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

Thu May 20 18:36:45 CDT 2010

Douglas, the pages scanned in the Olden Pathways (which was a Beta release) were OCR'd and the result was a LOT of errors, including typo's, plus we found some errors that were incurred in the original transcription process. I worked on editing some documents, enough to sense how overwhelming it would be to tackle the editing of the whole frigging archive after digitization. Since I'm not totally up to date here in Kansas City, so to speak, does your current process simply 'freeze' an image of the paper page as a .pdf? Or is OCR part of the process?
Marshall 

________________________________
From: Doug Druckenmiller <dpat23 at msn.com>
To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Thu, May 20, 2010 12:56:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Can I get arrested for doing an art form conversation?

Yes Jack, you are correct.  

The math was based on a page at a time process and based on 8
hours a day.  Part of the problem is that the paper we printed things on in
1972 is thin and tends to catch in the document feeder when you scan both
sides.  It’s possible that this could be solved with a roller
adjustment. Or scan one side of the document and then the other to avoid having
the machine turn each page to scan the other side.  I haven’t tried
but I think we can use adobe professional software to automatically stitch the
pages back together the from the two scans.  Renting high quality document
scanners could also be a solution.

Once we have a complete inventory of what’s in the
archives we can also prioritize what to scan first.  We don’t need
to redo stuff that’s in the Golden pathways CD for example.  Some
things may be quite low priority and only scanned as requested.

Doug

From:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Jack Gilles
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 1:06 PM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Can I get arrested for doing an art form
conversation?

Doug,

What a great context.  But I've got a question about
your math.  If it takes 150 years to scan everything, but you have reduced
the scanning rate from 20 minutes to 1 minute then we only need 7 1/2 years of
work!  Now what we might need is some of those 24 hour marathons of duty
like we used to do at the Summer program.  I believe it was Summer 70 when
we occupied the office downtown during the night to produce the documents.
 Hmm, seems a bunch of us need to put Chicago on our "to visit"
list this summer and fall.

Thanks for sharing!

Jack
On May 20, 2010, at 12:17 PM, M. George Walters wrote:

Wow Doug.
Thanks!

With kindest regards.

M. George Walters
Resurgence Publishing Corporation
4240 Sandy Shores Dr
Lutz, FL 33558
USA
Tel: +1 (813) 948-7267
Fax: +1 (813) 333-1787
Mob: +1 (813) 505-9041

URL: www.ResurgencePublishing.com
Professional Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mgwalters

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Doug Druckenmiller
Sent: Thursday, May 20,
2010 11:42
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net
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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