From iCommons wiki

The guys at the workshop were divided into groups and they had to build a model of their ideal iSummit space. At the end of the morning we had five spaces and these big ideas were common to all of them.

Big Ideas That Emerged

There should be chaos at the centre and order at the periphery.

A big community space where people can speak to each other and where people are inclined to speak to each other.

Language management is going to be a key performance area.

Fewer (if any) keynotes.

Diversity - fewer white men from the northern hemisphere.

Live (interactive) feeds on giant screens that become archival post the summit.

The largest space should not be committed to keynotes, but to social networking.

Delegates should have a sense that the summit is in Japan.

Choice must be well managed.

The AIR work should be integrated into the spaces that contain the rest of the summit.

A space for downtime.

Interconnectivity, rather than tracks.

An iCommons 101 track for newbies.

Once we had decided that the above were key major directions that people were moving in, we were able to look at some of them in greater depth.

Whilst going into the above, we got into a prickly discussion about community and how we understood it and because community is one of the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the commons the discussion was robust.

All that the robust discussion did was flag the fact that we had some differing opinions to work through and some way to go before we approached consensus.

Later on in the afternoon one group was tasked with looking at the four one-word goals that were laid down at the outset and they increased the number of goals to eight. These eight were then synthesized back to four concisely worded goals on Day 2. Please see Day 2 for those final goals.

Another group was asked to look at issues of - for want of a better word - diversity, but what they were basically looking at was: Who will be at iSummit 08?

Audience

The audience at iSummit 08 can be divided into 2 groups – the people we know will be there, and the people we want to be there. Decisions made around the granting of scholarships and the programme must be informed by these groups

Known Attendees (Tribes)

iCommons staff

CC staff

CCi affiliates

Japanese attendees (probably around 300 people from Tokyo and Sapporo, who are students, media, professionals, creators)

Free Culture

Free Software

Educators

Wish List

Classroom teachers

Working professionals (artists, musicians, game designers, architects, curators, filmmakers, photographers)

Academics (those already affiliated with the Commons, as well as anthropologists, ethnographers, media analysts who may not yet be part of the Commons)

Filmmakers

Wikipedians

Japanese media

Japanese Students

South East Asian + Australian delegates

Ways to facilitate attendance

Make information about the registration and scholarship application process available earlier, so that academics can look for funding from their institutions earlier. This can be staggered, so that attendees who don’t need as much time can apply later. Ensure that there is enough translated material (all written and film material, as well as simultaneous translation) to include Japanese attendees. Make information available to the media early, and give them access to people and information, but without creating too much legwork for the summit staff

Integration

Creating connections between summit veterans and newbies is difficult, and in the past has only happened halfway through the summit, which is too late. Social spaces and less formal programme events might help to make these connections happen faster.

Artists in Residence

2007’s AIR programme was focused primarily on visual art. It was suggested that 2008’s programme focus on another medium, like photography, documentary, film, music, or sound art, and that this change every year. This would result in a diverse body of work that is created around the Summit over the years.