Cc-hk mailing list

[Rebecca MacKinnon <rebecca.mackinnon AT gmail.com>]

Thanks very much Henry for the tremendous enthusiasm. It's really great.

A few things to point out, clarify, and seek further reaction from everybody on the list. Sorry for the long e-mail. The stuff I'd like responses to are marked with "PLEASE RESPOND:".  If anybody on this list feels more comfortable responding in Chinese instead of English that's fine. Please feel free to start Chinese-language discussion threads. A large number of the people on this list are bilingual and we can help summarize the discussion to those who aren't. But I want to make sure that the CC-HK community is not exclusively dominated by people who feel comfortable writing quickly and eloquently in English, with a result that we may lose some other points of view. :)

1. CC-HK launch:   Actually most CC country launches are not conferences, but celebrations of various kinds - often involving artistic performances, exhibitions, etc. etc., featuring artists and creators who use CC in various ways. The CC Taiwan launch was basically a big concert and party.  Other possibilities might be some kind of on-site mashup fest, and maybe some kind of public educational event about how to use CC, in addition to a cultural event/performance/exhibit/etc. Certainly we would want to have some kind of launch ceremony with a speech ideally from Larry and maybe a couple other people (like Joi if he can come, etc.), but I would advise against organizing the launch as a full-fledged conference - unless everybody on this list disagrees with me in which case obviously we should do what the general community thinks is most appropriate. 

However - and this is where I think the confusion arises - in order to pool resources and get maximum attention and maximum participation, we had the idea to do the launch in mid-June at the same time as the 6th annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC), an academic conference held every year for the past 6 years which is being organized separately and independently from CC-HK, which my center at HKU happens to be hosting on June 13-14. (Friday and Saturday). 

So. The idea was that the CC-HK launch could take place before, during, or after the CIRC - but would not be *part* of the CIRC. Because only a small part of the CC-HK community are academics and frankly these academic conferences are pretty hard to sit through for anybody who isn't an academic - and certainly not of interest to the media. On the other hand, a number of CIRC academic participants are also involved with CC. So doing the two at the same time maximizes the chances that the academics we'd like to invite can be there. At any rate I don't think we have the capacity to organize the launch before June (it's already tight) - and if we push it beyond June we really won't be able to get it together until the Fall, which I think is sub-optimal from the community's point of view. 

PLEASE RESPOND: If any of you think it's a * bad * idea to hold the launch right before or after the Chinese Internet Research Conference, please say so now! :)

2. Exact date of launch-  ** EVERYBODY PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK **

I am in contact with Lessig's assistant about his availability. I asked her about his availability during that week of June 13-14 and she asked which specific date and many more questions about the format of the launch - which we don't yet have answers to. Obviously it will take us a while to sort out exactly what will happen at the launch.  However I would like to get an idea * now * from all of you about which day of the week we think would be ideal - in theory, based on what we know now, assuming people want to hold the launch around the CIRC. 

 Since many core members of the community have jobs they can't easily get out of, we should hold the launch on an evening or weekend. A couple people I've talked to off-list have indicated Saturday or Sunday would be ideal for community participation. We could probably make either of these times - either late afternoon or evening - work with the CIRC. 

PLEASE RESPOND: What do people think about a launch on the late afternoon or evening of Saturday June 14th or Sunday June 15th? What are  your concerns? Alternative suggestions?

(There is of course the concern that the times most convenient for the community are least convenient for journalists. However there are ways around this if we get the right journalists involved early, and especially if the focus is heavily cultural. Generally the worst time to get media attention for something is if you do it late on a Friday anyway, and Thursday evening would also be pushing it for deadlines unless we held it too early for many people to get off work.)

3. Fund-raising.

Thanks Henry for your great suggestions and enthusiasm. I'm not actually too worried about fundraising for the launch itself. I'm more concerned about fundraising for CC-HK's ongoing operations and longer-term promotional projects. But that's a separate conversation for another e-mail thread. 

As it happens, the CEO of a local internet company who cares a lot about CC has indicated interest in sponsoring the event. (I'm not naming the company here because it was a verbal agreement based on no budget numbers or specific plan so it's not considerate for me to announce it officially yet.) Also I think there's a decent chance that if we were to approach Cyberport, they might be willing to provide us with venue and sponsorship. But we can't approach them till we have a specific proposed plan and budget...   

It's always great to get diversity of sponsors in addition to a couple "main" sponsors for the launch. However my experience with nonprofit fundraising is that it's very counterproductive to go hat-in-hand to people who aren't virtual "insiders" in your project before you have a very specific budget and plan for how their money will be spent. So first order of business is: a) to figure out what we want to do for the launch; and b) put together a budget. Then we can talk very specifically to funders and work out who would be most appropriate to approach.

PLEASE RESPOND: please let me know if you disagree with what I just said.

4. Draft license feedback. 

It would be really great if people could first channel their organizational enthusiasm to getting IP law experts and stakeholders around Hong Kong to respond to our draft licenses. This is really a priority if we want the launch to go well. It would be really bad if somebody prominent publicly trashes our licenses around the time of our launch because they weren't aware of them earlier. 

Thanks everybody!! This is all really exciting!

Rebecca

On Jan 5, 2008, at 4:37 PM, Henry Oh wrote:

Wow, this list has been very active for the past few days.  Kudos to all of

us for keeping up.

I think we have all gone to enough conferences or "events" to have a pretty

good sense of what we like and what we don't like.

And what we don't want is two things:

1)  A conference that gets no attention, nobody comes and we are left

speaking to ourselves.

2)  The launch to hinder the growth of Creative Commons HK into a social and

technological force that people look at and envy.  I think a little friendly

competitiveness in the CC community can be a good thing as long as it helps

speed the spread of the ideals and capabilities we all hope CC can bring to

the world.

What I can offer is this.  I worked on a few conferences in law school.  As

student-run conferences go, they weren't the best events, they weren't the

worst events.  So I have some experience in conference planning.  One

conference was an event with Professor Lessig as the main speaker so I have

some insight into the difficulties of coordinating his schedule to our

schedule.  :-) 

And as I see it, fundamentally, at this stage, we need two things:

1)  The right people working on the right tasks.  Committed manpower.  And

we need to do a good job on figuring out what these "right tasks" are and

their order of execution.

2)  Cash.  The more the better.

I have two ideas for both.

One is the Hong Kong Stanford Club

(http://e.stanfordalumni.org/Clubs/hongkong/index.asp).  I have a connection

there and they obviously have a connection to Professor Lessig and would

have their own interests in being associated with an event like this.  I

can, with Dr. Li's help, reach out to them.  They can be a good source for

#1 and #2.  I have no prior experience of being involved with them but it

would be very easy to be.

The second is a funding model that can be a part of the overall

multi-funding model that CC HK's launch requires.

It's been a few years but I believe the budgets we had for these conferences

were somewhere between (HK$240,000-HK$320,000), if not higher.  I've seen

some outrageous conference funding figures.  If the exact dollar figures are

important to anyone, I can track them down.  This is just the figure that

comes to mind and it seems to fall into the range of what we are looking to

raise for the launch event.

For us, we raised the money for these conferences by hitting up law firms.

We got them to buy ads in the conference program's guide.  It was

astonishing to me to see how much they were willing to pay for these ads.

There were certain "forces" at work in our favor and I do not have the local

knowledge to know if these same "forces" are at work here.  If so, I have a

lot of 2nd degree connections to a lot of lawyers at a lot of law firms.  I

can track them down and try to convince them to help us get the money we

want from these law firms.

If any of these ideas do not pan out or if you the rest of you do not think

they are worth pursuing, no problem.  Just tell me what to do and I'll tell

you if I can do it or not.  I have no problem handing out conference name

tags.  :-)

In terms of THE MEETING, I may or may not be able to make it.  I will be out

of town on business starting somewhere between the 21st or 22nd.  And I may

be gone for as long as six weeks.  The timing is pretty indeterminate at

this point.  My apologies in advance if I can't make the meeting.

Another long email to get through (and I'm sure many more will follow).

Again, kudos for keeping up!  :-)

-Henry

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Rebecca MacKinnon

Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Ctr.

University of Hong Kong   (http://jmsc.hku.hk)

E-mail: rmack AT hku.hk | Tel: +852-2219-4005

Blog: RConversation.com

Co-founder: GlobalVoicesOnline.org

"The world is talking. Are you listening?"