In September 2016, Creative Commons Europe hosted a meeting for our European affiliates in Lisbon, Portugal.

We would like to express our gratitude to the kind folks at Escola Das Gaivotas for hosting us, and to Teresa, Fatima, André, and Diogo from the CC Portugal team for being the best hosts ever!

What happens when you put 30 passionate commoners accustomed to meeting only online in a lovely conference venue in an historic city? Lots of talking, group updates, big plans being made, old and new issues being tackled, great projects presented, and new designs of collaboration schemes.

At the end of September, 30 participants from 15 different European Creative Commons teams came together for a meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. CC Representatives from the UK, France, Poland, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Ireland, Slovenia, Greece, Belarus, Ukraine, Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Romania joined the meeting, organized by CC Portugal. We were joined by CC CEO Ryan Merkley and Timothy Vollmer and Paul Stacey from CC HQ. 

The whole group poses together in Lisbon. Saša Krajnc, CC BY

From this meeting, we learned that the CC affiliate network is interested (and involved) in much more than just licenses. CC teams are vital in new emerging “commons” activities, the sharing economy, 3D printing, open agriculture, open business models, and copyright reform.

Some highlights of the meeting:

• The School of Rock(ing) Copyright, an information sharing bootcamp on copyright reform organized by Communia, with support from CC’s Awesome Fund. For a full report on this session, see Communia’s website. We all stand for creativity, innovation, access to knowledge, and development. Copyright laws can either boost or limit these goals, so we are actively involved with making progressive changes to copyright to benefit users, education, and the commons. Having some non-EU affiliates with us as well offered an interesting perspective on the importance of training and support on copyright reform in other regions and other languages than English.
• CC business models with a presentation of CC Portugal’s Toolkit for businesses, and an overview of CC’s Open Business Model project. Open business models about more than using the commons for gaining profit.
  

  Saša Krajnc, CC BY

  Open business models are about allowing all actors gain a fair share (above and beyond monetary rewards) for their contribution to the commons. Exploring and supporting open business models can also work to tackle the related discrepancies that can possibly turn a flourishing commons into a closed, feudalistic environment. The use of CC can one aspect for creating open, regenerative, and distributed networks.

• The kick off for the CC Certificates project raises fascinating challenges for CC in terms of education and validation of information about CC. A certification mechanism will formalize many of our efforts to teach about open, which is a challenge for a network with such a grassroots ethos. The project has a dedicated website where you can check for updates.
• A ‘CC infrastructure’ session on what’s going on at tech and legal level. You can check the notes from this meeting here.
• We also discussed the Global Network Strategy and next steps for our European community, which we look forward to continuing to work on over the next months, particularly as we prepare for our Global Summit in April in Toronto.

Saša Krajnc, CC BY

We’ll keep you updated as we continue our work for CC Europe in support of the commons. In the meantime, if you want to join the discussion, you can find us on Slack!

PS If you are wondering about the marvelous artworks in the photos, they’re by Vhils.