Great idea for a conference. If it is 2 or 3 days I would run half of it like a Bar Camp. Let the community choose some topics and activities.

I think some type of cultural event around the concepts of the commons would be excellent!

A much bigger and ambitious aggregation of sectors/institutions in your post.

I think a hub, or ‘just off’ hub would be ideal for a central event location. As much as I would have loved to take time-out to come to Sapporo, it was just too way off (plus you know if you make a location like that you want to spend much extra time exploring the locale).

I’d recommend somewhere like Istanbul near Europe, or Vancouver (as you suggest) or Montreal in North America.

@alek Yes, all these projects should have their own and do mostly, except CC, have their own event. The key idea for this event is that it is focused on the overlap between the projects.

Would be good to have half the day as all together and then half the day separated into: create and hack. Then, the night could be Party.

Parties are just as important as the conference. Free drinks and/or a set party each night with people from the conference performing, and basic cheers throughout the night.

Ideally, hotel and conference are at the exact same location or within walking distance. Conference attendees should be bussed to locations for events at night to get out and see things.

Also, eating should be on schedule with optional standing room and seating.

For host city, the culture of the city is important, but not as important as different cultures mixing together throughout the entire days of the event, especially with the topics of the FreeCon.

@alek pseudo agree on the keynotes. What would be good is for each major project to chart out roadmaps at the beginning of the event and what they want to get out of the FreeCon from other projects to initiate discussion. Ideally, issues are moved fwd because of the higher bandwidth (make sure not to waste those times together!).

@alek on the name of the SHARING/CREATION day. The idea is for anyone to put something that exists into the commons and/or create something to put into the commons, or move current licensing to more liberal licensing…what can encompass all that and still be easy to GROK by all?

Jon, thanks for some extra early catalization of good ideas that could push us forward! As for the name, creativity is big on my list of important things, so I’d call it “Creation Day” ^^. Or just “GROW”, like that weird click-and-grow game.

As for the content, one thing I’d avoid are keynotes. In the end, they semm like a waste of time. Or I’d do them differently, XXI century style: have them pre-recorded and available beforehand. At best sent to people on cheap portable video players, to watch on the plane and the train and the bus. Cause people need inspiration.

2-3 days, that’s tough to fill meaningfully. But people should have a bit of time to hack on what they are good at; and a bit of time to try hacking something new. And there’s the challenge of having the project / communities mesh – it’s easy to set up separate tracks, but how to make them work together? Maybe something basic, that anyone can do, like a fill-up-the-Wikipedia sprint, with funny teams from all over the scene writing up obscure examples of free culture.

And I wish someone did a proper re-thinking of all the available models: the un-conferences, the chaos congresses, the dorkbots, the keynote-driven TED events (good keynotes), the isummits, the wikimanias, etc. etc. – what works best?

One more idea. Every group has its own conference / meeting – do they need, and have time and money, to join one more meeting? What would be the special part, other than there would be so many different communities and too many people? Or would that precisely be the point?

However, I can’t parse your sentence “I think we can learn from Wikimania in Cairo and conferences in Sapporo as absurd for more the usual suspects on the conference circuit (of which I am a part).”

did you miss a word after “absurd”?