As the African Commons Project team says goodbye to iCommons, we publish the beautiful video of our awesome final project, iSummit ‘08 in Sapporo, Japan. The last two years has been an awesome experience, and we’ve all learned so much, but are really looking forward to dedicating our efforts towards empowering local communities in South Africa to use the internet and digital technologies for innovation and creativity.

We really hope that next year we will be able to have an iSummit in South Africa to complete the iSummit’s travel around the globe to every continent over the past four years. If you’re interested in helping out or attending, don’t forget to join the mailing list!

See the goodbye note from Ronaldo Lemos, iCommons Chairman, below:

‘Dear friends,

Over the past two years, iCommons has been fortunate to have the assistance of Heather Ford, Kerryn McKay and The African Commons Project, the local host organisation for iCommons in South Africa, managing our operations. Their hard work and dedication have moved iCommons from start-up stage to a thriving and effective organization. Under Heather’s leadership, iCommons has produced a number of important events for the commons including three iSummits, an iCommons iCurriculum and the enormously successful Local Context Global Commons project.

Because of diverging interests and strategies, however, iCommons and TACP have decided to unbundle their activities. Both organizations will work on activism, advocacy and outreach to support free knowledge, free culture, open education, and free software. iCommons will focus on helping organized communities leverage their efforts through cooperative action. TACP will focus on building support from its South African base, implementing projects that empower communities to use the Internet and commons-based technologies for local innovation and creativity.

TACP will continue to manage the LCGC and Nokia video-sharing projects. TACP’s work will be hosted at africancommons.org. iCommons will continue to operate from www.icommons.org. Changes at these sites are underway and should be completed by 1 January. We will send instructions to mailing list subscribers as migration progresses.

iCommons is excited and supportive of this development because it will expand the number of players working to support a global commons. We salute Heather, Kerryn and TACP for their accomplishments and fully expect them to continue to be a source of innovative programs that push the boundaries of open access practices and look forward to working with them in the future.

Ronaldo for the iCommons Board of Directors’