2026-10-01T16:41:21
It’s a question we ask ourselves regularly at CC—and one we recently brought directly to our community through our annual Community Survey. This year, 62 community members from 23 countries shared their experiences, priorities, ideas, and hopes for the future of the Commons.
What we heard most clearly is that you want to participate. You want to learn from one another, contribute your skills, build relationships across regions and areas of practice, and help shape the future of the open movement.
The survey gave us a clear picture of what meaningful participation means to you, what the barriers are, and what CC can do to help. Here’s what we heard and how it’s shaping our plans for the year ahead.
A community that wants to participate
Overall satisfaction with the CC community increased this year, reaching 3.8 out of 5—up 19% from 2025. Sixty-four percent of respondents rated their engagement with the community a 4 or 5, and 60% said you would recommend the CC community to others.
Perhaps most encouragingly, half of you said you were interested in participating in self-led activities like ad-hoc working groups.
And the open-ended responses made the sentiment behind those numbers especially clear:
These responses are a reminder that our community is not simply an audience for CC’s work. You see yourselves as part of the work—and many of you are looking for more opportunities to contribute.
The question is: how?
The clearest gap in this year’s responses was not a lack of interest. It was a lack of clarity about how to participate.
Thirty-three of you specifically asked for clearer ways to get involved. You wanted better information about chapters and regional groups, clearer direction about what volunteers can do, easier ways to find peers and mentors, structured opportunities to work on projects, and greater visibility and recognition for community contributions.
This is an important distinction. If you want to participate but can’t figure out where your skills, interests, or time fit, the problem isn’t necessarily motivation. Sometimes the infrastructure for participation simply isn’t visible enough.
The survey also gave us a clearer picture of what you need from CC as a community resource.
You asked for practical licensing guidance, FAQs, case studies, examples, short videos, factsheets, customizable templates, toolkits, asynchronous training, and translated materials.
Importantly, you don’t just want resources from CC. You want resources you can remix and reuse with your own communities. Our role can be much more powerful when we act as infrastructure, connector, facilitator, and amplifier—helping you take what you need and adapt it to your own contexts.
That means community engagement isn’t only about creating more events or sending more communications. It is also about creating more options for participation and building pathways between levels of engagement. We have started thinking about those pathways:
LEARN → CONNECT → CONTRIBUTE → ORGANIZE → LEAD
That’s also why we are working toward more “train-the-trainer” approaches as we roll out new guidance. Our resources become much more valuable when you can adapt and tailor them to your own contexts, and then share that knowledge with others.
It’s no surprise that AI is an important topic for our community right now. When we asked what topics you wanted training and information about, AI and the Commons received the most selections, with 37 respondents choosing it.
But the responses also made something else clear: your interests remain broad. Open Education, CC licenses and tools, and Copyright each received 30 selections. Open Culture and Heritage received 26, while Open Science and Contemporary Culture and Independent Creators each received 22.
AI is reshaping the information ecosystem, but is only one part of the work our community cares about. The principles of sharing, access, collaboration, attribution, and community governance continue to matter across education, science, culture, heritage, and creative practice.
Our community engagement needs to reflect that whole ecosystem.
The survey also reinforced the importance of regional and local engagement.
You asked for local-language resources, regional training, mentorship, stronger cross-regional networks, support for chapters and regional groups, local ambassadors and trainers, and greater recognition for local contributors.
You also identified practical infrastructure needs: more translation and better ways to discover activities happening in different places.
One particularly useful reminder was that some of you did not know that local chapters existed at all. This tells us that regionalization is not simply about creating more regional activity. It’s also about making the activity that already exists easier to find, connect to, and participate in.
A global community cannot function as a single centralized conversation. You need opportunities to build relationships and solve problems in your own languages, regions, and contexts—and then bring those experiences into conversation with the wider Commons.
While you certainly asked for additional support, you’ve also offered to contribute your own skills and support to the movement.
You told us you would like to run workshops and trainings, translate and localize resources, promote CC and recruit new members, host events, support local chapters, share knowledge and research, contribute images and networks, and collaborate on projects and advocacy.
That creates an exciting opportunity: with the right frameworks, resources, and infrastructure in place, we can make it easier for community members to contribute while amplifying the grassroots work already happening across the CC community.
The findings from this year’s survey are already shaping our community strategy for the year ahead. Here are some of the focuses we plan to bring into our 2027 planning:
1. Creating clearer pathways to participation
We’ll be working to improve engagement on Zulip, create more meaningful ways to participate in ongoing work, support distributed projects, and strengthen volunteer translation and regional events.
2. Building community capacity
We’ll expand “train-the-trainer” approaches, particularly around licensing guidance and other practical resources that you can use in your own contexts.
3. Creating resources you can remix
We’ll develop more short, reusable, localizable resources—from simple license comparison guides to CC FAQs, short videos, translated resources, and adaptable presentation materials.
4. Creating meaningful opportunities to contribute to AI work
We’re exploring new ways for our community to contribute to CC’s AI work— from regional consultations, and working groups to roundtables, case studies, translations, and opportunities to share your expertise and experience.
One of the things I find most exciting about this year’s survey is that you aren’t asking us simply to do more. You’re asking us to make more possible.
Clearer pathways. Better tools. More opportunities to learn from one another. Stronger regional connections. Resources you can take home and adapt. And meaningful ways to contribute your own expertise.
That gives us a powerful direction for the work ahead.
CC has always been about building the conditions for people to share, collaborate, and create. Our approach to community engagement should be no different.
The future of the commons won’t be built by CC alone. It will be built by the people who use these tools, teach them, translate them, adapt them, organize around them, challenge them, and carry them into new contexts.
Our role is to help make that possible. And, based on what we heard this year, you’re ready.
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