I'm actually based in Vancouver Canada but I've been actively leading digital commons initiatives globally since 2003. For the last five years I was Associate Director of Global Learning for Creative Commons helping government, organizations, and businesses around the world adopt and use open licenses to share digital works. In this capacity I supported open policy, open business models, and open practices across all kinds of open initiatives including Open Access, Open Educational Resources, open data, open science, and open culture. I'm the co-author of a recently published book Made With Creative Commons. This book makes the case that sharing is good for business, especially for companies, organizations, and creators who care about more than just the bottom line. It includes 24 case studies of hybrid organizations who are part market or state and part commons. All of this work has led me to see the great social and economic benefits of the commons - in all its forms. Having started out focusing on the digital commons I'm now coming to embrace the physical commons and position my go forward efforts in a way that embraces both the digital and physical. Commons work in Europe seems significantly more advanced than in North America but I'm sensing a growing interest here so I've started speaking to people about the possibility of to establishing a NA Commons Assembly. In September I'll be speaking at the Open Science FAIR Conference (OSFair2017 - www.opensciencefair.eu) in Athens about the book Made With Creative Commons. Hope to meet some of you there!
