CC Salon: Creative Community

[Apologies in advance for style. More of a straightforward write-up than my usual prose. Quite possibly, most people prefer this but I feel more comfortable rambling away than "reporting."]

Went to Austin CC Salon last night. CC Salon is a series of events “focused on building a community of artists and developers around Creative Commons licenses.”

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are tools meant to help creators in maintaining some rights over the “content” they produce (music, text, video…) while avoiding the chilling effects caused by Copyright and the “culture of ownership.” Though the Creative Commons organization was founded by a tech-savvy law professor and CC licenses are a tech-savvy solution to a legal problem, the social and cultural implications behind CC reach far beyond technological and legal contexts.

Last night’s event was held at Café Caffeine, a community-focused café/venue which happens to be in my neighborhood. The same café is host to the Jelly in Austin co-working sessions.

So… What happened last night at Café Caffeine?

A stimulating and thought-provoking event, to be sure. Also an event which provided the kind of casual and open atmosphere that I find most conducive for thoughtful discussion. In other words, I felt that I really was among like-minded people, despite all sorts of differences in our experiences and our approaches to technology and society.

Some of the people involved in last night’s event:

• Rich Vázquez (also)
• Laura Carbonneau
• Chris McConnell
• Tom Brown
• Shannon Lucas
• David Neff

Neff presented The American Cancer Society’s SharingHope.tv advocacy project and online video service. What made that site impressive, IMHO, was its adequate balance between message and technology. Such an important group as the American Cancer Society getting a high degree of geek cred. In some circles (including CC Salon, one would assume), it’s the best of both worlds.

Neff himself was remarkably enthusiastic, thoughtful, and level-headed in his approach to online video. Uncompromising in his dedication to the ACS mission and as poised as any developer can be in his approach to technological issues. In fact, Neff repeatedly referred to the importance of a respectful attitude toward users. And you could tell, from the way he talked about users, that he truly cares.

Neat!

For his part, Vázquez served as moderator and presented two online services meant to make it easy to find CC-licensed music online: Jamendo (a CC-friendly online music service with “pay what you want” compensation models) and CCMixter (mostly meant as a repository for remix-worthy samples).

In parallel to Vázquez’s presentation, mentions of several recent situations involving Copyright and Creative Commons licenses helped brush a clear picture of what the current “culture of ownership” implies.

But, again, what worked best for me went beyond what was said or even how it was said. My comfort level had more to do with a sense of belonging. Related to communitas. A community of experience, potentially the basis of a community of practice.

Overall, I hope CC Salon will become the basis for community building in Austin as elsewhere. Predictably, a significant portion of last night’s informal gathering was spent discussing legal, financial, and technical issues. But, clearly, these are people who are adept at crossing bridges in order to link people into actual communities.

Some random notes I took during and after CC Salon.

• Exposure to CC
  • Importance
  • Methods
    • QR-Codes for CC content
  • Possible outcomes
• Grassroots etiquette
  • Crowd’s shared values (not just “wisdom of crowds”)
  • Efficient in transition period
• CC in academia/education
  • Related to Open Access
  • Citation practice
  • Citation software and services (Zotero, RefWorks, Google Scholar)
  • Following links between references
  • Scholarship as “remixing”
• Random idea:
• CC musicians
  • Jams
    • Trying each other out
    • Playing together
    • Playful musicking
  • Shows/concerts/gigs
  • Band
  • Music community
    • Kalmunity-like?
• Mixing
  • Playful mixing
  • Audio editing (Pro Tools, Audition, Audacity…)
  • iLife GarageBand for CC?
  • Songbird for mixing?
  • CC loops
  • CC tracks
  • GB-like FLOSS project

Facebook Playing With My Mind

Took a look at the homepage for my Facebook account and I notice something new, below the birthday announcements. Some profile summaries with a mention that I might know these people. Nothing really awkward there, probably just a new feature. Although, Facebook has this strange (and potentially annoying) habit of changing features without warning us.

But still not mindblowing, or even mindplaying.

There’s a “Show All” button in that box and, when I click on it, I get to a Friend Finder page where I see a series of profile summaries with the heading: “People You May Know. Found based on your existing connections. Do you know any of these people? Add people you know as friends to make these results even better for you.”

Next to each profile summary:

You both know: [links to mutual friends]
Add To Friends|(View Friends)|Message

Again, nothing really weird. (Without warning,) Facebook browsed my connections and found some mutual friends. Some applications do things like these.

But, here’s where things get a bit less obvious: the first time I look at this page, I see a list of people I don’t recognize with mentions of some of my contacts (friends and acquaintances). Overall, these contacts are people I had assumed were unconnected. Granted, they all live or have lived in Montreal (my hometown). And some of them are somehow involved in music. But even the musicians among them are working in quite separate music scenes within Montreal’s music landscape.

According to this list, Richard (one of my contacts) has eleven connections in common with twelve of my friends and acquaintances. These twelve friends and acquaintances of mine presumably have little in common with the people that both Richard and I know. None of these twelve contacts of mine are connected directly to Richard on Facebook. They all know some of Richard’s contacts but my connections to them are very diverse: former students, former bandmates, a childhood friend, a fellow brewclub member, etc. I’ve met these people at very different stages of my life and I just couldn’t assume any of them would know one another. Again, all of these people have some connection to Montreal but given Montreal’s population, I find it quite surprising that my network would cluster so much across contact types.

I felt compelled to send a couple of messages about this. To Richard (this acquaintance of mine who seemed to have many mutual acquaintances with people I know). And to two of the people who were listed as possible acquaintances of mine (one of whom I probably did meet, a number of years ago).

Fascinating stuff for a social scientist like me.

But where it gets mindplaying is when, coming back to the Friend Finder page, the list of possible acquaintances is radically different from what it was the first time. This time, most of the people in the list belong to YulBlog, Montreal’s blogging community. That community has a relatively high clustering coefficient so I basically assumed that many of those YulBloggers are friends with some of my blogging friends. I did meet with several of these bloggers at blog meetings but I prefer letting them judge whether or not we should be linked through Facebook. So, this new Friend Finder page looks pretty normal, Which makes the first Friend Finder page seem more unusual. Playing with my mind.

It’s possible that the first Friend Finder page was a glitch. Facebook has been known to have some bugs recently, as they implement (some would say “impose”) changes in the way they handle things like privacy and contact lists. But, looking at Richard’s contact list, it does seem that these people really are all connected, albeit indirectly.

Lest you should mistake my enthusiasm for flabbergastment, I must say that while I find these connections surprising, I still understand that they’re fairly easy to explain. The effect, though, is one of puzzlement at the extent of the Small World Effect. I feel as though my world were much tinier and much more clustered than I had ever assumed. Especially the Montreal portion of my social world. And I thought my friends were diverse…

Yes, I know. I should just draw the network chart and let people reach their own conclusions.

Ah, well…