Wikis Take Manhattan III is this Saturday!

Fred Benenson, October 5th, 2009

Wikis Take Manhattan is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest aimed at illustrating Wikipedia and StreetsWiki articles covering sites and street features in Manhattan and across the five boroughs of New York City.

Scheduled for Saturday, October 10, 2009, this event will be a sequel to the spring 2008 Wikipedia Takes Manhattan (WTM-1) and last fall’s Wikis Take Manhattan (WTM-2) event. Check out the hoppin’ Wikipedia page for full details.

The day will be sponsored by Free Culture @ Columbia, the Columbia University chapter of Students for Free Culture, in cooperation with Free Culture @ NYU, The Open Planning Project, Wikimedia New York City and Wikipedia volunteers.

If you’re attending, make sure to register online here.

All Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians are invited to participate in teams of up to three (no special knowledge is required at all, just a digital camera and a love of the city).

REMINDER: CC Salon NYC is Monday October 5th

Fred Benenson, October 1st, 2009

Just a quick reminder that October’s CC Salon NYC is Monday night!

We’ve got a brand new home for the Salons – the Open Planning Project has generously offered their incredible penthouse.

So come out to have some beers with the CC community watch some cool presentations, and meet some new faces in the free culture space.

October’s Salon will feature short presentations from Adam Clark Estes, director of citizen journalism at the Huffington Post Investigative Fund talking about how the HuffPo is using CC to fuel the future of journalism, Shelley Bernstein, Chief Technology Officer of the Brooklyn Museum discussing their amazing community and commons efforts, and myself discussing some current CC projects, achievements, and a sneak peak at what I’ve been working on for the Creative Commons Network.

Here are the details:

Monday, October 5th, from 7-10pm
The Open Planning Project
148 Lafayette St
Between Grand & Howard
New York, NY

We’ll have free (as in beer) beer. If you’ve didn’t make it to any past CC Salons, don’t miss this one, and if you did, you’ll know to come early as space is limited.

RSVP to the event via Facebook or by e-mailing me: fred [at] creativecommons.org.

Jonathan Lethem’s CC Licensed Philip K. Dick Essay

Fred Benenson, September 30th, 2009

Notable Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem (Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn, You Don’t Love Me Yet among others) just released an essay titled “Crazy Friend” (PDF download) under a CC BY-NC-ND license. The story is a fantastic read in and of itself, but we’re doubly excited that its CC licensed.

Here’s io9’s summary:

The essay, called “Crazy Friend,” is a winding, mildly obsessive tale of how Dick’s stories guided Lethem out of childhood, into a turbulent adolescence, and at last settled him in a career as a critically-acclaimed writer. He begins by talking about his boyhood relationship with two cool older girls who didn’t get why he thought Dick’s writing was so important, and ends by introducing us to Lethem’s life as a Dick fanboy and showing us snippets of his early writing about Dick (some interesting stuff). Ultimately, Lethem says, Dick is the archetypal “crazy friend” whom we’ve all known. And whom we all love.

Lethem has a new book coming out on October 13th called Chronic City and he’ll be doing an epic reading of the entire book around NYC city book stores starting October 16th.

Announcing October’s CC Salon NYC

Fred Benenson, September 21st, 2009

CC Salon NYC is back with a brand new home! The Open Planning Project has generously offered their incredible penthouse for the October salon.

So come out to have some beers with the CC community watch some cool presentations, and meet some new faces in the free culture space.

October’s Salon will feature short presentations from Adam Clark Estes, director of citizen journalism at the Huffington Post Investigative Fund talking about how the HuffPo is using CC to fuel the future of journalism, Shelley Bernstein, Chief Technology Officer of the Brooklyn Museum discussing their amazing community and commons efforts, and one more special guest TBA.

Here are the details:

Monday, October 5th, from 7-10pm
The Open Planning Project
148 Lafayette St
Between Grand & Howard
New York, NY

We’ll have free (as in beer) beer. If you’ve didn’t make it to any past CC Salons, don’t miss this one, and if you did, you’ll know to come early as space is limited.

RSVP to the event via Facebook or by e-mailing me: fred [at] creativecommons.org.

Software Freedom Day is September 19th

Fred Benenson, September 17th, 2009

It should be no surprise that here at CC, we’re huge fans of Free Software. Every bit we release, from our JS Widget to the code running the CC Network itself to our Facebook Application is free software. That’s why we think its important to celebrate Software Freedom Day on Saturday, September 19th. There are numerous celebrations happening around the world, but I”ll be attending the one in NYC:

6pm to 10pm.
148 Lafayette St, 12th Floor.
New York, NY

If you’d like to attend the NYC event, please RSVP required to joshlevy.ny AT gmail. Have a great Software Freedom Day!

Wiki-Conference NYC 2009

Fred Benenson, July 20th, 2009

In New York this weekend? Head on over to NYC for the 1st Wiki-Conference.  Here are the details:

The 1st Wiki-Conference New York will be held over the weekend of July 25-26 2009 at New York University, and hosted by Free Culture @ NYU and Wikimedia New York City.

The location for the conference is Vanderbilt Hall, part of NYU law school, in the Village. This hall is opposite the southwest corner of Washington Square Park.

Plans are still gestating, and more schedule details should appear soon; participants are encouraged to give your own ideas for topic sessions. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales will be giving a keynote, and we will also have a second keynote speaker TBA.

You can register for the Wiki-Conference here.

Our OVC Wrapup

Fred Benenson, June 23rd, 2009

We wanted to give big thanks to Ben, Dean, Elizabeth, Adi, and all the volunteers to helped make the fantastic Open Video Conference happen. Myself, Jane and Alex K were all in attendance on behalf of CC and we figured we’d post a wrap up about our experience at the conference.

At the CC Salon NYC / OVC Pre-party, I was able to record my conversation with Brett Gaylor, the director and creator of RiP! A Remix Manifesto which also screened at OVC. You can download our interview in ogg here, or mp3 here, available under a our Attribution license. Fans of Adam McHeffey will be happy to watch a YouTube video of his performance here. And last but not least, thanks to Erik Möller from the Wikimedia Foundation for guiding us through Wikipedia’s switch to CC-BY-SA.

And of course, we couldn’t forget about Blip.tv for supplying the beer at the salon, For Your Imagination Studios for the space, and Parker and Wesley for helping out with setup and breakdown. We couldn’t have done it without you guys!

As for the OVC itself, we were blown away with the focus and intensity in every panel and session. I repeatedly heard from attendees how nice it was to have 100% of a conference focused on an issue that typically receives only 10% of the attention. One of my favorite presentations was by Chris Blizzard from Mozilla showing of Firefox’s 3.5 Ogg Theora capabilities. Here’s a quick screen cast some of the capabilities Chris showed off at the conference:

On Saturday afternoon I gave a well packed luncheon presentation on Open Video, Metadata, and Creative Commons. You can download the slides from my presentation here.

Here’s a brief summary from Jane and Alex who attended on behalf of ccLearn:

OVC by Alex Kozak / ccLearn

ccLearn also attended the first ever Open Video Conference and had a blast. We think much of the OVC’s success is due to the fact that so much of it was relevant to openness in general that education naturally fit the bill. “Open Video in Education” especially blew us away by the diversity of forward thinking present in the room by both open education advocates and those with little to no experience with open educational resources (OER). Most everyone in the room, including the audience, were in agreement that open video and open technologies are essential to the future of education. The expressed concerns were more about how to convince the higher-ups at their institutions to see the light.

To reiterate, the session was not lacking in representation. Someone remarked how the variety of perspectives yielded a kind of “transformer panel.” From Bjoern Hassler (Cambridge University’s Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies) who set the tone in the beginning by assuming that it is (or should be) apparent to everyone that CC BY is the best license for OER, Tiffiny Cheng (Participatory Culture Foundation) who highlighted Miro, the open source free high definition video player, to UC Berkeley’s webcast.berkeley, the panel was diverse but consistent in their view that open video for education is essential, that CC licenses for that video is a given, and that—to quote an audience member’s words—”You have to do more than just tape lectures.”

Finally, you can also watch most of the main hall sessions on the Livestream feed page for the OVC, though Flash is required. We’re assured these will be available in Theora in short order.

Great job OVC, we’re looking forward to the next one!

REMINDER: CC Salon NYC / OVC Pre-party is Thursday Night (+music & beer)

Fred Benenson, June 16th, 2009

Just a reminder that the Creative Commons Salon NYC / Official Open Video Conference Pre-party is happening Thursday night!

I’m also excited to announce that we’ve added a live acoustic set from CC musician Adam McHeffey (of FrostClick fame) as well as lots of cold beer sponsored by blip.tv!

Here’s all the info:

June’s Salon will feature an in depth chat with Brett Gaylor, writer and director of RiP! A Remix Manifesto, a presentation by Erik Moeller, Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation WMF on Wikipedia’s switch to Creative Commons licenses, and a live acoustic set from singer song writer Adam McHeffey.

Thursday, June 18th, from 7-10pm
For Your Imagination Loft
22 W. 27th St., 6th Floor
Between Broadway & 6th Ave.
New York, NY

We’ll have free (as in beer) beer for the reception afterward. If you’ve didn’t make it to any past CC Salons, don’t miss this one, and if you did, you’ll know to come early as space is limited.

RSVP to the event via Facebook or by e-mailing me: fred [at] creativecommons.org.

Remix NYC: Get Your Face In The Opening NYC Screening of “Rip! A Remix Manifesto”

Cameron Parkins, June 8th, 2009

Times Square, J Gutierrez | CC BY

June is turning into quite the month for the NYC CC-community with both a CC Salon and the Open Video Conference taking place. For added enjoyment, Open Source Cinema just announced Remix NYC, a digital celebration to commemorate the theatrical opening of Rip! A Remix Manifesto at the Cinema Village in New York on June 19th.

The premise is simple – edit yourself in place of the advertisements that are abound in Javier Gutierrez’s Times Square (pictured above) and upload it back to OSC’s site for inclusion in the film. The final product will be an animated version of image where the billboards are slowly replaced by free culture activists.

Unbelievably cool but you have a short time to get your photos in as the deadline is June 14th – visit Remix NYC for all the details.

Announcing June’s CC Salon NYC / Official OVC Pre-party

Fred Benenson, June 8th, 2009

After taking a break for a bit (things have been busy at CC) I’m happy to announce our June Salon, which we’ll be partnering with the Open Video Conference on. Think of it as a Salon and the official OVC pre-party.

So come out to have some beers with the CC community watch some cool presentations, and meet some new faces in the free culture space.

June’s Salon will feature an in depth chat with Brett Gaylor, writer and director of RiP! A Remix Manifesto, a presentation by Erik Moeller, Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation WMF on Wikipedia’s switch to Creative Commons licenses, and some more guests to be announced.

Here are the details:

Thursday, June 18th, from 7-10pm
For Your Imagination Loft
22 W. 27th St., 6th Floor
Between Broadway & 6th Ave.
New York, NY

We’ll have free (as in beer) beer for the reception afterward. If you’ve didn’t make it to any past CC Salons, don’t miss this one, and if you did, you’ll know to come early as space is limited.

RSVP to the event via Facebook or by e-mailing me: fred [at] creativecommons.org.