The A2K Movement… Keeps Moving. Literally.

I just got back from the Yale conference on A2K (April 27-29 - Yale Law School). You can find plenty of information on panels and speakers on the Yale ISP website. There's also a Jack Balkin's blog where you can find his opening speech. And here’s Robin’s Gross blog on the event.

There were five plenary panels (the social movement of a2k, mobilizing industry, governments, technologists and civil society) and maybe 12 policy panels. It was hard enough to decide which one to attend, and it’s impossible to report on all of them. I give up. Imagine over 100 people sticking to the venue, not only because the New Haven spring was kind of disgusting, but also because no one wanted to “miss” someone or something.

The quality and diversity of the speakers were impressive. There were some cult figures of the a2k movement (you know whom I'm talking about, right?). You had famous academics, a large and smart crew of Yale law students, kickass activists from many fields, enlightened industry people, government representatives (though not from the U.S., I am not sure why) and a few WIPO and foundation representatives.












At first, everyone was doing his or her job, playing his or her role as planned (choreographed?). However, it gets tiring and you cannot really maintain that for 3 days. Besides, it's when the players "try new ideas" that things get interesting. That is what was happening in the hallways, outside the dining hall, inside classrooms, etc. Many presentations were great, but all the informal discussions were important.

As Gwen Hinze and many others said during these informal talks, what made Yale's second conference on a2k so cool was the sense of belonging to a diverse international community. We had a (prestigious) place to meet and work together, plan, plot, eat, drink and enjoy being part of a larger social movement.











Now, really interesting to me was the presence of all the "new" people, the new faces, the new blood. New to me of course, probably well known to others, like the ISP organizers. From the beginning, the














plenary on "a2k as a social movement", the participants seemed to be determined to be "inclusive and to listen to all." Well, to be honest, in the hallways, there were some expressions of frustration (when some old issues were raised --again!), but more often people were expressing interest in the new "blood" that was being injected in this clearly live/organic a2k.

With a new crowd comes the fear of dilution, or even for some a threat to what one can call the informal a2k establishment (you know whom I'm talking about, right?) but from them also comes the hope of sustainability.

The policy panel I moderated was about open access to literature. Many thanks to Jami Johnson of Yale Law School who organized the panel AND kept time (and has good notes see wiki).

The speakers were an exceptional collection of writers/editors of literary journals like Tin House, Kwani? and Transition, affiliated with Blackplanet.com, AOL Black Voices, and the Alternative Law Forum. In some ways, the panel did its job as described in the program. It “explored the benefits of open access literature in fostering cross-cultural dialogue and in improving information flow between and among nations.” For sure, Achal Prabhala, Binyavanga Wainaina, Gary Dauphin, Rob Spillman, and Michael Vazquez were more fun than many conference speakers as they engaged in a lively dialogue about the role of small (but successful) literary magazines, a domain of publishing that is not typically interested a2k ideas. They talked about new business models and experimental modes of publication and archiving and how the Collective they have created recently will fit in some ways in the open access to literature frame.

The Heron Collective started in December 2006. A group of friends/colleagues got together in Nairobi, Kenya to talk about how to formalize an entire series of interactions by which they were trying find a way to create a system that would do something for themselves and a much larger public. The members of the collective want Heron to be an open access literature collective. Licensed through open content licensing, the content will be freely accessible and freely usable. They still have to work on all of this of course, it was just created.

Why did these magazines (some prefer the term journals) decide to do this? In the words of Achal because "they all know each other", they share "a common grammar", a common sense of humor and many other things. They are young, contemporary, open to new business models. They will probably use a developing nations CC license developed to provide for licenses where literature could be distributed commercially in developed countries but open access in developing nations. Right now, the Collective is working on its' policies on open archives and open licensing. They’re also working on circulation issues, distribution and production. As Achal noted "Nothing obviously useful: just serious fun".

One issue we did not talk about enough (we ran out of time), but that is pressing to me (we’re are creating our own open access journal right now), is how the hell will these kind of journals get sustainable funding if they become open access? Right now, they have funds from subscribers and donations. They’re thinking of increasing the “service” part of what they do as editors, maybe selling T-shirts and other things on the Collective website.

Thinking about possible new business models (or copyright and licenses) is not that exciting. And it is not what they want to do with their lives. However, it looks as if they will have to spend some time doing just that, and maybe they’ll come up with creative solutions. They are all super-creative for sure.



I never got to discuss with them other possible funding mechanisms (some of them outrageous—and that would have been fun for me) if we manage to decentralize markets for donations for open access journal.

For example, could we get some funding agency like the National Endowment for Humanities to provide grants structured to pay the authors?

Could we have some State or Federal tax credit for donations to journals?

Could we have a requirement that federally or state-funded universities, libraries, and/or other institutions donate minimum amounts to some journal of their choice? That could be linked to the library budget (let’s say they give 10% of what they give to expensive fee-based journals). Or, could we have obligations in certain sectors that they contribute to the open journal of their choice? Like publishers of computer games could give $.50 per game (nobody really likes publishers of computer games, right?) or like broadcasting or TV organizations? How about owners of government subsidized sports stadiums?

Why not?

Maybe we’ll get to talk again at a2k3?