User:Msurman:ABC-Camp
ABC-Camp (need a real name):
A peer-to-peer, face-to-face course for people who want to live, work and play in the open
A collaborative effort of Mozilla, Creative Commons and anyone else who wants to help
**very early draft**
ABC-Camp in a nutshell ...
ABC-Camp is a face-to-face course helps people learn the skills they need to live, work and play in the open online. Drawing on the experience of Mozilla, Creative Commons and others, it covers open content, open web technology and collaborative online work. Courses are locally organized and taught peer-to-peer style, with support for local leaders provided through a global online community.
Goals
- Give people tangible skills that help them live, work and play in the open online
- Promote the idea that openness and participation are a core part of internet life
- Offer people a concrete, local way to get involved in orgs like Mozilla and Creative Commons
Audience
ABC-Camp is for anyone who wants to learn about open content, technology and work methods. Especially:
- Artists
- Teachers
- Professors
- Scientists
- Researchers
- Writers
- Bloggers
- Publishers
- Small business people
Courses may target a specific audience (ABC-Camp for Musicians) or be more general (ABC-Camp Bangalore). It's all up to the local organizers.
Content
- Intro: What makes the Internet open?
- Transparency. Remixability. Participation. Distributed decision making.
- Topic 1: Open content
- E.g. Remix. Licensing. Business models. Local examples of open content.
- Topic 2: Open web technology
- E.g. Innovating w/o asking permission. Practical hands on w/ open web tech. Jet Pack?
- Topic 3: Working in the open
- E.g. Mozilla community model. Local examples of people working in the open. What else?
Format
Whatever format we decide on, it needs to be a) well templated to make things easy for local organizers and b) hackable so people can evolve for local needs. The two most promising concepts so far are:
1. A weekend workshop. Organized as a mix of short talks, videos and unconference session. Participants produce some concrete local project by then end of the weekend. Would need to be top quality content while at the same time being simple and low-cost like a BarCamp.
2. A three month study group. (or longer) Weekly meetings in a coffee shop where different people lead talks or discussions. Readings and videos offered in between meetings. Participants have assignments or blog for each other.
The long term goal is to have people organize these completely with local resources / no outside funding or help. In the short term, we probably need to seed things.
Online Community
Hosted jointly by Mozilla and Creative Commons, an online community site would offer:
- Place to advertise and organize local courses
- Mailing list / forums for local organizers to meet and support each other
- Library of slide decks, videos and readings that can be used for local courses
- One or more paid support people to help local organizers
Resources
- At least one paid support person early on, maybe two (one in each org?)
- Travel funding for speakers who can help seed the process
- Ideally, use regional leaders for this role, at least once things rolling
- Start up and ops funding for online community
- Probably some seed money for materials (video, slides, etc.), which can then snowball
- Fundraising system, allowing people to donate to ABC-Camp online
- Probably also allow local ABC-Camps to do fundraising asks a la Kiva
- Marketing and PR support
