NZCommons & case studies

In the pipeline, we have an interview with our Chair, Fabiana, about the past, present and future of open access, for OA week. We've also got a case study on a CC artist and open source guy Wiliam McKee.

We've just published the interview with Fabiana about Open Access in Aotearoa: http://nzcommons.org.nz/open-access-in-aotearoa-where-we-are-now/

Happy Open Access Week everyone!

This may be a tad off-topic here, but I've been thinking for a while about monthly NZCommons meet-ups. The idea would be to regularly bring together the people in each centre working on free culture/ CC, software freedom, open source development, OpenStreetMap/ OpenGIS, open hardare/ MakerSpaces, open government, WikiHouse etc and give us a chance to pick each others' brains, pitch projects and so on. Kind of like a regular, localized version of OSOS. Regular meet-ups could also provide an informal way to organise/ promote local events around things like Software/ Culture/ Hardware/ Education Freedom Days, OA Week etc.

There are definitely existing groups for a good amount of those areas already, though you seem to be keen on a broader open meetup? I've always had a hard time 'cross-pollinating' the various open areas, as people are (understandably) focused on openness in their own field.

Without wishing to palm this off, my initial reaction is that OSOS would probably be a better umbrella, as they have more of a tech focus (which is where the meetup culture seems strongest). Though keen to hear from anyone else, of course.

Oh, and our latest case study is on artist William McKee: http://nzcommons.org.nz/artist-william-mckee-discusses-creative-commons-open-source-and-open-education/

I've got a couple of interviews coming up to make case studies for NZCommons: the first is Ann Calhoun, who has written an ebook about the arts and crafts movement in NZ and licensed it under CC. The second is Kevin Double from Double Farley Creative Partners Limited, who uses CC on some of his videos.

I've now published the case study about the CC-licensed ebook on arts and crafts design in NZ: http://nzcommons.org.nz/new-openly-licensed-ebook-on-nz-arts-and-crafts-design/

We're continuing to plug away at the case studies, though I think Elizabeth and I are both starting to feel like NZCommons falls in the category of 'useful experiment.'

I think we've got some great and very useful pieces published on the site, though the initial justification - that it would sit outside of CCANZ, and have a broader range of discussion - hasn't really eventuated. There's nothing there that couldn't get published directly on the cc.org.nz site (and get more reads).

Interested to hear people's thoughts. There's always an cost with these sorts of projects, so time we invest here always means that we have less time for other sorts of work.

I think we're committed to publishing great thinking on the commons; less committed to the idea that we need a second site.

It's an excellent resource and I have been using it to discover artists that I can remix. Great reads, hate to see it 'disappear'.

Maybe the workload for the site needs to be more spread? Perhaps find more contributors to post and edit content?

What about merging it into the ccanz.org.nz site? You have the /news feed which the content is very similar to nzcommons. If you merge there is no need for the nzcommons site.

Updated my fork to be mobile friendly: http://wcmckee.com/nzcommons/

Hey William - great point, and to clarify, that's exactly what we want to do. I don't think anything will really change in terms of what we publish (by us and anyone from the community). All the content will live on. We'll just have one less website.

It'll also be easier for people to find out more about CC licensing, etc.