I had the good fortune to attend the Creative Commons Europe summit in Amsterdam this week. The meeting, part of the Creative Capital conference, was organized by the Waag Society’s Paul Keller, the public project lead of CC-Netherlands. It was one of those great happenings, more and more frequent these days, that snap your eyes open to Creative Commons’ long-term potential, and to how far we’ve come already: over 40 European Creative Commons project leads and volunteers from Spain, the Ukraine, and everywhere in between, brainstorming for two days about organizational structures, promotion strategy, and tough legal issues, like a free-culture EU. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing everyone — many for the first time — after so many email exchanges, and having the chance to listen to their stories about all their work. Paul deserves a medal (if we had those to give out) for pulling the event together, and there aren’t words to describe Creative Commons’ indebtedness to Christiane Asschenfeldt and Roland Honekamp for coordinating, over only the last year and a half no less, the development of such a great network of people. It was one of those events that feels both like a milestone and yet a beginning. Indeed, watch this space as we try to develop similar meetings around the world. (Photos will soon follow, too.)