iSummit 08, Sapporo, Japan (29/7-01/8)

The 2008 iSummit brings together activists, change agents and new world social entrepreneurs to chart and reflect on a positive path for a more fair, more just, more creative world in the Information Age. The event will cover such topics as Open Education Policy and Practice, Open Business, Global Commons and Open Publishing, and the First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture.

The list of keynote speakers include COMMUNIA active members Rishab Ghosh and Paul Keller, along with other renowned experts and activists.

Also on 29 July a special workshop about the legal and international aspects of the Creative Commons licences will be held in Sapporo. With the increasing growth of Creative Commons worldwide, a structured discussion about policies, legal issues, and questions about interoperability will prove both necessary and fruitful.

Building on the vision of the first iSummit (Harvard University, July 2005), where about 80 people from every continent met to discuss the future of the Creative Commons International project, the next two editions - in Rio de Janeiro and Dubrovnick - focused, among other things, on scaling up the move towards opening and reinvigorating educational policy and practice in schools, universities and informal learning environments everywhere.

The 2008 iSummit is a rare public-private partnership in the realm of the digital commons that has made our process all the more grounded in the reality of creative industry, public duty and non-profit sustainability in both South Africa (where iCommons is based) and in Japan.