Creative Commons helps individuals and organizations legally share their knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world — unlocking the full potential of the internet to drive a new era of development, growth and productivity.

In early 2016, Creative Commons were successful in obtaining funding Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services for the development of the CC Master Certificate and specialised versions for educators, government, and librarians. The project team has been meticulous about documenting their journey so far.

As part of the discovery phase of the project, Creative Commons asked the We Are Open Co-op team to help them find the edges of the project through a Thinkathon. The initial brief was to start the ball rolling around:

  1. Generating a fun Creative Commons Certificates brand that aligns with Creative Commons organisational image and identity
  2. Visually conveying the designs of the Certificates themselves
  3. Inviting/inciting CC Certificates participation
  4. Creating a visual for what the Certificate itself would look like

As the Creative Commons team were physically co-located in Vancouver, this was a virtual thinkathon for the We Are Open team. We used appear.in to connect and, apart from one brief (and pretty minor) blip, the technology was rock-solid throughout the three hour session.

Every thinkathon we run is different, and what made this particularly good was the familiarity of everyone involved with meeting virtually. This led to an extremely productive session, where we went both broad and deep on various issues.

“Nothing is off the table,” said Paul Stacey, who is leading the project for Creative Commons. That was music to the We Are Open team’s ears, who like to think openly, invite tangents, and are comfortable exploring rabbit before zooming out to see the bigger picture.

One particularly rich vein we explored was the type of metaphors that could be used for Creative Commons certification. In the space of a few minutes, we came up with around 30 metaphors — ways in which we could use to explain the importance of ‘the commons’.

Some of the metaphors we rejected as unworkable or too western-centric. Others, such as the ‘garden’ and ‘space’ metaphors, were explored more thoroughly and the Creative Commons team further discussed them once the Thinkathon was over. Check out the audio from that session in Alan Levine’s wrap-up post.

Some started off as a bit ridiculous, such as a reference to the Missionary Church of Kopimism, but it the concept of a Creative Commons ‘belief system’ actually ended up as useful parallel:

By the end of the Thinkathon, we were ready to focus on four more integral questions:

  1. What is it like to participate in curriculum/certificate? This has to have both informal and formal piece. What’s the experience of engagement?
  2. What are the activities people are engaging in? Knowledge needs to be applied and people should become part of the community.
  3. What does assessment look like? Who is assessing? What is assessed?
  4. What constitutes ‘completion’? In a formal sense, and particularly with libraries and governments (they need a start/end).

We’re looking forward to future work with Creative Commons, thinking through how we can grow the global movement!

“Thanks to the entire We Are Open Cooperative team for today’s thinkathon. It’s incredibly helpful to have you all help us think through what a new kind of certificate is, or might be.” (Paul Stacey)

We Are Open Co-op works to spread the culture, processes, and benefits of openness wherever we can.

We are experts in facilitated thinking in a process we call the Thinkathon. Find out more by getting in touch with us for a friendly chat!

Email: thinkathons@weareopen.coop