Last weekend, I attended the Creative Commons Global Summit in Toronto, Canada. One of my projects for the meeting was having a session where I presented tools and projects that inspire communities and people around an open project.

Such a project is Mapillary in my opinion. It inspires people, it helps people in many ways, and it builds upon the licenses from Creative Commons, making it clear and safe for everyone to attend and benefit from the project.

It both inspires and engages me to take pictures for the project. My wife is no longer surprised if we are taking different ways from A to B. She knows we eventually will get there, and that she doesnt need to ask about the black t-shirt in the windscreen (avoiding reflections during recording).

In Toronto, some 450 people from all over the world were gathered: lawyers, librarians, teachers, activists and many more. Creative Commons is a set of permissions that all of us can use when we want to share something we have made, e.g. when we want to share our photos recorded while walking or driving with the Mapillary app.

In that way, Creative Commons is relevant because it gives people the tools to contribute, collaborate, share, and reuse projects and works without getting into trouble with copyright.

One of the first people I talked with about Mapillary instantly said; You should meet Leo from Costa Rica. So I did. I presented myself and then showed him the back of my phone. Then he did same… and we smiled. Both of us had the Mapillary sticker there.

Mapillary friends meet (CC BY Peter Leth)

Two people from the same world—just situated 9,300 km from each other.

The next thing we did was show each other (in the app) where we had been and talking about the thoughts and motivations that have driven us.

This wonderful meeting was just one of the good experiences I had, talking with people about open projects that we can attend and that can contribute to a better world.

I would like to thank Mapillary for making a short video for the summit about Mapillary and how Creative Commons is important for having a collaborative project like this.

/Peter

PS. I rounded 300K while walking in the streets of Toronto :-)

PPS. Take a look at the blog post about Tools to Engage.

Mapillary video for Creative Commons Summit 2018 from Leg med IT on Vimeo.

In case you didn't guess yet, Peter's unexpected Mapillary encounter was our awesome ambassador Leo Arias!