2008 EOY Message
From apc.au wiki
Draft ag 02:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Updated Draft grant 11:30, 16 Dec 2008 (UTC)
apc.au sends hearty greetings and best wishes for a sensational year... We believe that through your support and the work we have contributed to in 2008, somehow hope has fed through to where it is needed most.
Before I get to the "pat ourselves on the back" bit, some of you may have noticed that we have started publishing the description of our acronym, apc. Although we were founded in 1997, we rebranded ourselves as apc.au in 2005 and the expansion to "Advisory, Production, Commons Australia" was quietly launched in this, our 11th year. We are now operating as one of Australia first fully commons-based companies. In short, it means we manage our business in a collective manner, with a special regard for equitable access, use and sustainability.
apc.au is guided and motivated in part by a broad commons-based agenda, defined in part by the author and scholar, David Bollier:
- The commons is a new way to express a very old idea - that some forms of wealth belong to all of us, and that these community resources must be actively protected and managed for the good of all. The commons are the things that we inherit and create jointly, and that will (hopefully) last for generations to come.
- The commons consists of gifts of nature such as air, water, the oceans, wildlife and wilderness, and shared assets like the Internet, the airwaves used for broadcasting, and public lands. The commons also includes our shared social creations: libraries, parks, public spaces as well as scientific research, creative works and public knowledge that have accumulated over centuries.
In our first full year as a virtual organisation we have worked on projects in Cape Town, Nairobi, Istanbul, Sarawak, Osaka and Tokyo and I am writing to you from the small gothic city of Graz, Austria. Projects have ranged from research for the internet video series Home Lands, production on the Sarawak Gone micro-docs, hosting Video Slam at Arts Law Week 2008, video production and presentations at the iCommons iSummit, participation in the first Growing an Australian Commons conference and the Open Spectrum Australia symposium, Quality / Control.
Our record label, Secession Records, also released my "5 year in the making" album, Son of Science which we will launch in Melbourne in February.
We have been inspired to have worked on some incredible projects this year. Very special thanks to all the people at Cultural Development Network and City of Melbourne, our colleagues at Open Spectrum Australia, Arts Law Consortium, Creative Commons Clinic and members of the Association for Progressive Communications.
We have participated in an ever increasing range of "commons" related activities and advisories, providing commons-based solutions to open publishing and rights management, from video production to web 2.0 implementations within the cultural development sectors.
I could take up another few screen pages on all the in-between projects and activities, but I won't. I will, however, encourage you to visit our wikis and blogs, let us know what you're doing and what we may be able to assist you with in the coming year.
And finally, a very special request... in February 2009 we will be hosting a fund-raiser to assist in pulling resources together to complete the Sarawak Gone micro-docs series and to also contribute to a second series dealing specifically with the nomadic Penan of Sarawak. We'll get details out to you as soon as we have a venue secured, but in the meantime, you can read about the series or make a donation on either http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=Sarawak_Gone, or http://rengah.c2o.org
All the very best from the "open", friendly and entirely uncommon team at apc.au...
Andrew & Grant
