What to Expect from Creative Commons Salon Delhi

With only a day between us and Delhi's first Creative Commons Salon Delhi, I am getting many calls about what to expect from the event? Will it be boring? Will it be fun? Will it be worthwhile on the eve of Holi? I think, it is best I pen down my thoughts here for a general use.

Why 28th? It's one of the most pertinent questions. Mohak and I wanted to do the event on a weekend (we want to do all out events on weekends); weekends are most convenient for everyone. The wireside chat with Lawrence Lessig was scheduled for Feb 25th and the weekend nearest to it is Feb 27-28. Now Feb 27 is TEDx Gurgaon, so the only logical choice was Feb 28 - sadly, Chhoti Holi. Given the event timings - 1.30PM to 6.30PM, it should not be troublesome for anyone to make it to the event without disrupting their holi plans. Hopefully.

So, what are the sessions? Two: The Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig and a talk on Open Educational Resources by Dr. Savithri Singh. Even though we are telecasting a recorded chat with Lawrence Lessig, the chat has been instrumental and successful globally (look at the twitter hashtag #wireside). Lawrence, in the chat, has addressed many issues including copyright in a digital age, and the role (and importance) of a doctrine like “fair use.” Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video.

After the telecast, we will have Dr. Savithri Singh talk about Open Educational Resources and WikiEducator. Open Educational Resources include anything uses in the educational context including learning designs, software, open standards & specs, design patterns, and content including Open CourseWare. Dr. Singh will talk about what are OERs and how to build one, why are they relevant, and why they are critical to Open Education.

After the Session by Dr. Singh, we begin with open house sessions. The idea behind these sessions is to promote discussions, interactions and networking between the participants and share their views and experiences on Sharing, Open Access, Creative Commons and Licensing.

As far as I understand, this social sandbox will be immense given the participation we are having - a major chunk is the blogging community, then are artists, photographers, creative professionals, lawyers and students. Given this composition of participants, not only this sandbox brings together people from diverse backgrounds but also presents varied perspectives to sharing, licensing and copyrights.

During these sandboxes, we expect a lot of ideas and content to be generated and shared amongst the participants and the global community in general. Do follow the event live on Twitter with the hashtag #ccsdel and be a part of the discussions. We are also working out how best to live stream the event. Keep watching for updates.

Post these sandboxes, we will move to creating a road-map for the CC NCR Community and figure out how to proceed forward. Remember, nothing is possible without your support. Be there to make a difference ;)

In this post, I will also like to acknowledge the support extended by various individuals and institutions. Niyam Bhushan has been a great help in ideation and setting the direction of the event. We hope to make the event more appealing with his guidance. CC India has also helped us every possible support in promoting the event, though we were late in making contact with them. Thanks to iCommons and Open Video Alliance for sponsoring the event. Sarai for being the event hosts and accepting all our cranky requirements from the venue. Mohak has been very instrumental in setting up the whole show; wouldn't have been possible without his passion and energy. Yadu has been extremely creative in doing all the art assets for the event.

In the spirit of promoting the open source and open access ecosystem, we have been doing a lot of community events including OSScamps. We believe that with your support, Delhi's first Creative Commons Salon will be a huge step forward in our initiatives as well.

The event flyer made by Yadu: