Roadmap Colombia 2011

ROAD MAP Colombia for 2011

• Submitted on December 10, 2010 by Fundacion Karisma
• Covering period of One year (2011)

Team information

Team Members

CAROLINA BOTERO - Colombian Lawyer (Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, 1993), LLM on International Legal Cooperation (VUB, Brussels, 1994), Masters on Contracts (UAB, Barcelona, 2006), visiting scholar at Lecce University (Lecce, Italy, 2005-2006) and UCAL (Berkeley, spring 2006). She is currengly a doctoral student at the UAB in Barcelona, Spain but lives and works in Bogotà.

Carolina Botero is a researcher, lecturer, writer and consultant on issues related to law and technology. She has developed a special interest on the challenges that the educational sector faces regarding copyright issues while working with Karisma Foundation in Bogotá. She is an active member of the Colombian Free Software community and co-leader of Creative Commons in Colombia. As a consultant she has worked for several Universities in Colombia like the National University and the Andes University. She is consultant for the Bogota Telecomunications Corporation (ETB) and the Ministry of Agriculture. She has supported the adoption of open standards in elearning projects such as the UNDP Virtual School for Latinamerica and the Caribbean, or the Virtual Sports School of Coldeportes (the Colombian sports authority).

She is leading the Law, Internet and Society group inside the Karisma Foundation. This group is in charge of the Creative Commons project at the foundation and she excecises the personal coleader role of Creative Commons from this position, too.

MARIA JULIANA MARIA JULIANA SOTO - Studied Social Communication – Journalism at the Universidad del Valle (Cali, 2010). She studied music for many years, but finally decided to work on media. During college she worked on journalism, radio and audiovisual issues. Her experience includes building digital contents and on doing so she has developed a major concern for how this construction is done.


She was born in Cali, but more recently lives in Bogotá, since she joined the Karisma Foundation which supports the dissemination and proper use of information technologies and communications technology (ICT) especially in education. She is now studying French and how to made dolls out of clay. Personal blog: http://caraycarambolas.wordpress.com/

ANDREA PAOLA SANCHEZ - Andrea holds a bachelor honors degree in Media Culture and Communications from Greenwich University in London (2005). She currently finished her law degree from los Andes University and will be graduating in March 2011. Her thesis focused on the study of the adoption of Open Access policies and the use of Creative Commons Licences in Colombia’s Digital Library BDCOL (Biblioteca Digital Colombiana). Andrea was also a research assistant for the Public Interest Law Clinic GDIP, which focused on investigating the violation of Human Rights in Colombia´s Prisons, which in turn led to the writing of a shadow report that was sent to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva (may 2010).

For the last 6 months Andrea has worked at Karisma Foundation as a research assistant on topics such as the following: a study of the use of Creative Commons licenses in Digital Libraries and Institutional repositories in Colombia; a 45 minute presentation on Creative Commons Licenses and their impact in the academic and business realm, which took place at the Free Software Festival at Universidad Nacional; a study of new circuits of music distribution regarding the genre Champeta in Colombia’s coast; and the upgrade of Creative Commons Licenses in Colombia, from the 2.5 Version to 3.0.

HECTOR BOTERO - He is an Engineer that has worked on Technology inception in different environments, from the entreprenurial area to different educational uses. In the 1990s he was already working on ICT in education in Colombia, first developing educational software, soon working on virtual educational projects and also as a digital publisher. Along with some other family members at the end of the 1990s he started the Karisma Foundation in order to support ICT adoption especially in educational institutions. He gives consultancy on the issues of his expertise and conducts specific projects of the Foundation that works on the frame of bottom-up community initiatives that support local capacities and resources, selflearning process and the necessary inception of ICT.

VOLUNTEER PUBLIC LEADS ANDRES UMAÑA AND ALFREDO VARGAS

Date of earliest MOU in jurisdiction

The first MOU was signed by Universidad del Rosario back in 2005, since then Carolina Botero become coleader and because of her relation with the Karisma Foundation we supported CC’s activities in Colombia since the begining. Karisma Foundation signed a MOU with CC in September 3, 2009

Self-Identified Region(s)

Latin America. Geographically we are part of Latin America and since the insertion of the Colombian Project we have been part of the regional activities, discussions and meetings.

Vision

Why is Creative Commons important for the jurisdiction?

Colombia has been traditionally very supporting of strong copyright legislative structures despite it being a developing country and having a multiethnic population with a very diverse views of the creative process. CC shows some of the copyright current problematic issues and align them from a legal perspective that could be of good use in our country.

From our own perspective, considering that the Foundation’s mission is to support the diffusion and good use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the Colombian society, we believe Creative Commons is an important tool that could be implemented in the different sectors of the Colombian society.

It is so especially because Karisma has worked mainly with educational institutions since its inception, providing content and support for the use of ICTs in the learning process. “Open” ideas, problems and solutions are present from the start. The scope of Karisma´s work now supports the appropriation of ICT in many other sectors—in this context, we also find it very useful and important to be associated to the Creative Commons licences and the networks that are related to them.

Leading Creative Commons activities in Colombia is easy to match with our current normal activities; analysis, consultation, proposals, trainings, teaching materials, legal advise and analysis on ICT issues, as well as the design and organization of conferences and seminars on ICT appropriation, especially regarding educational, citizen and cultural matters.

What do you think makes a successful jurisdiction project?

a. The fact that the normal activities of the affiliates are easily related to CC activities, because then the effort that the CC project requires is part of the day-to-day work and has a direct benefit for the affiliate.

b. The affiliate needs to have a commitment with openness not just on the “conceptual” or “theoretical” part of the idea but also in terms of the affiliates' approach towards others. The project has to be open for people and institutions in the jurisdiction to ask questions, find support and get involved with Creative Commons ideas, The affiliates has to be first a catalyst and then the expert.

c. The affiliate must build a network on the national and international level that allows the project to have communicating vessels, a real network that allows the project to grow and learn from others

How do you see the jurisdiction project contributing to the CC Affiliate Network?

We have been working in the open world for 5 years. During this period of time:

a. We can be an example: we have supported the startup and rise of different projects that had adopted these ideas enhancing their impact in Colombia and showing some local awareness and role in the inception of the concept. For example, today more than seven Colombian Universities are part of the OCWC project, and three of them had been close to us. Also other 2 projects that work with elearning models out of the formal structure (UNDP and Escuela Virtual del Deporte) had also adopted OER standards. Lately we are also getting involved with important projects regarding Digital Libraries and Institutional Repositories, this will allow us to have in the close future more knowledge and specific projects to think about this issues.

b. We have built our own expertise on the project that we can share with others. This expertise is relevant not only to the difussion of the project in our country but also in relation with other regional and worldwide projects. Carolina Botero has already participated for the last 2 years in international seminars not just under our umbrella but also on behalf of CC showing local and regional experiences, and we have been engaged in some international projects through her too (such as CClearn, research projects with the FGV University in Brasil and Derechos Digitales in Chile)

c. We are committed to collaborative and participatory activities as part of networks that are involved in open projects at different levels; so we are also willing to learn from others and work with them. We are often invited at very diverse activities at different levels and are involved in some of the main projects in Colombia related to this networks such as Free Software communities and on the creation of others like the Wikimedia Chapter or the Hacker Space. We are also broading the scope towards building some capacity for research and activism in public policies especially regarding copyright and public information and transparency.

Community

Describe the communities that are currently active in the project.

• Free software community
• Librarians' community
• Teachers' community
• Creators' community
• Universities
• Institutions

How will you continue to engage with these communities?

We always support any activity or specific need they have. Furthermore, Karisma is also engaged on specific activities that allow us to keep the contact

a. With the Free Software community: We actively participate in some of their activities and currently we are contributing to the soon to be Hackbo (Hacker Space in Bogota).To make this possible, we are working together with people from the free software community and creators' community.

b. We built ties with community projects in different levels like citizen journalism (with the Hiperbarrio project founded by Rising Voices), community video activsm (like the Centro Audiovisual de Ciudad Bolivar), our own bottom up project that thinks of a Digital Town (Fresno digital), cultural centers that are adopting ICT (like La Ksitta), etc.

c. With the librarians and teachers: With these two comunities we are currently working with digital content, elearning projects and coursewares, and also on different institutional repositories and related projects like digital libraries. We participate whenever we are invited to their meetings, seminars and related activities to speak and discuss the open issues, and we have worked on specific projects that will continue to have impact in the coming years.

d. At an institutional level we have bonds with universities and some public institutions (like public libraries) and we collaborate with them on publications, seminars and the discussions of public policies

e. We have built some contacts with more governmental institutional like the Copyright Office; these we expect to be able to strengthen with time

Describe the communities (existing or new) that you plan to focus on during the timeframe covered by this roadmap?

• Free Software
• Librarians and Teachers
• Creators
• Wikipedians
• Citizenship Organizations
• NGOs

How do you plan to engage with these communities?

We will be working on specific projects with those communities that we already working directly with (like Fresno Digital ) or that we have ties with (the hackbo space or a community for lowtech use of educational content are some ideas), while enhancing and building bonds with those that we are not so related to.

Priority Goals

In Colombia we have done a lot of promotion, but we still need to work on specific projects that can go beyond our own efforts and we have to show them around.

1. Focus-area: Online workshop on copyright and licensing

In developing awareness and training in areas at the intersection between technology, education and copyright, Karisma Foundation has been developing “learning while doing” workshops in the line that enable teachers, librarians, publishers, researchers, students, etc., to address the problem and come up with possible solutions, we had design a 5 years project that will develop this kind of activities for different audiences.

As part of this major project Karisma has identified that the process of creating open educational resources, as with any other content, needs an understanding of the legal system of copyright and requires addressing open licensing issues that are usually complicated. Therefore one of the first activity that has been developed from the workshops that Karisma does in Colombia seeks to facilitate face-to-face educational activities for teachers involved in the production of Open Educational Resources (OER). The first community to address during the 1st year of the major project is therefore educators.

We think we need to strengthen the work that has been done with certain communities and we are ready to further commit with actions, and to take advantage of the catalyst capacity of certain communities to increase the impact of our projects.

We believe that if we get directly involved in projects (up to know we have been basically intermediaries, helpers of other projects) we will be able to better measure their impact and have documented examples of the benefits.

Teachers, designers, programmers and basically any person working on the production of digital content although special attention will be given to Open Educational Resources (OER) developers for virtual environments.

2. Focus-area: Research on Digital Libraries and Access to Public Funded Information

In developing awareness and training in areas at the intersection between technology, education and copyright, Karisma Foundation is aware of the increasing interest that there is on access to academic and public funded information in Colombia and in Latin America, an interest spurred by some current innitiaves (http://www.renata.edu.co/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=263&Itemid=94).

There are national and regional initiatives to publish this information and make it visible through Internet but from some projects we have been involved (ie the intellectual property on academic online publications in Latin America research project– with the CC Chilean leaders, or the Agropecuarian Colombian Documentation Network consultancy) we understand there are important misunderstandings on the scope of what “open” means. Further, there is a need to properly accompany, help and inform existing academic networks of documents, information and data, to showcase the Open Access initiative.

We think we need to strengthen the work that has been done and that we can learn from the experience to enrichen other projects such as our workshops, since we could work on a better workshop for librarians in the digital era.

Scientists, public policy makers, librarians and basically any person that needs academic and scientific information produced in Colombia and in the Latin American region.

3. Focus-area: Promotion Plan. Helping facilitate the knowledge and connections among Colombians and colombian projects interested in the topic.

Beyond attending events that we are normally invited and answering questions, we will participate in the documentation of local projects to be published in our local CC project web page (that was redesigned during 2009, but still needs to be more dynamic) or others. We will get involved in other community projects like the Hackbo and we will participate in the design and execution of at least two seminars on open issues.

We need to further encourage connections among people and projects that will solidify our network and foster a stronger network environment in our jurisdiction.

We have been doing special seminars every year since the launch of CC licenses in 2006 and it has shown to be an important forum and gathering point. We would like to maintain this initiative.

This strategy is more open and wants to cover a broad audience, those that already know CC and those getting in touch with the concept. The seminars will be more on the educational sector.

Project Outputs

The outputs we plan to complete are as follows:

1. Focus-area

Implementing specific projects that will involve the use and benefits of Creative Commons beyond our own efforts, building up catalyst processes

Project Output: We started the design and search for funds of this projects during 2010, it is part of a 5 year plan to produce material for face-to-face as well as online trainings on the foundation's subjects of interest.

This specific workshop is the compleition of the first stage in this bigger project, it seeks to leverage the team’s experience, materials and methodology developed during the last 3 years of working with teachers. Additionally, it will provide us with the necessary funds to create two other online versions of the workshop in a period of 3 to 6 months:

a. A Do it yourself kit for face to face activities. This kit includes a guide together with the necessary props and materials. The material will be an update of the ones currently being used by Karisma within its local activities. The kit is meant to be available online to anyone that wishes to implement the workshop within their own environment. The kit consists basically of a set of files with instructions and the printable material to proceed.

b. A fully digital version of the workshop to be integrated, for example, in e-learning processes or in virtual courses as a sideline. Files in this case will be ready to be uploaded in an e-learning platform.

While the face to face workshop that serves as the basis of this digital project is designed for the Colombian context (language and legal framework) it was designed so that it can be used in a global context. In fact it was used in the OCWC meeting in Vietnam with participants from all over the word. Some of the key features that allow the workshop to be compatible in a global context are:

• Materials are designed in graphic form and with general representations.
• Although it targets a broad linguistic community (Spanish, that is spoken by a large population in different regions) digital versions will be developed with particular sensitivity to the possibility of translation into other languages.
• The workshop explains copyright and licenses issues and especially Creative Commons licenses.
• It will be issued with a CC BYSA license that allows anyone to adapt, improve and share the results.

Expected start date - Expected date of completion: This depends on the funding we can raise. If we find the funds, it will be done during 2011, if not we will do it slowly with our own resources, and it might take longer.

Team Member(s) Responsible: Carolina Botero

How will this output help achieve your goals? It is a nice mixture between our expertise built on our day to day activities in the educational sector with our Creative Commons advocacy. This project is our content contribution to the open network and it fits perfectly with the current trends on open education. We believe it will help us build reputation in a more broader community, further from the local to the regional and worldwide.

2. Focus-area

Research on Digital Libraries and Access to Public Funded Information

Project Output: Articles on our findings

Expected start date - Expected date of completion: We are already working on getting involved in some of this projects and we have also gathered some information that we should sistematize and put together to share with others our findings. We should have at least 2 publications during 2011

Team Member(s) Responsible: Andrea Sánchez

How will this output help achieve your goals? We want to take advantage of the projects that we work on as consultants or otherwise to produce tangible information and turn them into research projects, information to be shared and used by us and by interested communities.

3. Focus-area

Promotion Plan

Project Output: A documentation of Colombian projects to be published in the CC CO web page, the CC case study wiki and/or the Open Business Brazilian web page depending on the focus (1, 2, or all of them… or even others). The better documentation of our promotional activities (such as lectures and gatherings) and other related information of interest (news, legal decisions, etc.) for the people that follow Creative Commons in our country through the web page and social networks.

Active participation in new related communities like the on going Hackbo Project (Bogotá Hacker Space) with creators and free software people 2 seminars on “open” issues during the year.

Expected start date - Expected date of completion: During 2011

Team Member(s) Responsible: Maria Juliana Soto and Carolina Botero

How will this output help achieve your goals? The promotion and network building goals will be better served with these outputs

Metrics

How will you measure and evaluate your impact on focus-area 1?

If we can complete this project during 2011 we will have done a trial with some Colombian users to evaluate it. A more global evaluation will be made in the months after the release (2012) and will be measured by traffic, other project adoptions, translations, etc.

How will you measure and evaluate your impact on focus-area 2?

If we produce at least 2 articles on the issue that will accepted to be published in local journals requiring peer evaluation.

How will you measure and evaluate your impact on focus-area 3?

Publishing of material: traffic possible network linkages The Hackbo: ----- The seminars: Number of attendants

Resources Required

What resources or expertise must the team seek out to achieve your priority goals? How will you secure these

For The Online Workshop: We have the project plan and we need human and expertise resources beyond the foundation´s capacities; we are seeking funds For the Research on Digital Libraries and Access to Public Funded Information:

We need to systematize and analyze the information we gathered during last years consultancies, and we have to keep contact with and be active in the community. We will do this with our own infrastructure of profesionals and engaging community through specific projects participating in the calls for consultancy in the regions or supporting volunteer communities.

For the Promotion Goal, most of the resources come from the Foundation, except the seminars that will require expert lecturers. For this we will cooperate with local actors who will also help us reach other community members. (most likely Universidad Nacional, as in previous years )

This applies to technological, material, and other resource needs.

Sustainability and Scalability

How will you ensure your goals will be completed if unforeseen circumstances interrupt the project, such as changes in the leadership of the project or outputs taking longer to complete than anticipated?

We know that we are drawing mostly from volunteers , therefore we design this road map mixing our normal activities with commitments on CC goals, this will give us the flexibility to reach the goals even if they take longer. However, we are committed to work on this and guarantee compliance to the best of our ability.

How will you communicate the project's on-going progress and setbacks within the jurisdiction and the CC Affiliate Network? (e.g. email list updates, meetings, press releases)

According to the nature of the goals

a. The Workshop: we are planning a web page and we will use the Foundation's infrastructure (webste, social web, networks, etc.) b. The Research on Digital Libraries and Access to Public Funded Information: we plan to publish on local journals that will disseminate the information among this specific community and if possible reproduce them with the CC licenses on other sites such as the Foundation and CC CO web pages. c. The promotion plan will be done in any way we can: web page, social web, networks, etc.

How will you document the project so that others may replicate or learn from your efforts?

We always publish material online, however, the Workshop, the publication of the research project and the seminars have their own dynamics to be documented and published.

Collaboration

How could the jurisdiction's plans help drive or support other jurisdictions' activities?

The Workshop is designed to be replicated and can be used as a promotion tool by others, in fact, there is interest from members of the broader community (like P2PU). We have been participating in others jurisdictions public events and we normally show our projects and local achievements, we are willing to keep up with these activities.

What are other jurisdictions doing that might support or contribute to the project?

The seminars we designed in the past had been supported by other team leaders and CC staff (Argentina, Australia, Chile, Spain, Science Commons, CC Board) that have better expertise in the different issues, we hope to continue this trend.

The OER movement is important in many other jurisdictions and we have been building a network around this issue that we share with them (ie. Spain and Guatemala).

Would you be interested in mentoring new jurisdiction teams?

Yes

Conversely, would you be interested in having a mentor from a more experienced jurisdiction team?

Yes

Translation

In what language(s) will you promote CC in the jurisdiction and why?

Spanish is the official language in Colombia

In which of these languages are licenses already available? CC0?

Spanish, CCO is not yet available