as half-day every day, so that participants can still attend other things in the afternoon

Assuming that people break into their own tribes in the mornings, we could have a break in the middle where everyone comes together, people get rejuvinated, get fired up about the afternoon, report back from the mornings, do elevator pitches for the afternoon sessions.

Facilitation in the central area will then lead people into the break-away sessions, tracks, labs - so people must have a way of seeing what is happening in the different sessions.

People come with ideas on what they want to do, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and then during the session connections are made. Participant list before the summit that has more than just names and location, people could start connecting with each other before the summit.

Then there are other things we can't anticipate, and for these things we create spaces that encourage and allow things to happen. We also want people to break out of their mold to some extent, to see new things, and participate in new initiatives.

One person "lives" in the central space and helps organise logistics (book rooms, organise equipment, provide direction)

Important that not everything is fixed in advanced