[Dialogue] Can I get arrested for doing an artform conversation?

Thu May 20 14:47:30 CDT 2010

I had my first encounter with EI 40 years ago in the spring of '70 when Troxel and Lauderemilk taught a PLC near Atlanta. The next thing I knew I was on a plane for Chicago to work in something called a Summer  Research Assembly on the Local Church. One of the great things I learned that summer was the criminality of asking the right question. In the case of the archives, I don't believe that the right question has been asked yet. 

The context for asking the right question would be something like this. We are standing in the winner's circle twenty years from now. People walking around giving roses to all of us and popping corks on Champaign bottles. Then someone vaguely resembling Joe Mathews stands up and asks "What happened." "What did we accomplish?" What he doesn't ask is "Did you remember to get copyrights on all that junk that Lynn squirreled away in the basement of Kemper?"    

So my question today is " What kind of constructs do we need to create that will allow for the emergence a new spirit movement in civilizing process ask how can the contents of the archives  be made available in what form to enable this emergence to happen.

David Walters 

PS some of you who are currently playing in the archives sandbox might want to take a look through the Summer '71 document and see if can find the section on "All the archives belong to all the people". I think if you look in the lower right triangle in the Cultural triangle you will find it about 3 levels down. 

  Subject: [Dialogue] Can I get arrested for doing an artform conversation?

  I've read with interest the discussion about the archives and the related comments on intellectual property rights, copyright and licensing.  I think it is important to clearly separate the issues so that clear discussion can be made and we can see where our consensus lies.  I think a bit of context is necessary for my comments, so I apologize for what will likely be a longer post than is recommended for email listserves, but my personal story and experience in this is maybe not well known and potentially useful to the discussion.

  I got reengaged with ICA in the spring of 2007 (having been separated since 1982, a 25 year long journey!) when I attended  an ICA-USA think tank in Chicago.  I was interested in getting access to archival material for my university research into collaboration engineering.  I am an Associate Professor at Western Illinois University with a PhD in Business Administration.  My major interest is in Strategic Information Systems, especially knowledge management and collaborative systems.  Collaboration engineering is a newly emerging field that seeks to understand the basic patterns of group interaction: Brainstorming, organizing (gestalt), evaluating, consensus building, convergence etc.  The field has evolved from a focus on electronic meeting systems to a broader focus on facilitation methods, facilitation design, and how facilitation systems can be embedded in organizations.  Most recently I've been working with Jon Jenkins on redesigning the IAF methods database for easier access.  The Town Meeting 76 documents represent a research treasure in my field as it is an example of large scale collaboration engineering.  We (ICA) designed a collaboration event and then trained practitioners to deliver it.  The TM76 documents are empirical evidence of successful collaboration engineering on a large scale.

  This was just after the now-famous firing of all the staff by the board of ICA-USA.  I proposed to then board chair, Carolyn Antenen, that we digitize the archive to improve its accessibility, not just mine, but others interested in utilizing the archives as a resource. Digitization is an obvious solution with the necessity of moving the archive to a physical location where they can be catalogued and digitized.  Funding would be needed to accomplish this, and there are issues of storage and quality control in the digitization process.  At the time I saw several possibilities for doing this:

  1.       If the ICA is willing to give up copyright to the archival data (here I am not talking about the JWM files that I understand his family has control over) and donate the collection to the University (WIU), the University would store it, digitize it and make it electronically available online. 

  2.       The ICA funds the digitization on its own using the University's digitization capability and services.

  3.       The ICA does the digitization on its own with its own resources.

  In any case, quality control of the process would require that someone familiar with the data monitor results.

  The ICA was mainly pursuing housing the archives at a university, as there was no internal capability for true care and maintenance of archival material.  The first option was not realistic because ICA was not interested in giving up its copyright, although it would only be on the digital copy not the original material.  The second is quite expensive, $100,000+ and the third is also expensive and nearly impossible given limited staff resources and time.  As we subsequently began to see, option 2 can't be done without doing option 3.  University partnership is still an ongoing discussion.  Our emerging partnership with Oklahoma City University is an example.

  Discussions with the Mathews family were underway at this time, resulting in the eventual move of the JWM files to Wesleyan Seminary in Washington DC.  Digitization and open access were part of the reason that educational institutions interested in the content of the archives were involved.  Based on the reception this past December and the establishment of the JWM archive at Wesleyan, this is an excellent partnership and collaboration toward that end.  Betty Pesak and Marge Philbrook prepared the material for transfer to Wesleyan to insure that wherever there were multiple copies of documents, they were retained in the archive in Chicago.

  In October of that year I attended the Living Legacy event and began discussing with Board Member Judy Lindblad an archive digitization project.  Several alarming conversations with people at the event made me wonder what had happened to the ICA in the 25 years since I was involved.  Several people insisted that if you used any ICA methods that you had to pay a royalty to the ICA.  It seemed that a simple artform conversation was "private property" and especially if you called what you were doing "ORID."  This seemed exceedingly strange to me, and I remain curious as to where this idea had come from.  I wondered if the ICA police would arrest me for having ignorantly been using the artform conversation for the past 25 years in my teaching.  At least I didn't call it ORID, so maybe I would be forgiven. But what about charting?  I was in deep trouble.

  I then did a stupid thing, I volunteered to join the board of directors, since it was the only way I could see to insure access to the archives, and maybe I could get time off for good behavior and service rendered.  The archives were at that point under lock and key in the basement and not accessible in any real sense.  They also were at risk of flood and the environment was not conducive to work or long term preservation.  I was elected to the BOD in November and began a three year term in January of 2008.  As a board member I continued to push for a focus on the archives, but it was not a concern and discussions about intellectual property were not encouraged.  "We've already talked about that."  In January 2009 I became board chair and remain currently in that position.  Work on the Global Archives remains for me a key objective.  Obviously I've not completed my sentence yet.

  Enough context, fast forward to May 2010.  Last week Pat and I attended the archive sojourn event.  What a wonderful time we had digging deep into the spirit resources of the archive and continuing the work begun the week before on processing the archive for eventual digitization.  Slowly the file cabinets are coming out of the basement to bright available space on the 6th floor.   In order to digitize the archive (make a digital copy) we must have a "gold" set of unduplicated material.  As Marge Philbrook has pointed out many times, the files in the basement contain lots of copies.  By way of example, Pat and I processed a stack of files about 15" high containing constructs for "fast, feast and watch."  This was mainly material from summer '72 research assembly.  I remember the 7 day fast, the wonderful feast and the watch that we did that summer.  Anyway, after removing all the duplicated material and keeping 2 copies of everything where possible, we reduced the stack by about 2/3.  So 5" of material remain, quite a bit of that is file folders, and if you figure half of what is left is what would need to be digitized, you are left with about 2 inches of paper that represents the "gold" set.  This is what is going on in Chicago this month.  We will have a fairly good picture by the end of May of the size of the mountain, but we will not have climbed it.

  In the midst of this event I had a revelation of sorts about the process we are now engaged in.  95% of the work to digitize the archive is this kind of manual sorting and sifting of the material.  Without doing this, we cannot digitize anything.  It also requires people familiar with the material.  It is not something that can be "outsourced" to someone else.  The smallest part (and least expensive) is the actual making of a digital copy.  This involves scanning the documents into a PDF format and can be time consuming if you are thinking of your own personal scanner which is a one page at a time process.  For example, two of us scanned the 110 page summer 72 spirit methods manual in about 20 minutes.  At that rate it would take 150 years to scan the archive!  What we really need is a scanner that has a copy machine-like document feeder.  This could do the same job in less than a minute.  I then realized that most copy machines made these days are document servers.  This means they are connected to your computer network and you can print to them from your PC, and you can also use them as a scanner.  Mon Dieu! We have a copier! I wonder if it is also a document scanner?  Turns out we have two in the building.  They can be set to scan documents at high speed to our server and made available.  We tested this system last week and while there are some problems with old paper feeding properly, we have everything we need to do digitization. Option 3 increasingly looks like the way to go.

  The only thing we are missing is you!  We need more people to volunteer their time to do the sorting and reducing work that prepares the material for scanning.  And then we will need people to do the scanning and to quality check the results.  We have 25 nicely furnished rooms on the 8th floor so you can live onsite, work on the archives and visit the beautiful city of Chicago.  The increasing numbers of people and reunion atmosphere have been a real joy to all who have attended the sojourn.  I really think that with a steady stream of volunteers, we could accomplish the digitization goal much quicker than we think.  Terry is planning another official Archives sojourn in the fall, but I am sure that Marge Philbrook is willing to put anyone to work who wants to volunteer at any time.  Once the archive is fully digital, another task can begin, which is the "tagging" of the content. This essentially is having a collaboratively built rich index to the material that allows for easy access of its contents and can be done from anywhere in the world as long as you have internet access. (Think of the way you use Google to find information - a word or phrase is all you need.)

  Now about copyright.  The ICA-USA will have copyright to the digital form of the archive based on the "Cairo protocol" described in Wayne's post.  This will likely be about 2 terabytes of data.  You can purchase a 2 terabyte drive from your local office products store for about $300.  Last week Bob Hansen asked me, "Will we have to pay for access to the digitized archive?"  Definitely not!  We intend to put the whole archive and the index to it on our server and make it available at no cost for download over the web. If you want a backup copy, go buy a 2 terabyte drive at OfficeMax, come to Chicago and make your own copy.   Of course, you'll have to wait until its finished.  You could help with that.

  I would say that there is a broad consensus that both the original material in the archives and a digital copy should be freely accessed.  (I'm not really aware of anyone who holds the contrary position).  The cost of digital distribution is very small, as we have existing resources to do this, once things are in digital form.  In Creative Commons terms, this is the "Attribution license ."  This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon our work, even commercially, as long as they credit EI/ICA for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.   I believe this was the original intent for access to this material and should be applied to both the physical and digital versions. Please spend some time at www.creativecommons.org/choose.  Answers to two simple questions determine the License:  "Allow commercial uses of the work?" and "Allow modifications of the work?"  

  I hope this settles the IP question about our common memory and heritage.  I will request that the board of ICA-USA pass a resolution to this effect at our next meeting.

  The more interesting question, though, is what about copyright for works derived from the archive?  (Those works that are owned by the national ICAs or created by individuals, for example PJD, Top Training manuals, etc.)  The "Attribution license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit EI/ICA for the original creation."  PJD is a creation of John Cock and his team; they hold the copyright and clearly attribute the work to EI/ICA.  I think this meets the standard of an attribution license.   It is not a product of ICA-USA or even one of our programs.  It is a tweaked remix built on RS-1.  The license for PJD is a decision to be made by that team.  While the product is under development and testing, a limited distribution seems appropriate.  In the long run, though, I think either "attribution share alike" or "attribution non-commercial share alike" would be appropriate with other national ICAs.  If the product is distributed outside the ICA, say to a church denomination or a business organization, a tighter licensing arrangement might be in order for quality control.  Top Training Manuals are an example of this type of licensed control and protected content.  But this applies only to the training manuals published by ICA-USA, the logo, and trade name.  The reasoning behind this is based in quality control of training and branding for commercial purposes of the training network.  This does not mean that the methods themselves are copyrighted.  Anyone is free to develop any training program they want based on the open source archival material; they would need to attribute the EI/ICA in their copyright, but they could decide how to license their own material.

  You can't get arrested for doing an art-form conversation even if you call it ORID.

  Doug

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