It’s been a bit more than seven years since I took a call from
Larry Lessig about joining
Creative Commons. It was my birthday
in mid-August 2004, and I was sitting on a log near the
beach at
Brewster, a small town in Massachusetts. The signal was cutting in and
out, but enough got through for Larry to ask me to come on board, and
for me to say yes.
It was the best decision I ever made.
Since that call,
I’ve flown somewhere around 1,200,000 miles, spent about 800 nights on
the road, and visited more than 30 countries, giving more than 400
lectures and talks. I’ve spent days with scientists in disciplines
ranging from biodiversity to geospatial to chemistry to biology to
physics to anthropology to neuroscience and on. I’ve danced to dubstep
in Zagreb, lost my passport in Bogota, and been drunk under the table in
Helsinki by our amazing
international
affiliates.
I met my wife,
Carolina Rossini,
through Creative Commons (for this alone, I should buy the world a
drink) and we recently had our first child, who may be the first baby to
emerge from the movement. CC’s been incredible for me, a challenging job
that grew me and opened me and taught me. I’m a better person because of
this job.
I got to go to work, pretty much every day, loving what I did. And I got
to work with the most amazing people, my fellow staff who picked me up
in moments of incredible personal trial and kept me going, as well as
creating the most demanding intellectual environment I’ve ever
known.
Now it’s time for me to say yes to something
else, and move on from my position as VP of Science at Creative
Commons.
I’ve launched a project called
Consent to Research, which is being
supported by the Kauffman Foundation,
Sage Bionetworks,
Lybba, and a few other organizations. The idea
behind CtR is simple: make it easy for people who want to share data
about themselves for scientific, medical, and health research to do so.
It’s not centered on intellectual property, though it does touch on it.
It’s more about privacy, and in particular, about making it possible for
people to get informed about what is possible with their data and how
beautiful research can emerge if enough genomes, enough biosamples, and
enough other kinds of data can be shared and connected.
CC is not abandoning the field in science. If anything, the next
iteration will have an even greater impact at national and international
policy levels. We spent seven years building expertise, building
networks (both professional and social), and
releasing products that drive
science towards an open, networked state. Those seven years are the
foundation for the next round of CC science, and don’t let anybody fool
you into thinking that CC is out of the open science world. They will
(strange to use the third person!) be proving that point with a series
of workshops and papers in the coming months.
I’m not leaving CC entirely. It means too much to me, and I’ll maintain
a role as Senior Advisor so I can be actively involved with the next
generation of CC’s scientific program. I’ve accepted a seat on the Board
of Directors at iCommons, and I plan to be a
project lead of the new CC-US jurisdiction as it emerges. I am therefore
an affiliate now, and am looking forward to criticizing HQ for a lack of
transparency ;-)
Thank you to everyone who made this
such a great experience. It’s been a joy.