Grants/Common Spaces for Creative People. Toolkit for CC@Coworking Spaces
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
Collaboration, Openness and Communities are main components of coworking. Coworking is a very topical and popular subject, as more and more people want to work at or create such places for working together. A lot of those people are open-minded, but do not know yet what CC is and how to use it. The toolkit will be a perfect way to promote the understanding and adoption of CC's within people working at or building a coworking space with a CC licensed toolkit that contains a manual on how to build up a coworking space and use it for the commons. Furthermore it will include materials to promote and explain CC, which means that we will provide a practical hands-on CC project.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
Free PDF and print on demand ebook. "(How to use and) Support CC" signs/cards/posters for work spaces. Both in English and German.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
There a two main target communities. 1. People working in a coworking space, who are mainly people with highly creative profiles such as designers, programmers, authors, musicians etc. They will learn how to use CC and how to add their works to the commons. 2. People building a coworking space. They will see that CC is a great way to share knowledge by using the toolkit. And they will be enabled to support people working at the Coworking space by providing them tips for specific topics which are important for their individual projects.br />
I work as a freelance project manager since 1997. Connecting people and helping them to share ideas is the main part of my work. Working in the coworking field since 2007. Founded hallenprojekt (hallenprojekt.de) as platform and network for freelancers (?). Providing open APIs to our data. Using CC licenses. Founded and lead a project to enable people to participate for 3 years (2001-2004) founded by German youth ministry (Service Agency for Youth Participation), followed by many similar projects. Published a book "100.000 EURO JOB - Useful and new views about work" 2008. Hosting our own coworking space Studio 70 since June 2009. Gave talks @openeverything Berlin and co-founded the atoms&bits festival, which had CC and Coworking as two of five topics.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
We will use a wikipage to contribute cc licensed works from coworkers. We will monitor downloads of the toolkit. We will have a list of places using the "cc supportive place" signs on our webplatform. We will keep track of new "CC ambassadors" who have been inspired by the project.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
Around 10 to 15 by creating, at least 100 by using it, at least 5000 by seeing the material. We will find at least 1 CC-ambassador at each participating coworking space. Also the opportunity to submit cc created works is a way to sustain their involvement.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
1. It will provide a CC licensed toolkit for a very hot topic (coworking/new work patterns) to the commons. 2. It will increase the amount of CC licensed work created from people in coworking spaces. 3. It will raise the awareness for CC by clients and visitors of people working in coworking places.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
We would create this material with collaboration tools like etherpad/piratepad, google docs, skype and with at least one workshop, mayba organized as a booksprint. Tim Cole used our work as one example in his new book "enterprise 2020" about new work and collaboration forms. We would need a designer - we will find them at a coworking space. We use s.m.a.r.t. aims method and moderation methods for our work.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
If the coworker supports CC this does not necessarily mean that their clients do as well. We expect to face prejudices regarding copyright infringement, therefore we have to try to overcome it by providing better practical examples and outlining the positive effects of CC usage.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
As the toolkit would be granted by CC.org, it should be free. But People could donate, if they find it useful. This project would empower also our own work with hallenprojekt, as we could show in a better way what we mean when we talk about our "cc mindedness" (as we do already). So this project is not over after the funding has ended, but the funding will be used as a great support for our work.
The next step would be a project to exhibit cc works created by people in coworking spaces to show the impact of a new free and collaborative kind of work (and this project). This would be supported by local sponsors.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
It's very easy to adopt on every new coworking space - either in existing spaces or for and by building new ones. It's adoptable to other kinds of places where people work.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
Fact checking for materials we will develop, using the cc channels to distribute the work kit and materials.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
We are using collaborative tools like group chats, google docs, etherpads and wikis for working together. We use blogs, twitter and Facebook to announce news, share and connect with each other. Social media is an essential element of our communication since coworking is first and foremost a social experience.
One important aspect are public events such as talks, workshops and meetups. We host or participate in events like barcamps or coworking space host network meetups. And we have a platform were you can find coworking spaces and coworkers with own work profiles (hallenprojekt.de).
We work together with students who are researching coworking / new working patterns and receive a broad media response with many face-to-face interviews (see: hallenprojekt.de/pages/presse ).
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