The MIT Media Lab, known for its innovative, hands-on approaches in design, multimedia, and technology, has named Creative Commons Chairman and former CEO Joi Ito as its new executive director. In its article about the announcement, the New York Times notes Joi’s long-time support of open culture:

“Raised in both Tokyo and Silicon Valley, Mr. Ito was part of the first generation to grow up with the Internet. …[Joi] was also an early participant in the open-source software movement and is a board member of the Mozilla Foundation, which oversees the development of the Firefox Web [browser], as well as being the co-founder and chairman of Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that has sought to create a middle ground to promote the sharing of digital information.”

Joi also blogs about his new appointment, describing MIT Media Lab as a great fit:

“I really felt at home for the first time in many ways. It felt like a place where I could focus – focus on everything – but still have a tremendous ability to work with the team as well as my network and broader extended network to execute and impact the world in a substantial and positive way.”

Learn more about the Media Lab and Joi’s appointment at his blog.

You probably know that for the past two years, Creative Commons has been incredibly fortunate to have the pro bono leadership of our CEO, Joi Ito. Joi is a successful internet investor. He has been at the birth of companies such as Moveable Type, Technorati and Twitter. For the past 7 years, he’s also been a key leader on our board. But by far his most important contribution began two years ago when my own commitments made it necessary for me to step down as CEO. With the organization in a pinch, he volunteered to take the lead, again, as a volunteer.

Everyone recognized at the time that this sort of sacrifice could only be temporary. Yet from the time he stepped up, my biggest fear was that when he could no longer make this sacrifice, we would have no one comparable to tap. Last Thursday, I was proven wrong.

One of the most important moments in the history of Creative Commons happened on the day the Supreme Court upheld (incorrectly, in my view, but let’s leave that alone) the Copyright Term Extension Act in Eldred v. Ashcroft. After reading the decision, I had my head in my hands, buried in sadness, when my assistant reminded me that I had a 10am meeting with two people from the Hewlett Foundation. This was exactly one month after we had launched Creative Commons. I was surprised a foundation as prominent as Hewlett even knew about us, let alone had an interest in talking to us. So I put aside my sadness, and walked down to the conference room at Stanford Law School, to meet with Cathy Casserly and Mike Smith.

Cathy and Mike had heard about the Supreme Court’s decision. They recognized I wouldn’t be in much of a mood to chat. So they launched right into the reason for the meeting: The Hewlett Foundation had decided to help launch Creative Commons with a grant of $1 million dollars.

I won’t say that after I heard that news, I forgot about the Supreme Court. But from that moment on, it was much more important to me to prove Hewlett’s faith right than to worry about what the Supreme Court had gotten wrong. And I was especially keen to get to know these two people who understood our mission long before most had even recognized the problem that CC was meant to solve.

Now eight years later, after completing her term at Hewlett and a stint at the Carnegie Foundation as well, I am enormously happy to announce that Cathy Casserly has accepted our offer to become the CEO of Creative Commons.

Cathy has an extraordinary reputation among foundations and the Open Educational Resources community. She has had extensive experience coaxing creators and educators into a more sensible and flexible manner for creating and sharing their work. That was her job at Carnegie and Hewlett. Before Hewlett, she was a program officer at the Walter S. Johnson Foundation. Before that, a teacher of mathematics in Jamaica. She has a PhD in the economics of education from Stanford, and a BA in mathematics from Boston College.

Joi will stay in the hot seat as Chair of the Board. But early in the new year, he will pass his CEO responsibilities to Cathy. Between him and Cathy, we will then have the very best leadership Creative Commons has known.

So then here’s my ask: Creative Commons has been enormously fortunate to have had Joi as an interim CEO, and extremely fortunate now to have found Cathy to fill that role permanently.

Let’s show them how happy we are about both.

We are in the last laps of a very difficult fundraising year, with just two weeks to go and still about $200,000 to raise. Please reach deep in your pocket, and click here to pledge whatever you can find. We have never needed the support of our community more than we do this year. And though I am happy beyond measure about our future, I am extremely concerned about the cuts we will have to make if we don’t meet our goals.

You have supported us throughout these 8 years. We need your support this year especially. Please thank Joi and welcome Cathy in every way, including a pledge to support Creative Commons again.

“Creative Commons continues to make tremendous strides in enabling openness and innovation in learning,” Wojcicki said. “I’m very happy to focus my experience and expertise on ensuring that high-quality educational materials are made easily and freely available to everyone in the world.”

Creative Commons benefits from a diverse board comprised of thought leaders, education experts, technologists, legal scholars, investors, entrepreneurs and philanthropists, all sharing a keen interest in improving quality and access in the learning sector. As a result, we anticipate that CC will be able to assist innovators, educators and policy makers in sharing the yet untapped potential of this revolution.

Digital Journalism 2010 is “an introduction to online journalism, citizen media and the use of social networks for journalism and collective action. Participants will work on self defined projects either as individuals or in groups using any combination of media types including video, photographs, illustrations and text as well as online tools such as blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and any other reasonable tool the participant or team would like to use.” In addition to learning about how the journalism landscape is rapidly changing, participants will learn to research and create news online by publishing stories of their own in teams. These stories will be presented to the class (and the world).

The course is a work in progress, so the community can contribute by suggesting readings, activities, and more. P2PU is looking for course organizers to facilitate the P2PU end of things. If interested, please contact thepeople [at] p2pu.org. To participate in the course remotely via P2PU, you can sign up to apply at www.p2pu.org/journalism. Sign-up is open now and the course will begin on Friday, 4 June.

Joi teaches Digital Journalism annually as part of the Keio Graduate School of Media Design. He has contributed pieces to the New York Times, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and Wired. He is also a prolific photographer and if you didn’t already know, the CEO of Creative Commons.

The Peer 2 Peer University is “a grassroots education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls.” In addition to leveraging existing OER, P2PU licenses all of its own courses under CC BY-SA. For more on why P2PU chose this license, visit http://p2pu.org/license.

On a philosophical level, the idea of making money from something available free might seem questionable. But Joi Ito, chief executive of Creative Commons, which issues the licenses defining user rights to most OpenCourseWare materials, supports the mixing of free and for-profit: “I think there’s a great deal of commercial infrastructure that needs to be created in order for this to be successful,” Mr. Ito said: “It can’t all just be free.”

As readers steeped in knowledge of free culture/open content (and before it free and open source software) will recognize, this means three things.

First, sharing does not preclude making money. To the contrary, artists have long been making CC licensing part of their business strategies, and recently some OER creators and companies are following suit. Examples include WikiPremed, Flat World Knowledge, and Bloomsbury Academic. See Eric Frank explain how Flat World Knowledge gives away CC licensed open textbooks and profits from print materials and services rendered around the content in a video just uploaded from CC Salon NYC.

Second, there needs to be an ecosystem built around open materials, and businesses are an important part of that ecosystem. In the OER space the article mentions Academic Earth. Consider the many businesses providing services around CC licensed materials more broadly (e.g., Flickr, and Fotopedia, which leverages CC licensed works from both Flickr and Wikipedia) and the legion of businesses build around free software (e.g., Red Hat). Consider how huge education is. The opportunity and need for businesses that provide distribution, curation, and a plethora of other services around OER are huge.

Third, free can refer to price and freedom. Businesses, universities, and others can charge a price for access or services around OER. The ecosystem works due to the freedoms that have been granted to use and build upon OER.

The article also mentions the values of OER, one of which is to “[create] an incentive for universities to improve themselves.” It quotes Cathy Casserly, who recently joined the Creative Commons board of directors:

“I think that by putting some of the spectacular professors, and putting their approaches and pedagogical instructional strategies that they use with their students in front of the world, it sets a new benchmark for all of us to learn from,” she said. “And I think that’s actually one of the incredible powers of this open educational resource.”

CEO Joi Ito gives an update on how Creative Commons has hit the ground running in 2010, with big plans for expanding our efforts in education and open educational resources (OER). You’ll also read about new jurisdictions, government adoption of CC licenses, how CC licenses have played a role in the Haiti earthquake relief effort, and more. Happy reading! This quarterly version of the newsletter is in beautifully-designed PDF format (download), designed for your reading pleasure by the CC Philippines team!

Subscribe to receive our monthly e-news updates and quarterly PDF newsletters by email, and stay on top of the inspiring stories coming out of the Commons.

Check out the event posting on Upcoming and Facebook.

CC Salons are global events, and anyone can start one, no matter where you live. We encourage you to check out our resources for starting your own salon in your area.

If you’re in the SF Bay Area, we hope to see you at our next Creative Commons Salon, which will feature a panel discussion about CC from an international perspective. The panel will feature CC staffers CEO Joi Ito, Arab World Media & Development Manager Donatella della Ratta, and International Project Manager Michelle Thorne, who will be joined by David Sasaki, Outreach Director for Global Voices.

This will be a great chance to learn about how globally diverse communities use Creative Commons, as well as challenges faced in various regions and projects around the world. How do sharing norms, for example, or compelling use cases differ from country to country? What works in one context may not carry over to another, so where do models fail and what lessons can be learned? How can specific fields, such as open education or citizen journalism, solve some of these issues and foster healthier sharing communities?

Come meet CC staff and other free culture friends and enthusiasts from the Bay Area in an informal setting.

When: Tuesday, February 16, 7-9pm
Location: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St. (map and directions). Plenty of street parking available. (Please note, the space is located up two steep flights of stairs, and unfortunately does not currently have elevator access.)

Light refreshments will be provided, and since we rely on the generosity of our community to keep us afloat, we’ll be accepting donations for CC at the door.

Check out the event posting on Upcoming and Facebook. We hope to see you there!

CC Salons are global events, and anyone can start one, no matter where you live. We encourage you to check out our resources for starting your own salon in your area.

The Guardian just posted a great interview with CC CEO Joi Ito that, while focusing broadly on Joi’s work as an entrepreneur, spends substantial time discussing his role at CC.

The piece touches on a number of topics including how CC interacts with businesses, our commitment to RDFa, and how our licenses can be used:

The advantage of the range of Creative Commons licences is that it can be tweaked as the creator likes. “Typically a professional musician will choose a licence that prohibits commercial reuse to protect their income, which usually comes from copyright. But for instance a photographer, and especially an amateur photographer, may want to be well-known, so they focus on attribution. Documentary producers often say ‘no derivatives’ because they don’t want the story to change, but will allow commercial use so that movie theatres can show their work.”

Be sure to read the interview at the Guardian’s website or check out the full transcript here. You can also listen to the interview as part of the Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast.

Check out the latest ccNewsletter, available to download in PDF format for your reading pleasure as you catch up on the latest CC news. It opens with a special update from CEO Joi Ito, and includes CC’s most exciting recent developments in arts & culture, science, education, and internationally. From groundbreaking CC integrations with Google and Wikipedia, to the launch of new open educational resources, to a CC-licensed web series by director Ridley Scott, you can see for yourself how far CC has come just this year.

Many thanks to Tomas Ashe, our 2009 summer Design Intern, for his beautiful design of this month’s newsletter. You can also check out past issues of the newsletter.

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