Next up in our ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ series, meet long-time Wikipedians Ariel Elinson and Laliv Gal. Ariel is an accomplished graphic designer and lecturer. With the support of Wikimedia Israel, he launched the VIPs Photography Project for Wikipedia. Ariel and Laliv will be presenting together at Summit. Laliv is a former board member of Wikimedia Israel, and a leader and active member of the Wiki-Woman local project. She has been volunteering for the VIPs Photography Project for Wikipedia for 6 years. Their session at the 2021 CC Global Summit will introduce their work photographing public figures in Israel, and the main goal of this unique project. This project focuses on creating and promoting high-quality, free and open content that can be used on Wikipedia articles and in other media.

Based in: Israel

Summit Session: Very Important People become Commoners

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

Ariel is the initiator of the VIPs photography project for Wikipedia with the aid of the Wikimedia Foundation in Israel, and Laliv is a volunteer at the project. Together we upload as many CC released photos as we can.

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?

This is our first one! We are excited.

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?

We would like to hear about other ways to create high-end, good quality photos for the public use in other countries.

Why are you an advocate for Open?

We are advocates for Open because we believe in creating and sharing high quality visual content.

What is your proudest achievement?

Contributing hundreds of new photos to Hebrew Wikipedia articles.

What is your favorite GIF?

via GIPHY

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

Wikipedia, Of course!

What’s one new trend that you think the CC community should look out for?

Making video content more accessible for people use.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

Create great content!

Only 6 days until the 2021 CC Global Summit kicks off on September 20-24. Join us virtually for a week of discussion, collaboration, creativity and community building. Register here >>

The post Meet CC Summit Presenters: Laliv Gal & Ariel Elinson appeared first on Creative Commons.

Next up in our ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ series, we sit down with social entrepreneur, Comfort Onyaga. ​​Comfort is a market systems development expert with over five years of field experience and a proven track record in her field. As a social impact entrepreneur, Comfort believes that Africa can become self-reliant through homegrown solutions to socioeconomic problems. This philosophy inspires her to drive inclusive economic growth and continue to impact humanity a day at a time. Comfort is a multi-hyphenate who has founded a nonprofit organization and private sector companies as follows: Founder & Executive Director, CLICE Foundation; Founder & CEO of Izanu Africa, an Agritech Startup; JustComfort, a fashion line for children and teens, Co-Founder, Policy Sharpers, and the coordinator, Ngozi Nwozor- Agbo Initiative (NNAI), and Multi-stakeholders Partnership Initiatives for Advocacy on Countering Trafficking in Persons (MULTIPACT). She is also an Alumna of the Founder Institute, Utiva Product School, and the Tekedia Mini-MBA Institute. As a founding member of Policy Shapers, she and her team participated in the maiden edition of the Stanford Open Data Project and emerged top three in the Policy and Advocacy Tract. Comfort was recently nominated for the World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leaders, Class of 2022.

Based in: Lagos, Nigeria

Summit Session: How Open Data can drive Transparency and Transformation in Virtual Universities

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

My team saw the ads on DevCom and we decided to apply! 

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?

A physical Summit if possible.

What is your proudest achievement?

Been nominated for the World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leaders Class of 2022 sometime this year. 

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

The best part of what I do as the Founder of CLICE Foundation is working with my team to impact humanity, and the most difficult part of it is fundraising. 

What is your favorite GIF?

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What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

LinkedIn: I’m able to network and connect with professionals in my field seamlessly. 

What is the biggest setback you have experienced? How did you overcome it?

My biggest setback was graduating from the Founder Institute in 2020, and I overcame it by quickly creating a team of like-minded persons to help me with most of my assignments, which were real-time tasks. 

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

We all have a right to access data when we need it, because data is the live wire of the future.

What was the best career advice you ever received? 

To build and grow CLICE Foundation during my formative years, rather than dump it for an offer another organization proposed in 2018.  

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

The best is yet to come. Phenomenal strides await the Creative Commons. 

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

It means collaboration for accelerated growth, because it takes collaboration to share, and this will ultimately birth growth in leaps and bounds.

Not long to go until the 2021 CC Global Summit on September 20-24. Join us from wherever you are as we explore the latest developments in the Open Movement, celebrate 20 years of Creative Commons, and consider what the future of Open holds. Register here >>

The post Meet the CC Summit Presenter: Comfort Onyaga appeared first on Creative Commons.

Can you believe we’re just one week away from the 2021 CC Global Summit? Join us from September 20-24 for an unforgettable event. This week, we will keep the ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ Q&As coming, so that you can continue to get to know our presenters and their session topics ahead of next week. Our next presenter in the series will engage us in a topic that’s been making headlines recently — NFTs (Non-fungible tokens). Kyle Smith is a polymath passionate about the digital art creator economy, working on “conscientious cybernetics” using media & entertainment deeptech. He has a BBA in music industry from Belmont University and a JD in law from Western University. As an active member of LexDAO and Fellow in Gitcoin’s KERNEL incubator, Kyle is currently working on Ethereum projects. Namely, “public good” Ethereum projects that leverage Raspberry Pi Nodejs devops environments for STEAM education. Kyle’s Summit session ‘CC + NFT’will be based on this Creative Commons Canada blog post Copyright as a public good: CC + NFT value creation.

Based in: Victoria, Canada

Summit Session: CC + NFT

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

While I was a student at Western Law, I wrote a paper for Brian Fitzerald about using small claims court for copyright disputes.

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?

Monetary & validation awards for community voted projects that support the Commons.

Why are you an advocate for Open?

I believe in the positive impact literacy has on society. Program language literacy is now more important than ever.

What is your proudest achievement?

In academia: 

@stevenstrogatz your tweet re: Needham’s visual math book reminded me of https://t.co/9FDkSJfQDj
.
You expertly explain the subtle scale-symmetry invariant in Einstein’s Pythagoras proof: fa^2 + fb^2 = fc^2.
.
This clip shows my scale-symmetry method. The next clips go deeper. pic.twitter.com/VoogPEANOR

— Kyle Smith | bestape.eth (@bestape) August 22, 2021

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What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

The best is being the first to figure out low-level information theory. The most difficult is going out on a limb free solo for long stretches of time. 

What is your favorite GIF?

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by km.smith (@bestape)

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What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

My Cheerbot script-as-UX because it can live code and hot swap during performances. 

“I believe in the positive impact literacy has on society. Program language literacy is now more important than ever.”

What’s one new trend that you think the CC community should look out for?

Full-fidelity duplication as a CC public good embraced by the “global parent” private good NFT layer; the topic of my Summit presentation.

What is the biggest setback you have experienced? How did you overcome it?

Political instability from Truth & Reconciliation struggles has been difficult. I look forward to moving to a jurisdiction without this complication, so I can better prioritize Cheerbot for all peoples.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

We can have our cake and eat it too with digital media if we embrace “two-sided coin” IP composites, such as CC + NFT assets.

What was the best career advice you ever received? What was the worst career advice you ever received?

Best advice, know your personal brand and patiently work with it. Worse advice, impatiently try to make a lot of money, above all other priorities.

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

Congratulations! The World wouldn’t be nearly as Enlightened without you. Keep up the good work. :o)

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

Continue Jobs’s “bicycle of the mind” dream with modern “IoT” general purpose machines like Raspberry Pi so we can unleash the latent power of humanity and innovate ourselves out of this fossil-fuel-driven climate crisis. 

Join us from wherever you are for the 2021 CC Global Summit on September 20-24. We will explore the latest developments in the Open Movement, celebrate 20 years of Creative Commons, and consider what the future of Open holds. Register here >>

The post Meet the CC Summit Presenter: Kyle Smith appeared first on Creative Commons.

Happy Friday Creative Commoners! There are only 10 more days until this year’s virtual CC Global Summit, on September 20-24.

In anticipation of the Summit, we’re doing something a little different in this episode. Pack your bags and prepare for a short (audio) tour around the world, join CC’s Ony Anukem as she speaks to three of our wonderful Summit keynote speakers. First up in Nairobi, Kenya, where we sit down with Angela Oduor Lungati, Executive Director at Ushahidi. Ushahidi is a global non-profit technology company that builds tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering barriers for individuals to raise their voices. Angela was also recently appointed to the Creative Commons Board of Directors.

Next, we’ll arrive in Bangalore, India, where you’ll hear from Shuttleworth Fellow and Coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, Achal Prabhala. AccessIBSA is a project set up to expand access and speed up the discovery of new drugs in India, Brazil and South Africa. Our final stop on the tour will be in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where we will catch up with Cecília Olliveira, Executive Director of Fogo Cruzado. Fogo Cruzado aims to expand a community-driven open data platform and reduce the impact of armed violence to build a more just society. She is also a fellow of the Shuttleworth Foundation.

Are you ready for an adventure? Get to know our Summit keynote speakers, as we talk about their work, what drives them and what they are most excited about ahead of this year’s CC Global Summit.

• Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also subscribe via the show’s RSS feed.

Please subscribe to the show in whatever podcast app you use, so you don’t miss any of our conversations with people working to make the internet and our global culture more open and collaborative.

P.S. If you haven’t listened to Episode 5 of Opens Minds yet, it features another one of this year’s keynote speakers, Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan.

The post Open Minds Podcast: *Special Episode* Meet 3 of our CC Global Summit Keynotes appeared first on Creative Commons.

In 10 days, the second-ever virtual CC Global Summit will be coming to a screen near you September 20-24! We’re back with another ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ Q&A, in this blog post, we catch up with Lisa Macklem. Lisa is a PhD candidate in Law at the University of Western Ontario, whose research focuses on digital content delivery, IP, and the Entertainment Industry. She focuses on issues of access, copyright, and technology. “Fair Dealing, Online Teaching and Technological Neutrality: Lessons From the COVID-19 Crisis,” cowritten with Samuel Trosow, is in the Intellectual Property Journal Vol. 32, Iss. 3 (Sept 2020) and was cited in the recent Supreme Canada of Canada case York University v. Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), 2021 SCC 32.

Based in: London, ON – Canada

Summit Session: Pump Up the Volume: The Importance of Listening to Stakeholders in Copyright Reform and Regulation

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

I first became aware of Creative Commons in law school. As a Copyright scholar and a writer, I was fully on board from day 1!

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?

Twice – including this year! It’s helpful when it’s online.

Why are you an advocate for Open?

With increasing costs and barriers to access, it’s never been more important to ensure that everyone has access to culture and information – and the tools to create and innovate. Open access helps to foster the next generation of creators and students, and ensures that content reaches the widest possible audience. As large copyright and technology owners increasingly lobby for (and too often get!) more stringent restrictions, open access has never been more important.

“The more we can share in a responsible way, the more we can foster a more creative, innovative future!”

What is your proudest achievement?

Being cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in support of fair dealing.

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

Helping people understand their rights. Convincing people that no one is trying to pick their pocket! 

What is your favorite GIF?

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What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

Zoom – but it’s really a love/hate relationship. It’s easy to use and has done me great service over the last year and a half.

What’s one new trend that you think the CC community should look out for?

The trend of governments to overlook what creators and innovators really need. 

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

Don’t be taken in by the rhetoric from the loudest voices.

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

Here’s to the next 20 years!

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

The more we can share in a responsible way, the more we can foster a more creative, innovative future!

Whether you are new to the community or a long-time contributor, the 2021 CC Global Summit on September 20-24 has something for you! Register here >>

The post Meet the CC Summit Presenter: Lisa Macklem appeared first on Creative Commons.