Are you joining us at the 2021 CC Global Summit (September 20-24)? There are only three weeks to go. Up next in our ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ series, we’re excited to introduce you to Suzanne Wakim. Suzanne is Coordinator for Distance Education and Student Learning Outcomes at Butte Community College. She is also a biology instructor who has designed and developed over a dozen biology courses in multiple modalities for multiple institutions. She is a Course Facilitator for @ONE (Online Network of Educators); a Project Facilitator for the ASCCC OER Initiative; and a Certificate Facilitator for Creative Commons. She has created online educational resources for the Open Learning Initiative, OpenStax, Nature, Discovery Education, and co-authored the most adopted Biology textbook in LibreTexts.  She conducts nationwide trainings on topics including Universal Design for Learning, Adaptable Course and Assessment Design, Open Pedagogy, Accessibility, and Online Course Design.

 

Based in?: Paradise, CA, USA

Summit Session: Strategies for Assessing and Adapting OER for Inclusion

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

I don’t remember.  My journey into the world of Open has been circuitous.  But, I vividly remember my first time participating in the CC EDU meeting.  I had never been in such a global space (with folks from almost all continents).  That was when I knew I wanted to be “all in” with advocacy for OER. 

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?

Last year was my first, and I was lucky enough to get to volunteer too!

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?

Guided discussions and opportunities to brainstorm as a group. Loosely moderated because I do better with structure.

Why are you an advocate for Open?

Everyone deserves access to information – financial gatekeeping is wrong.  Everyone is worthy of participating in the global commons – we are better together.

“We are all in this together, and we each have something valuable to bring to the table. When we collaborate, we will find ways to make the future better for everyone.”

What is your proudest achievement?

I recently began facilitating for the CC Certificate, and I am still giddy from being selected.  

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

I help faculty build engaging and accessible online classes and open educational resources.  That’s both the best part and the most difficult part!

What is your favorite GIF?

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

Mentimeter. It helps keep my presentations engaging and can help lighten heavy topics. 

What’s one new trend that you think the CC community should look out for?

How can we (the creators of content) work together to improve our collective resources?  There are many slightly different editions of some resources, and it would be great to have a place where the authors of different versions can collaborate on a master collection of versions.  This isn’t so much a trend to look for, but one I want us to begin ?.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

If we want students to feel that they belong in our class, they need to see themselves in our content and materials. 

What was the best career advice you ever received? What was the worst career advice you ever received?

I was in a research PhD program and found that I prefer teaching to research. The best advice was a mentor who told me that I can teach at the Community College level with a Masters, and that the extra years of experience would outweigh the difference in degrees.  That one discussion set me on a different path to where I am now – and I am forever grateful.  The worst advice was that “real scientists do research”.  That made my decision to go into teaching all that much easier. 

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

Thank you for all the amazing work you do to advance the equitable sharing of information ? 

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

We are all in this together, and we each have something valuable to bring to the table.  When we collaborate, we will find ways to make the future better for everyone.

Haven’t had a chance to register for the 2021 Global Summit yet? Register here >>

The 2021 CC Global Summit (September 20-24) is fast approaching, only 3 more weeks to go. Up next in our ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ series, we have a fantastic duo — Flor de Fuego and Naoto Hieda. Florencia Alonso’s art practice as Flor de Fuego investigates digital image and media related to live coding, animation, video and the Internet. She produced full-dome live coding projects at the planetariums in Buenos Aires and Bogota, and at Domo Lleno 2019 with Iris Saladino. She was part of Mutek Montreal with Amplify DAI. With Francisco Raposeiras, they form a duo “c0de p03try” exhibited at JSAmsterdam Nation Conference, Experimental Video Festival Pumpumyachkan (Peru), and the International Conference on Live Coding (Ireland). As part of CliC (Collective of Live Coders), she participated in + CODE in Buenos Aires, and other live coding events, and as a VJ. Alonso actively collaborates in the development of Hydra, software created by Olivia Jack, giving talks and workshops in Argentina. A professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the UNLP, she is currently doing her thesis in Plastic Arts, and is associate of the Chair of Photography and Digital Image at the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Naoto Hieda is a Japanese artist based in Cologne, Germany. They challenge the current paradigm of productive coding to speculate its new form, namely post-coding, through their neurodiverse perspective and live coding experiences. The duo co-founded Hydra community meetups at venues including NODE20 (Germany), and presented hybrid media installation GlitchMe at CODAME (US).

Based in?: La Plata, Argentina ; Cologne, Germany 

Summit Session: Glitch Vacations

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

We use CC licenses, and also Naoto presented at the CC global summit 2020.

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?

Second time

What was your favorite CC Global Summit?

It’s gonna be this one ?

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?

Workshop sessions — to create something together!

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

The best part: we enjoy the process of working together (often funny).

The difficult part: we have to finish working and go to sleep.

What is your favorite GIF?

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

Hydra (live coding environment) – we use it a lot for creating visuals and for the upcoming performance.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

“Glitch me”

What was the best career advice you ever received? What was the worst career advice you ever received?

Flor: Stop dividing discipline as if it’s a slice of pizza (best advice).

Flor: don’t wear a skirt with trousers (worst advice).

There are only 3 more weeks until the 2021 CC Global Summit, taking place virtually from September 20-24. Haven’t had a chance to register for the 2021 Global Summit yet? Register here >>

 

Hi folks! We are back with a new episode of CC’s podcast, Open Minds … from Creative Commons!

On this episode, CC’s Director of Product, Anna Tumadóttir, sits down with Matt Mullenweg. Originally from Houston, Texas, Matt is the co-founder of the open-source blogging platform WordPress, the most popular publishing platform on the web, and the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce and Jetpack.

As an advocate of distributed work, Matt set out to change the way folks work at Automattic. With more than 1,100 employees working from more than 62 countries, it is an entirely distributed company with no physical headquarters.

“I have found throughout my career, the more I’ve given away, the more I’ve gotten back.”

Matt is a long-time supporter of Creative Commons, and earlier this year, we announced that CC Search, the search engine we built for openly licensed content, had found a new home at WordPress.org. 

• Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also subscribe via the show’s RSS feed.
• Episode transcript: Text // PDF // Text

Please subscribe to the show in whatever podcast app you use, so you don’t miss any of our conversations with people working to make the internet and our global culture more open and collaborative.

 

We’re back with another ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ Q&A — next up is Houcemeddine Turki. A long-term Wikimedian, Houcemeddine has contributed to Wikipedia and sister projects since 2009. He is also an open science advocate promoting the use of free licenses, like Creative Commons Licenses, in research and code publishing among Tunisian research scientists for years. He is concerned about the spread of information about the usefulness of free computer resources to develop real-life computer applications at a low cost, from the perspective of science policy and scholarly research. As a Wikimedian, Houcemeddine was among the first members of Wikimedia Tunisia User Group in 2014, serving as GLAM and Education Coordinator for the affiliate between 2018 and 2019 as Vice-Chair of the group since 2019. Moreover, he was involved as a member of the Programme Committee of the WikiIndaba Conference, the Premier African Conference of Wikimedia Community, in 2018 and 2019. Furthermore, he currently serves as a member of WikiIndaba Streering Committee, of Wikimedia and Libraries User Group Steering Committee, and of Wikimedia Foundation Affiliation Committee. “In real life”, Houcemeddine is a medical student and research assistant at the University of Sfax, Tunisia. He is affiliated to the Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit, a local research structure that focuses on the development of knowledge-based systems based on freely available computer resources.

Based in?: Sfax, Tunisia

Summit Session: Creative Commons and Computer Programming

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

As a contributor to Wikimedia Projects, I have always been in contact with Creative Commons Licenses, and I have been familiar with them for a long time. Effectively, the Creative Commons Licenses opened ways to spread Wikipedia and sister projects across all continents. Such an outcome encourages me to get involved in sharing knowledge about free licenses in my own country. I believe this can improve the quality and visibility of our local research and development. That is why I have worked with other individuals to create a research unit that interests in free licenses. Thankfully, we succeeded in co-founding this research unit as part of the University of Sfax, a major university in Africa. We look forward to defining research policies that are motivated by common free licenses.

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?

This is the first time I made it to the CC Global Summit.

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?

I would like to see more experiences about the adaptation of Creative Commons Licenses to support specific open applications. This can be inspiring for us as a developing world to develop our usage of CC Licenses.

Why are you an advocate for Open?

There are a lack of resources that can be used for the development of computer applications in Africa, particularly in Tunisia. Without freely available databases and codes, the enhancement of computer science research in my underdeveloped continent will be impossible.

“We cannot stand as a worldwide community without open sharing.”

What is your proudest achievement?

My most important achievement is to share open resources with international research communities. I was honoured to introduce many research scientists to Wikimedia Projects and help them get involved with Wikimedia Research.

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

The best and most difficult part of what I always do is that I succeed to publish research papers in highly referred journals with the support of Wikimedia Community. This requires high-level research skills, as well as advanced knowledge of Wikimedia Projects. As well, this requires a long-term commitment, as revising research outputs is time-consuming and exhausting. However, this is worth it.

What is your favorite GIF?

Thomas Shafee, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

Wikidata is currently the most promising knowledge base. I really love it because it hosts many communities as part of its open ecosystem. Nowadays, many people contribute to it on a daily basis and reuse its core knowledge in useful applications thanks to its CC0 License and flexible data model.

What’s one new trend that you think the CC community should look out for?

The current trend I have observed is there are efforts to create a distributed architecture to host license information for products and outputs. Such a technology (e.g. Blockchain) can be useful to show copyright information for items when preserving creators’ privacy. I think the CC Community can benefit from such architectures to keep track of the services using Creative Commons Licenses and to efficiently spread them around the world.

What is the biggest setback you have experienced? How did you overcome it?

The biggest setback I always experience is the issue of license compatibility. I overcame it by reading lots of technical documentation about this issue. However, this was not easy for me, and I do not see that many people would be very comfortable in doing this.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

Creative Commons Community should involve more people from different disciplines. Specialized people are the most skilled people that can point the main legal concerns in their field of interest.

What was the best career advice you ever received? What was the worst career advice you ever received?

The best career advice I have ever received is to get involved in the talk groups of CC-related communities in social networks. I have learned a lot from active people there. You can have information not just by directly asking useful questions, but also by reading the discussions of other active participants. I did not receive bad advice. Even the worst advice can be useful to learn what does not effectively work, and to adjust thinking skills.

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

Thank you Creative Commons for supporting the open sharing of valuable resources that help many communities develop their projects and get interesting outcomes.

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

It means a lot to me. We cannot stand as a worldwide community without open sharing. The Global North needs socioeconomic and cultural information about developing countries to develop and sell their products, and have significantly higher incomes. The Global South requires specialized datasets about detailed ground knowledge to build their knowledge-based systems.

Join us from wherever you are for the 2021 CC Global Summit, which takes place 20-24 September! Register here >>

 

Dr. Suma Parahakaran is one of our presenters at the 2021 CC Global Summit, taking place 20-24 September. In advance of her session at Summit, we caught up with her for a quick Q&A. Suma is currently pursuing her second PhD in Bioethics and Environmental Education at the American University of Sovereign Nations. Suma has a Doctorate in Education in Human Values-based water education from the University of Sydney, Australia. She also holds a Masters in Education from Assumption International University, Thailand. As a curriculum developer, she has conducted training workshops on integration of values and ethics into the curriculum with teachers from Southeast Asia. She is also a module writer (both for blended, online and offline learning). The school under her leadership was nominated for the Japan Education for Sustainable Development (2014 SEAMEO-Japan ESD Award) under the theme of “Fostering Global Citizenship for Sustainable Future”. She was also the resource lead and evaluated the Human values based water, sanitation and hygiene program, UNHABITAT (United Nations Human Settlements) (Regional Training of Trainers (TOT) course on Integration of Human Values-based Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Education (HVWSHE).

Based in?:

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

Summit Session:

Sustainable Environmental Education and Best Practices Integrating Human Values and Ethics

How did you get involved with Creative Commons? 

I heard about it when I was lecturing at the open university.

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?

Once

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?

Global participation—as it is for the common good.

Why are you an advocate for Open?

Education and medical research must be free for any country to be successful without politicking. 

“I want CC to be the new crest jewel for making a better world!”

What is your proudest achievement?

I specialized in Curriculum Integration of Values and Ethics. 

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

Research on improving education is the best part. Most difficult is to get schools to take up Values and Ethics as an agenda by policymakers. 

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

Taxila Education where I am opening up for Educators (working on it).

What’s one new trend that you think the CC community should look out for?

Profiles of CC members, like me, being advertised, so that we can collaborate on our important work, on many platforms. 

What is the biggest setback you have experienced? How did you overcome it?

So far the going has been good! 

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

LET’S HAVE A BETTER WORLD…. One where love, peace, and sustainable education become the new NORM! 

What was the best career advice you ever received? What was the worst career advice you ever received?

I have followed my own intuition. Worst is people trying to get what they want you to do to achieve their purpose, and not for the common good. 

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

I want CC to be the new crest jewel for making a better world!

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

Education for All, People are FOR and by the PEOPLE

 Join us from wherever you are for the 2021 CC Global Summit, which takes place 20-24 September!  Register here >>

 

We launched the ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ series to introduce the CC community to our fantastic presenters at this year’s CC Global Summit, taking place September 20-24. Next up, we sit down with Arturo Sánchez Pineda. Arturo is a Venezuelan researcher (PhD) in physics, computer science and education. He lives in Europe and develops his professional and outreach activities at CERN, LAPP, and ICTP in Switzerland, France, and Italy. Some of the relevant activities in the OER area are the management of the ATLAS Open Data project for Education at CERN, the coordination of the CEVALE2VE, being a member of the EU Horizon 2020 project called ESCAPE, and the EU ERASMUS+ project LA-CoNGA physics. He is also the co-founder and GNC representative of the Creative Commons Venezuela Chapter. In general, he always tries to teach and outreach what he learns. In his opinion, the best way to contribute to the Creative Commons objectives and society has been through education. Find out more at https://www.youtube.com/c/ArturoSanchezArtara.

Based in?: Geneva, Switzerland

Summit Session: Open Source & Open Access: from United Nations Agencies to Open Educational Programs in the Americas

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Creative Commons about our Open Access program for ATLAS Collaboration at CERN (read it here), and from there, I started to interact with CC constantly!

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?

Four times (since 2017).

What was your favorite CC Global Summit? (if applicable)

Lisbon 2019

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?

More hands-on workshops for those new in Open Access tools and resources.

Why are you an advocate for Open?

Open has been the only way I know that education and science are done, so I keep doing it for the global community, or at least I try.

“International cooperation is possible and necessary for equity and progress in education around the world. And Open Access is real.”

What is your proudest achievement?

Being part of truly global communities where I am never the smartest guy in the room.

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

The best part is reaching so many people, and the most difficult part is figuring out how to reach more people.

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

Discord. It allows me to organize engaging events and fully operational teams.

What is the biggest setback you have experienced? How did you overcome it?

The usage and outreach of the Open Software, less on the technical side, but as a tool for economic and social development in the global south.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

International cooperation is possible and necessary for equity and progress in education around the world. And Open Access is real.

What was the best career advice you ever received? What was the worst career advice you ever received?

My best career advice was from one of my grandma’s in Spanish dele, which translates as “continue with what you are doing, it remains less than when you started.” And the worst… I do not remember it.

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

You are truly global, let’s embrace that.

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

 Sharing without documentation — on-boarding and outreach is not really sharing.

Haven’t had a chance to register for the 2021 Global Summit yet? Register here >>

The countdown to the 2021 CC Global Summit (September 20-24) continues, and next up in our ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ series, we have Leo Cunha, CTO of Curriki.org. In his role, Leo architected and managed the development of the first Open Educational Resources (OER) enterprise-level, standards-compliant, authoring and distribution platform for interactive learning resources. The success and innovation of Curriki’s open architecture resulted in its selection as a finalist in the Best Emerging Instructional Technology Solution category for the Codie Awards in 2021. The technology spearheaded by Leo also resulted in Curriki being chosen, alongside the World Health Organization, as one of two non-profit organizations sponsored to participate in the Red Hat Innovation Labs in 2020.

Leo is a seasoned systems architect and education technology executive with over 30 years of progressively challenging experience in management, leadership, and the design and development of mission critical software systems for education.

Based in?: Cupertino, United States

Summit Session: Project #OPENEDUCATION – Teaching and Learning in Perfect Harmony

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?

Through my work in Open Educational Resources (OER), and the opportunity to be on a call with Dr. Cable Green.

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?

First time ever.

Why are you an advocate for Open?

I have actively participated in the Open movement since its inception, and have been a proponent and contributor ever since.

“The spirit of sharing is progressive. The better we get at it, the better it will become.”

What is your proudest achievement?

Releasing the CurrikiStudio, the OPEN authoring platform for OPEN educational content.

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

Making a measurable impact in the state of education and equity is the best part of what I do. The most difficult part is ensuring that the spirit of open is not lost among the users of open technologies and creators of open content.

What is your favorite GIF?

Ooga-chaka

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

CurrikiStudio – I am amazed at the adoption and imaginative ways our open technologies are being put to use!

What’s one new trend that you think the CC community should look out for?

Keeping an eye on the hype around NFTs

What is the biggest setback you have experienced? How did you overcome it?

There are no major setbacks, once you set your mind to overcome whatever life throws in your path.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

Share. And Share Alike!

What was the best career advice you ever received? What was the worst career advice you ever received?

I wish I had received career advice much earlier in my life – like as early as middle school!

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

Don’t stop, and don’t look back.

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

The spirit of sharing is progressive. The better we get at it, the better it will become.

 

Haven’t had a chance to register for the 2021 Global Summit yet? Register here >>

 

With exactly one month to go until the 2021 CC Global Summit (September 20-24), we are launching our ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ series to introduce the CC community to some of our amazing presenters from this year’s event. First up, we have Primavera De Filippi. Primavera is a Researcher at the National Center of Scientific Research in Paris, and Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. Her research focuses on the legal challenges and opportunities of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, with specific focus on governance and trust. She is the co-author of the book “Blockchain and the Law,” published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, and she was recently awarded a €2M grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to investigate how blockchain technology can help improve institutional governance through greater confidence and trust.

Based in?: Paris, France

Summit Session: Creative NFTs: Using Blockchain Technology and NFTs to Support Creative Commons (access the program here).

How did you get involved with Creative Commons?
I joined Creative Commons France in 2010 as a legal expert.

How many times have you been to CC Global Summit?
Three

In the future, what is something you would like to see at the CC Summit?More NFT related stuff ?.

Why are you an advocate for Open?
I believe that information should remain open and accessible to all, in order to foster creativity through incremental innovation. The model of artificial scarcity established by copyright law is not ideal for all types of works, especially with the Internet, which is characterized by digital abundance.

“Blockchain can be used for creating digital scarcity and exclusivity, but also to foster creativity and promote digital abundance, we just need more commons-oriented people to work on it!”

What is your proudest achievement?
Bringing my Plantoid art project at Burning Man (www.plantoid.org): Plantoids are blockchain-based life-forms, or mechanical plants using cryptocurrency to reproduce themselves by hiring artists to create replicas of themselves. The goal is to eliminate the figure of the author, by enabling people to fund the art-pieces themselves, rather than their creators, to facilitate their reproduction.

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?
The best part of what I do is exploring the new opportunities that blockchain technology provides, and how they can foster new economic models for artists and creators. The most difficult part is actually getting these opportunities to be implemented in the real world, and adopted by creators.

What is your favorite GIF?

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?
Notion — a new editor that blends notes, tasks, wikis in one app. 

What is the biggest setback you have experienced? How did you overcome it?
Getting people to understand that not all NFTs are ridiculously energy-consuming, and that different blockchain platforms can be used to provide environmental friendly solutions for NFTs. I am still struggling to overcome it, but it’s all about information and education.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?
Blockchain can be used for creating digital scarcity and exclusivity, but also to foster creativity and promote digital abundance, we just need more commons-oriented people to work on it!

What was the best career advice you ever received? What was the worst career advice you ever received?
I think the best and worst career advice I ever received were essentially the same: ‘Like what you do, and you’ll never work a day in your life’ — very true and very false at the same time ?.

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?Thank you for all the work and inspiration you’ve brought to the world ❤️.

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?
Sharing is a skill set that needs to be learned in order to build a more sustainable and cooperative future.

Haven’t had a chance to register for the 2021 Global Summit yet? Register here >>

This month, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) shared its new open access policy. This new policy is a welcome initiative that will increase opportunities for the findings of publicly funded research to be accessed, shared and reused.

As part of our work supporting efforts in the creation, adoption and implementation of open access policies with various institutions, Creative Commons (CC) was pleased to lend its knowledge to assist UKRI in developing its open access policy as part of the Open Access Review last year. Generally, CC is committed to the goal of ensuring that the public is able to access immediately, free of charge, and without restriction, the peer-reviewed research articles and academic books resulting from publicly funded research. We are pleased to see that the comments we provided back in May 2020 have been taken into account in the review process. We are especially glad to see that key requirements of the new policy include immediate open access for research articles and the release of publications under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY) (CC BY ND by exception only*).

CC licenses and tools have become the standard in research publication open licensing. They are free, easy-to-use, simple and standardized licenses that enable researchers to share the articles or monographs they wrote with everyone, worldwide, on the conditions that they determine. In practice, this means research articles and data can be freely reused by others, thereby enhancing collaboration among researchers, accelerating the pace of scientific discovery, and facilitating the dissemination of reliable, practical information to the public.

For guidance on implementing an open access policy or using the CC License Suite, please contact us at info@creativecommons.org—we’re here to help.

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*At CC, we believe that the use of CC BY ND licenses should not be encouraged for open access publishing, because those licenses restrict standard reuses that researchers and the general public need to be able to do in order to maximize the benefit of research outputs, such as adaptations for a different readership or translation into other languages. By contrast, CC BY-licensed research can be translated into other languages, adapted for use as open educational resources in the classroom, or shared widely on other platforms that champion the spread of knowledge, such as Wikipedia.

Today marks my first year anniversary at CC. It is such an honour and a privilege to lead this organization whose relevance could not be more important at this time.

However, as I sit and write this reflection, I know for so many in our global community and network that our thoughts and prayers are with the women and girls in Afghanistan with whom I want to express my solidarity. I sincerely hope the international community will do all that it can to support women and girls in Afghanistan to exercise their basic human rights against a backdrop of chaos, violence and uncertainty. 

As for CC, I would like to take this moment of a year as CEO to reflect on all that we have achieved together during this extraordinary time. The global pandemic has meant that no one from this global, virtual organization has met in-person since February 2020. In fact, I’ve yet to meet a single Creative Commoner in-person since joining as CEO. However, we have not let this hamper our ambitions or restrict our achievements.

In the first four months of coming to CC, we led a virtual strategic process, which resulted in the creation of our new 5 year strategy. The theme of Better Sharing resonates now more than ever. This theme forms the central message of our 20th Anniversary Capital Campaign. It has been a privilege to support our 20th Anniversary Committee and to see the launch of the campaign in May this year. A huge thank you must go to the 20th anniversary co-chairs, Paul Brest and Ruth Okediji, whose wisdom and thoughtfulness shine through in their dedication to Creative Commons.

Our 20th Anniversary Capital Campaign was launched to a flying start, thanks to the generous support of Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Their $5 million multi-year gift to launch a program focused on Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAMs) is a phenomenal investment in supporting openness in cultural heritage. Brigitte Vézina, who is leading CC’s work on GLAM, presented the new program at Wikimania earlier this week.

This generous gift will help us achieve our ambitious goal of raising $15 million by the end of next year. Thank you to all those who support our work – without you, we could not free knowledge and culture around the world for everyone, everywhere. 

Our strategy is our guiding map over the next 5 years, and it is great to see our priorities of advocacy, legal innovation, and capacity building start to take shape. Last week, our legal team, composed of Sarah Pearson and Kat Walsh, published an open consultation on how we will be addressing the issue of aggressive license enforcement. This has long been a topic in the open licensing community, and we are now seeing real action coming together to address this critical area of concern.

Our work in Open Education led by Dr. Cable Green continues, and it was a real success story to see California adopt what we have been advocating for in open textbooks. We hope that over the coming months, as the world looks to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), we will have something more to share with you on our open climate ambitions – watch this space. It has been exciting to watch our work with Grant for the Web mature in the second year of the collaboration. The program is thriving under the strong leadership of the Interledger Foundation.

Over the past year, we have also seen the successful transition of CC Search to Automattic, and our stewardship of the Open COVID pledge transferred to American University. It is a testament to CC to see projects which began here grow and prosper under the leadership of organizations that share our values. We have also seen staff too move onto new and exciting opportunities, and I want to thank each and every one of them for their tireless efforts at CC. It has been great to welcome Kat Drew, Kat Walsh, Marlena Reimer, Brylie Oxley and Ony Anukem to CC. Our global community remains a strength that no matter where you are in the world you will find people who share our values over the importance of sharing knowledge and culture. I am excited about our 20th Anniversary Summit, which is now just a month away. I invite you all to join the Creative Commons team, global network, and broader open community to discuss key issues and learn together, the week of September 20th.

And so for the next year, my key priorities remain the 20th Anniversary Campaign, to meet our goal of $15 million by the end of next year, implementing our strategy of Better Sharing, and continuing to raise the profile and awareness of Creative Commons across our world. I look forward to the year ahead and thank you again for your support, friendship and commitment to the powerful cause of sharing knowledge and culture.