Monthly Archives: December 2006

Elliott Bledsoe was recently accepted to the inaugural [Brightest Young Minds](http://www.bym.com.au), an annual summit of engaged young Australians with a social focus.

The summit aims to bring together 100 future leaders in an environment that encourages greater social responsibility and contribution to the common good.

Launched in Australia in July 2005 The Brightest Young Minds Foundation (BYM) is a not-for-profit organisation that rewards and fosters creativity, boldness, and passion in the leaders of tomorrow. In recognition that today’s Australian youth are more willing and enthusiastic to be involved in social projects than ever before, BYM provides the opportunity for experience, exposure, learning and development.

Elliott’s application focused on his project work with CCau at QUT, his body of popular press articles and his work on the Board of [Vibewire](http://www.vibewire.net/) Inc. He began work with Professor Brian Fitzgerald on the CC project in a volunteer capacity and has since come on board as a Project Officer, working to promote the use of the licences and to document/case study how CC is being used in Australia.
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Hybrid arts ensemble collusion performing with a backdrop of audio/visuals by andrew garton from Toysatellite live as part of the ccSalon. Photo by Ray Allen, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial licence v2.0.

Who would have thought a Wednesday night could have so much excitement? On 29 November, Creative Commons Australia (CCau), in conjunction with Queensland University of Technology, the Australian Research Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) and the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (iCi), held the first Australian ccSalon, a live showcase of Creative Commons art, music, film and text in Australia.

In a ‘two birds/one stone’ move CCau decided to take full advantage of the relationship building opportunities of the Salon, and make sure that we had a diverse group of attendees, by tying the Salon to a series of industry meetings, which we held at the same venue in the afternoon leading up to the Salon. These meetings, which we dubbed the first CCau Industry Forum, were designed to act as both education and research tools, providing an opportunity to explore and explain the potential for Creative Commons across government, education and the creative industries both to generate awareness and help direct CCau’s focus from here.

The Forum proved surprisingly popular, with about 60 attendees from a range of private organisations, government departments, industry bodies, as well as individuals with an interest in the area. Asides from the fabulous crew at CCau (including Project Lead Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Project Manager, Jesscia Coates, Project Officer, Elliott Bledsoe and Research Officer, Nic Suzor), other Creative Commons licence users/advocates from Australia were given the opportunity to engage directly with the attendees, discussing their experiences of, motivations for, and results from using Creative Commons and other open content licensing models. Speakers included Tim Norton from A New Leaf Media, Anna Helme from Engage Media, Scott Kiel-Chisholm from the Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, Neale Hooper from the Queensland Government’s Whole of Government Information Licensing Project and Delia Browne from the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA).
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