[Latin-America] Fwd: [cc-affiliates] Network Strategy now complete - what's next?

[Simeon Oriko]

For your information.

Simeon Oriko
Network Manager, Creative Commons

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ryan Merkley <ryan at creativecommons.org>
Date: Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 9:44 PM
Subject: [cc-affiliates] Network Strategy now complete - what's next?
To: CC Affiliates <cc-affiliates at lists.ibiblio.org>


Dear community members,

This note is written by Ryan Merkley (CC HQ, Canada) and Alek Tarkowski (CC
Poland), in their capacity as co-chairs of the CC Network Strategy process.
This note is presented on behalf of the Steering Committee. We’re very
grateful to everyone who participated in the consultation process by
organizing meetings, conducting talks and submitting comments  to the
proposal.

We have finalised the CC Network Strategy proposal. The Steering Committee
has taken into consideration all the responses submitted online (over 230
comments and edits), as well as results of consultation meetings (we
organized 22 such meetings in person and online around the world, as well
as 55 consultations with individual affiliates) between January and March
2017. Part of the Steering Committee met in person on 31 March to finalise
the proposal.

We believe that the feedback that we received provided positive endorsement
of the general direction and intended goals, and did not suggest any
dramatic changes to the document. Rather, in direct response to many
helpful comments and questions of clarification, we saw that some areas
needed to be better explained. The final version of the document aims to
achieve that goal. We have also provided this explanatory note for some
additional context.

The updated and annotated document is located here
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1asXFOc4tyGla76KYTVUEsWgbaxYqxOAktchaS5WD2MA/edit#>,
highlighting the major changes and improvements.

Some more detailed responses are below, for those who want to dig deeper.
During the opening session at the Summit, we will have a large group of new
individuals — over 400 attendees are registered. The Network Strategy
session will be led by committee members, who will review the rationale,
research, insights, process, and strategy recommendation, and focus on how
we can use the event to work on the next step: developing platforms for
collaboration and impact.

We thank you for all of your contributions, and are all excited for what’s
next. If you have specific questions, the committee will schedule a few
periods of available time during the summit where you can drop in, or we
can schedule time in the coming weeks.

Sincerely,

Alek Tarkowski,
CC Poland

Ryan Merkley,
CEO, Creative Commons



Selected responses to detailed consultation comments
We would also like to stress that the CC Network Strategy document should
not be read as finalized rules, or a contract agreement, for collaboration
in our network. Rather, it is a detailed proposal for a model that will
need to be further refined during the implementation phase, in an open
process with our communities. This is a big process, and will take some
time, and we’re committed to working with you throughout.

We are also aware that some of the wording is still new and might require
getting used to. Please note that the document includes a vocabulary with
explanations of key terms. We have decided to keep the term"Platforms" to
explain areas of shared activities and areas of work that we would like to
develop as the next step of this process. We considered over 20 other terms
and this one still is the best fit. We hope that over time you will get
used to this terminology — and encourage you to adapt it appropriately in
your own languages.

This explanatory note follows the structure of the document and addresses
in turn comments provided for each part. We would like to underline that
the responses that we received focus on several core issues:

- functioning of the new Country Teams;
- transition from current affiliates to the new Country Team model
- representation of CC and fundraising as rights of network members
- network size, governance and complexity


Vision and Mission
Regarding the Vision of the CCGN, we believe that the visions of the
organization and the network should be aligned. Therefore we decided to
copy verbatim the vision of the Creative Commons organization and adopt it
as a mission statement for our network. CC HQ and its board chair, along
with the committee believe that in the future there might be an opportunity
to modify this shared vision, but we are not proposing that change at this
time.

Many comments concerned the wording "realizing the full potential of the
Internet", arguing that the scope of CC's activities should also include
non-digital, offline content and related issues. While we agree with that,
we believe that fundamentally Internet connects today with almost all parts
and aspects of our reality, and thus this statement should not be read as
limiting our scope of activities.

We adopted a different approach regarding the mission of the CCGN, which we
on purpose defined more broadly than the mission of the CC organization. We
believe that the two missions are complementary and at some point might be
unified. Again, this would be part of a public and open process, in
collaboration with the network, CC HQ, and the board.


Values and Guiding Principles
In this part, we focused on clarifying the distinction between values and
guiding principles, and improving the language of specific sub-parts. In
particular:
- we removed the term "regulatory environment", based on comments that it
is counter-intuitive
- regarding the term "digital commons", we feel that using the term
"commons" on its own would suggest an overly broad scope of our activities,
and that the term "digital commons" gives a good general idea of this
scope; as mentioned before, this shouldn't be read as a precise formal
statement or exclusionary definition
- we simplified the part "We use free and open licensing and support the
public domain" and currently we simply declare support for all Creative
Commons licenses and tools, as well as commitment to use free and open
licensing ourselves. More detailed guidelines could be developed in the
future by the CCGN.


Creative Commons Global Network Model
In this part we aimed to clarify the functioning of the network and the way
Membership and Partnership will be organized. We see the right to speak on
behalf of CC as the main advantage of being a Member or a Partner — at the
same time we were not trying to empower every member as a spokesperson
wherever they see fit, as that would be unmanageable and even damaging. We
have clarified the obligations related to these roles.

Some of you have suggested that this model will be overly complicated, that
the network might be too large, or that the obligations towards Members are
too high. Firstly, we believe that we want to empower individuals actively
involved in the CC network - even if we grow a quite large network (we're
assuming several hundred Members). Secondly, Members will have more
obligations than current individuals participating in affiliate teams - we
believe it's necessary to have a network that is active. At the same time,
we don't feel that we are expecting too much of Members in terms of
commitment of time or resources. Secondly, we want to stress that on a
day-to-day basis the network will not have too many activities and the
Members will not be required to be involved. Ongoing work will be done by a
small group of Members forming the Global Network Council. Also, we're
expecting increased activity to take place within the scope of the
platforms - but participation in them and time commitment is voluntary.

In particular:
- we clarified what the CCGN serves to do
- we removed the confusing wording about "coordination of active
contributors", based on comments pointing out that it's a confusing
distinction
- we made the use of terms "Members" and "Partners" more consistent
- we kept the original idea of giving only individual Members voting
rights. We are assuming that Partner organizations will coordinate
internally to have representatives, who are Members, vote in accordance
with their positions, but feel strongly that individuals can be measured by
their activities and contributions and therefore are accountable in ways
that organizations can’t be, as staffing may change.
- we clarified lack of formal legal status of the network - it is not a
formal legal body
- we removed the possibility to veto a membership proposal, and instead
proposed to have conflicts around membership settled by the dispute
resolution committee


Country Teams
Many of your responses concerned this part of the proposal and in
particular how current affiliates will transition into the new model. You
expressed worry about duties and rights of new country teams, especially
around representation of CC at national level, fundraising and ability to
effectively manage local teams.

Having taken these comments into consideration, we aimed to clarify the
document, in order to better explain how the process will work. Most
importantly, we are assuming that current affiliate teams will form the
core of the new teams, and established teams will likely port over many of
their structures to facilitate their ongoing work — provided that they are
interested in doing that (otherwise, we are assuming that we will terminate
cooperation, creating space in a given jurisdiction for a new team to
develop).

Furthermore, newly established teams will have the freedom to shape their
internal governance and procedure - allowing current affiliates to
establish specific rules that will allow them to continue working
effectively. This can include a division of roles concerning fundraising or
representation in policy debates, identifying spokespeople and subject
matter leads, defined roles of participating individuals and organizations,
and procedures such as election of representatives to the Global Network
Council. From the perspective of the whole CC Global Network, a
jurisdiction team needs only to keep its defined commitments.

In particular:
- we retained the term Country Team, but removed references to nation and
national structures, as per CC China requests. Further, we added language
to allow them to have sub-jurisdictional teams to account for their unique
political realities, carrying forward their structure from the affiliate
model.
- we would like to clarify that there can be an organization that is
identified to host a grant and provide administrative support at a
jurisdictional level to coordinate the local team; at the same time we are
expecting all teams to remain open and even to actively search for new
members and contributors to CC
- we are committing to a "one team per jurisdiction" model. Flexibility to
shape teams creates opportunity to adapt to local needs

Global Network Council

We did not receive many comments concerning the Council. Some people
expressed a sense that we are moving towards a "United Nation" structure,
which might be overly bureaucratic. The Steering Committee, after
discussing this issue anew, believes that representation of each
jurisdiction participating in our network is important. At the same time we
will aim to make the activities of the Council, and its Executive
Committee, to be as agile and minimal as possible. Further, we expect the
majority of the work of the network to take place in platforms and Country
teams. Detailed procedures for the Council and the Executive Committee will
be developed in the implementation phase.

Role of CC HQ within the Global Network

Most of the comments we received regarding this part concerned fundraising
by Country Teams using the CC brand. We provided additional explanations
that clarify this issue. In line with the general concept for Country
Teams, they will have the freedom to shape procedures and obligations
related to fundraising on their own - provided that they meet the
requirements established by the HQ and the CCGN (mainly concerning
coordination of fundraising efforts under the name of CC). We have also
simplified the coordination requirements. We also clarified that
coordination is not required with HQ for local funders, resolving issues
raised by some teams who rely on those funds (e.g., CCANZ)

Platforms

Platforms are a very important of the new CC Global Network model - it is
through platforms that we will define, coordinate and conduct activities.
We moved this part in the document to make it more prominent. Expect also
more guidance on shaping platforms at the CC Summit.



_______________________

Ryan Merkley
CEO, Creative Commons
ryan at creativecommons.org
@ryanmerkley <https://twitter.com/ryanmerkley>

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