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[Ryan Merkley <ryan AT creativecommons.org>]

Like most things, it's more complicated than any one issue or action. In 2015 CC cut $1M from our budget, had to let 1/3 of our staff go, and had to push aggressively to fundraise to find money to fund the overall budget, including the Global Summit. Many were concerned we couldn't afford it and should cancel this year, but I felt it was important we all get together. I'm glad we did. As we we forced to make cuts to balance the budget, we tried to protect the network-focused resources from the impacts of any cuts we might have to make. That's important to me.

We're all doing our best, and while the perception may be that CC has lots of resources to spare, the organization I walked into in 2014 certainly did not. I'm proud of what we've done to put CC back on its feet, but it's been tough. Where we've fallen down has been because juggling many balls often means you drop some -- even the important ones. We're doing our absolute best to pick them all back up, and as you saw in Seoul, the network is a priority for me, and for everyone.

I'd like to see us all working well together, and I'll be honest there's an underpinning of confrontation and frustration that I'd like to see us move past and focus on being constructive. I accept my part in that, though I now know that there is a tension that has long existed that we all have to work around. Please know that if we make mistakes, it's not malicious, nor at all intended. After our sessions in Seoul, I think it's clear that by and large we all want the same things for CC. I'd like to see us refocus on that together in the next year and assume good will from all involved.

First, I accept that timing and structure haven't been as good as we can do for some projects. None of that was by design. But it happened, and while there are reasons, it's still our fault. At the same time, people in the network are busy, and while highly interested, aren't always available or able to be responsive. That's a fact we all have to acknowledge and plan for if we want better engagement. Sometimes we can make more lead time, and sometimes we can do one-on-one asks, but that won't always work and it isn't sustainable. When it doesn't work, people get frustrated, and I'm sorry for that. We'll do better.

On the fundraising discussion, I accept your point but it's of course more complicated than that. We spoke of fundraising many times throughout the summit. There were dedicated breakouts in the Day 3 session and also on Day 0. Strictly speaking, you're right that CC did not run a dedicated session on it at Summit, but like just about every session at summit, it got combined with other sessions -- including what I think is a much more all-encompassing issue about how we all want to to work together as a network. I think we left summit with some good insights on how to do that, and are now working towards that.

I will gladly commit to starting SotC 2016 in Q1/2 of 2016, and to pulling together a committee to shape it. And I will also be happy to facilitate a dedicated fundraising meeting if there is still interest -- though it may make more sense to build it into the CC network strategy work we all agreed to do.

Best,
Ryan

On 2015-11-11 6:38 AM, Alek Tarkowski wrote:

8B11B7F9-D88C-4F39-B949-00DB0C4F1557 AT creativecommons.pl" type="cite">

Ryan,

I do not understand this. It’s not realistic to give people several days to respond. We also know that without extra “push” we don’t get many response from our network, since general level of engagement is low. (This is the bit that we agree on).I wish that the schedule was set in a way that made involvement of affiliates realistic, and that it was as important a goal as your Year End Campaign. Actually “going door to door” does work - for example we had a good response to the pre-summit survey.  

It’s also not true that you did not receive these suggestions earlier.

The plan was actually shared on  the list on October 5, due to list malfunction. Two days later, I wrote:

"Hi Jane,

thanks for sharing this. It sounds like you have a really sound plan for the report, and to build upon last year’s work.

i want to share some thoughts from the perspective of an affiliate:

- last year the report did not do a very good job in showing the achievements of our network across the world, I’m hoping we can improve that this year - I would underline the international aspect of the report in the outline. I agree that discussing this at the Summit is a good idea, although we might not find time during the Day 0 meeting. Maybe there is a chance to have some affiliates actively involved in preparing the report. please don’t see our role mainly as translators :)

- I hope you’re aware that there’s a similar effort, conducted by a group of organisations (mainly affiliates, including CC Poland) under the OPN umbrella - the “State of Open Policy” report. we wrote about it recently on this list. it would be good if we could figure out how these two publications can “work together”. that’s another thing we can discuss in Seoul.

I am volunteering to help out with these two things. I unfortunately can’t help with providing platform data. 

all the best,

Alek”

furthermore, I raised this issue personally with Jane at the Summit and wrote you a follow-up email on the 19th. It seems to me that it was actually you and your team that were slow to respond to this idea, making it impossible to include it. 

I am a bit tired of hearing that the next time things will be improved. Next year’s report will be written in 12 months. That’s a lot of time to wait. Why didn’t we have this conversation over the summer, for example? That was actually the best, comfortable opportunity to discuss this - but none of us were aware that the next report is in the works.

With regard to CC fundraising - you promised in July a standalone session at the Summit. It never happened.

Best,

Alek

On 10 Nov 2015, at 21:21, Ryan Merkley <ryan AT creativecommons.org> wrote:

Unfortunately, we can't stretch the schedule. The report has to go live on Dec 7 to work into our Year End Campaign and press push, and we already made commitments to give affiliates sufficient time to translate. 

We all want to see stronger engagement, but it's too late for new additions -- the opportunity for this particular project was much earlier in the process. We shared the plan and asked for feedback on October 1, but these ideas didn't come forward until over a month later. It's unfortunate, because they're good ideas, but we also need to publish the report on schedule to meet our other objectives. Getting RCs to go door-to-door when e-mails don't generate much interest or response is probably not a viable solution, and maybe part of a larger issue around overall network capacity and engagement. Something we should work on for our larger network strategy, and for next year's report.

r.

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koordynator, Creative Commons Polska

European Policy Fellow, Creative Commons
Twitter: @atarkowski / @ccpolska

WWW: creativecommons.pl / oerpolicy.eu

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Ryan Merkley
CEO, Creative Commons
ryan AT creativecommons.org

+1 416.802.0662
@ryanmerkley

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