Dissemination Report: Summary of Dissemination Actions and Adoption of NetCommons Solutions During the First Year

This deliverable summarizes the dissemination activities of the netCommons Consortium and their overall impact during the first year of the project’s life. Given the multidisciplinary nature of netCommons, its dissemination activities target a broad set of actors including academia, activists, public authorities, policy makers, and the general public. Hence, in netCommons we developed from the beginning a comprehensive dissemination strategy including the development of a project identity, expressed by visuals and graphics, and the public presentation of netCommons objectives and approach. Chapter 2 describes the rationale we followed in developing such identity, right after the overall summary of activities carried out and the impact achieved is described in Chapter 1. netCommons had a very fruitful first year in terms of dissemination events, described in Chapter 3 with six organized events (and two forthcoming in early 2017) attended by around 200 people, from local farmers in the Sarantaporo area and local authorities in Barcelona to activists from CNs and the scientific community. It had also significant contribution in seven high-impact international events with thousands of participants, and a wide range of actors, including policy makers, regulators, EC officials, the CAPS community, the diverse global stakeholders of the United Nations (UN) Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and the general public. Finally, netCommons partners were invited to give talks and participate in public panels, ten in total. In terms of publications, see Chapter 5, netCommons activities produced four book chapters, eight journal papers, and several conference and workshop papers, all published in 2016; more are already accepted for publication in early 2017. The objectives of the netCommons project were also included in an article published by The Conversation Global. In addition to those institutional dissemination activities, netCommons was very active in reaching out to activists, local authorities and citizens, through a series of local meetings described in Chapter 4, managing to establish strong links with such actors in four areas of interest (Barcelona/Guifi.net, Athens/Sarantaporo, Trento/Ninux.org, and FFDN in France). Finally, Chapter 6, summarizes a series of additional dissemination by netCommons partners such as interviews (four in total), CAPS networking activities, educational material, editorial boards, and also their engagement in advocacy efforts and struggles against policies and regulations that pose significant hurdles to the sustainability of CNs. Before describing in detail on all these dissemination activities, Chapter 1 highlights the most important achievements in terms of impact, including: the contribution in two important global events, namely: the recent IGF conference in Mexico and the European Commons Assembly in Brussels; the initiation of an ambitious participatory design process in the Sarantaporo valley, the home of the Sarantaporo.gr Community Network; the public discussion on strategies for efficient collaboration between government, citizens and enterprises in Barcelona around key challenges faced by Guifi.net and other CNs all over the world; and our engagement in the legal and policy battles linked to the so called “EU radio directive” in collaboration with FSFE and other institutions. The Deliverable closes with the next steps and expected dissemination results during the second year.