iceland

National Vanity Projects

My hotel room overlooks the building site of the new Icelandic Opera – well actually its called the Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre but everyone refers to it as the new opera. Its an impressive building that is due to be opened in 82 days. What I find fascinating is the scale of the project. The concert hall will seat 1800 people which seems large considering the population of a Iceland is about 320,000 (Wikipedia). But is this excessive? The population of the capital city is around 120,000 (and over 200,000 in the Greater Reykjavík Area) (Wikipedia).

The new opera house

While digitalization and the Internet have killed (or wounded) some traditional national vanity projects: national encyclopedias and dictionaries have been hit very hard. Buildings remain ever popular methods of attempting to raise the national image (Oslo recently completed a gorgeous new opera house) and this new opera will be a fascinating building.

Posted on by mklang

Great News for the Nordic Commons

Not only has Jonas done the work – he even wrote this blogpost which I happily & unashamedly steal. Great Work Jonas!

This is horribly exciting: I’ve been wanting to write more about this for a while now, but we wanted to time the release together with the Nordic Culture Fund. The short story, part of which I’ve leaked before, is that the Society for Free Culture and Software has been granted €49000 in funding for a project to bring Creative Commons to artists. Over the next year, from September 2010 to June 2011 we’ll be organising a series of workshops in some Nordic countries where we will talk about Creative Commons, how to use it, when to use it, and get as many artists as possible to make that first release with a Creative Commons license.

We’ll be organising workshops in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and on the Faroe Islands. The workshops themselves will be around April-May 2011, but we’re going to start already in September this year, and during FSCONS in November, to think about how to best approach newcomers to Creative Commons, prepare materials for the workshops and practice presenting Creative Commons to newcomers.

The society is working on this together with Smári McCarthy (IS), Birita í Dali (FO), Christian Villum (DK), Mathias Klang (SE) and Gisle Hannemyr (NO). The funding comes from Nordic Culture Fund and the Nordic Culture Point, and supplements funding which we’ve received for other projects. In total, we’ll spend around €60000 over the next year on CC activities.

Posted on by mklang

Congratulations & Welcome

Missed this in the rush of things… Two new jurisdictions join the Creative Commons family!

Costa Rica

The CC project in Costa Rica is officially underway. Leading the public initiative are Rolando Coto-Solano, from the Office of the Vice Dean of Research at the University of Costa Rica, and Carlos E. Saborío Romero, a representative of over ten creative communities and artists. The license porting will be conducted by our long-time friend and colleague of Costa Rican descent, Andres Guadamuz, of the University of Edinburgh. Andres continues to lead CC efforts in Scotland, and we’re thrilled his expertise will be turned to the Costa Rican project as well. Legal support will also be provided by Denis Campos, a representative from the Legal Department of the Office of the Vice Dean of Research. The project is hosted by the University of Costa Rica.

To see some of the promising local initiatives, visit http://www.cientec.or.cr/accceso/, the website of the recent seminar on Free Culture and creativity, held in San Jose. Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cientec/sets/72157622756119822/

Iceland

Today kicks off the Reykjavik Digital Freedoms Conference <http://www.fsfi.is/atburdir/radstefna2009/>, which features an MOU signing with Creative Commons, the Icelandic Society for Digital Freedoms (Icelandic abbreviation: FSFÍ), and Reykjavík University. CC Iceland was initiated by Project Lead Tryggvi Björgvinsson and is supported by Legal Lead Harald Gunnar Halldórsson. The project has already won the heart of the Ministry of Education, whose lawyer Jón Vilberg Guðjónsson will liaison with the Icelandic team throughout the porting process. This afternoon the group will meet with the Prime Minister of Iceland joined by CC Board Member Eric Saltzman, a keynote speaker at the Digital Freedoms conference.

For your viewing pleasure, check out the event’s CC video collage. “Horses like free software!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rLm1NDGep8&feature=youtube_gdata

Posted on by mklang

Iceland tomorrow!

Tomorrow I am off to Iceland! This is really cool even though I wish I was staying there for a longer period of time. But it’s cool enough. I fly up tomorrow, have meetings on Tuesday and fly home early on Wednesday. The meetings should be very interesting since I am there to participate in discussions on Tryggvi Björgvinsson‘s thesis, there will be meetings with the Icelandic Society for Digital Freedom. Also I should be able to squeeze in some sightseeing between airports.

Posted on by mklang

Love and hate my job

Feeling decedant tonight slouching on the sofa watching tv, celebrating the completion of the initial part of my empirical research – I have completed empirical studies of a mailing list containing over 15 000 discussion threads over an eight year period. This work has been negative, depressing and very very very boring. This part of my work I really really hate. It’s not the results but the reality of the everyday grind that I hate.

The part that I like is the recognition. I was asked to be part of examination committee which was/is a major honor. And to add a cherry to this already great place is that I get to fly to Reykjavik, Iceland in March. I will not be there for a long period but I will be in Iceland! This is so cool and I am really looking forward to the trip.

Posted on by mklang