I’m delighted to announce, on behalf of the Creative Commons (CC) Board of Directors, the formal launch of the global search for the next Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CC.

The timing could not be more exciting for CC. We will welcome our next CEO as we prepare to enter our third decade as the global standard for sharing works of knowledge and creativity.

Our new CEO will both shape the organization’s future strategy and operationally lead the team and community by leveraging CC’s tremendous assets. These assets include CC’s core competencies, credibility, and track record; as well as the skills, commitment, and passion of its talented board of directors, advisory council, staff, global network, and volunteers.

This is an outstanding opportunity for a creative strategist and manager to champion the work of a leading voice in the open movement as it evolves its role within its community and the world. 

The full job description can be accessed here.

Questions or confidential nominations can be shared with our search partners at Viewcrest Advisors: creativecommons@viewcrestadvisors.com

Thank you for sharing this post broadly! 

Molly Van Houweling | Creative Commons Board Chair

The post CC Launches the Global Search for Its Next Chief Executive Officer appeared first on Creative Commons.

This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019. Ari Madian was one of those contributors and we are grateful for his work on this project.

The Creative Commons (CC) License Chooser was made nearly 15 years ago and is long overdue for an update. The purpose of the CC Chooser is to help users choose which CC license is right for them and their needs. However, since its release, it has fallen short in a few respects. 

First, the user interface is quite cluttered, with no clear visual hierarchy. For example, elements on the page appear to be fighting for equal importance. Second, the lack of a clear call-to-action makes it difficult to get started using the tool. Third, it’s difficult to understand what the selected license means, as well as get an idea of what the full CC license suite has to offer due to a lack of information.

The New Chooser

Since May 2019, an updated version of the CC License Chooser has been in development as part of the 2019 Google Summer of Code (GSoC). The main goal of the original GSoC project, “Human-Centered Education of CC Licenses,” was to revamp the CC Chooser with a greater focus on usability and on the educational experience of the license suite. Today, the updated CC Chooser is still a work in progress, particularly with regards to the user interface design and internationalization.

The screenshot above shows a small section of the new CC Chooser. At the top of the image is the updated CC license selection section. In terms of design and usability, this is already a huge improvement over the existing CC Chooser. However, we’re still making minor improvements based on user feedback. We’ve carried over the functionality of the HTML license mark generator from the original CC Chooser but added rich text generation, simplified it to be more usable, and brought a more contemporary look to the generated mark.

A new addition to the CC Chooser is what we call the “Help Section,” which can be seen at the bottom of the image. The purpose of this section is to help answer questions that users might have during the license selection process and to help users get a better idea of what the CC license suite has to offer, as well as how it works.

What’s Next?

The new CC Chooser still needs some work before it’s ready to become the CC Chooser. For example, we need to:

• Make improvements to the CC Chooser’s UI and selection process. This includes making license selection easier, simplifying the UI, and integrating it with CC’s new web design system called Vocabulary.
• Internationalize the CC Chooser (i.e. make it available in multiple languages)
• Finish technical work related to the CC Chooser’s infrastructure

The UI improvements and internationalization work are core objectives of the Outreachy internship running from December 2019 to March 2020. Olga Bulat is the Outreachy intern currently working on the CC License Chooser. She’s experimenting with the introduction of a step-based system for CC license selection, which will help guide the user through the various licensing considerations. She’ll also be collaborating with CC’s legal counsel and communications team to provide updated text describing each license in a clear and succinct way. 

Tasks, issues, and discussions related to the release of the new CC Chooser are tracked with the Launch Milestone in the creativecommons/cc-chooser repository on GitHub.

How Can I Contribute?

Anyone can contribute by testing the beta deployment of the new CC License Chooser. At the top of the page, there is a link to a feedback form. Take a look at the new CC Chooser and let us know what you think! You can also join the #cc-dev-license-chooser channel on Creative Commons’ Slack and keep an eye out for calls for volunteers to test usability.

Those who are technically inclined can contribute by fixing code issues, as well as finding and reporting bugs. The GitHub repo for the new CC Chooser is called “cc-chooser,” and can be found here. Please remember to read the contributing section in the chooser repo’s README. Issues marked with the green “help wanted” tag are open to contributors, however issues marked with the yellow “in progress” tag are not open.

Quick Links

• New Chooser (Beta): https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/
• Existing Chooser: https://creativecommons.org/choose/
• GitHub Repository (source code): https://github.com/creativecommons/cc-chooser
• Contributing to the code: https://github.com/creativecommons/cc-chooser#contributing

The post Here’s a Sneak Peek at the Updated Creative Commons License Chooser appeared first on Creative Commons.

This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019. Maria Belen Guaranda was one of those contributors and we are grateful for her work on this project.

“By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes.” David McCandless

The landscape of openly licensed content is wide and varied. Millions of web pages host and share CC-licensed works—in fact, we estimate that there are over 1.6 billion across the web! With this growth of CC-licensed works, Creative Commons (CC) is increasingly interested in learning how hosts and users of CC-licensed materials are connected, as well as the types of content published under a CC license and how this content is shared. Each month, CC uses Common Crawl data to find all domains that contain CC-licensed content. This dataset contains information about the URL of the websites and the licenses used.

Using the Linked Commons

In order to draw conclusions and insights from this dataset, we created the Linked Commons: a visualization that shows how the Commons is digitally connected.

In the Linked Commons, nodes (units in a data structure) represent websites of an organization, person, academic institution, etc. A link between nodes exists if one website hosts CC-licensed content that belongs to or is hosted by another website (as indicated by a URL link). A community represents a group of websites that are closely related to each other because they produce and/or share CC-licensed content between them.

Vast quantities of data make any web browser render elements slowly and may eventually freeze. Due to the 100k nodes included in the Linked Commons, the visualization initially took a long time to render and had a clustered appearance—this was a major concern. 

That’s why we decided to use data from only a single month and chose the top 500 websites containing links to CC-licensed material, as well as all of the other domains those 500 nodes are connected to. In addition to lessening the loading time, we found that this was also more user-friendly because navigating the entire dataset’s graph would be dizzying. Even with this smaller dataset, we were able to gather valuable insights from the graph, including discovering subcommunities of CC license hosts and users. One such subcommunity is shown in the image below.

The subcommunity above is an “educational” community; made up of libraries, universities, and schools. 

Visualizations like these are valuable for CC because they can help guide our outreach efforts and targeted communications. The CC Search team can also use this data to choose which domains to prioritize indexing in the CC Catalog.

The visualization is interactive; users can pan, zoom in and out, hover over a node to see its neighbors, and click on a node to display a pie chart, like the one below. We encourage users to test out the Linked Commons and see what insights they can gather from this information!

What’s next?

We plan to continue working on the Linked Commons. Here are some features we hope to add:

• Live updates—The graph is currently static because it uses a single month’s data file that has already been processed. We would like to automatically update the graph as soon as new data is processed.

• Filtering domains by country—Some domains have suffixes that represent countries, such as domain.au which corresponds to a domain from Australia. We plan to use these suffixes to filter nodes in the visualization by country.

• Filtering domains by name—A user might want to check if a specific domain has CC-licensed content and how that content is used. We plan to add a search bar and provide the user with the ability to search for a specific node given a domain name and/or URL.

Interested? Check out the Linked Commons here!

Give us your feedback!

The Linked Commons is an open source project. The project’s source code is available in the Github repo. Contributions are welcome! For the technical details of how this project was developed, please read this series of posts on the CC Open Source blog.

The post Introducing the Linked Commons appeared first on Creative Commons.

We’re excited to announce that the Call for Proposals and Scholarship Applications for the 2020 CC Global Summit is now open! 

The CC Global Summit gathers those in the open community under the umbrella of learning, sharing, and creating; united by a passion for growing a vibrant, usable commons powered by collaboration and gratitude.

Call for Proposals, Art Submissions, and Research Posters

This year, we invite proposals that address the topics and issues outlined in the tracks below with a focus on actionable insights and outcomes, from case studies to workshops and storytelling sessions. 

• Creators of the Commons—The faces, work, and stories of those building the Commons
• Powering the Commons—Exploring the tools, technology, and communities that power the Commons
• Open Education and Open Scholarship—Supporting communities that practice open access to education and scholarship
• Open Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums—Improving and expanding open access to cultural heritage
  
• Policy and Advocacy Promoting the Commons—Strategies for legal action and copyright reform

We’re also pleased to announce that we’ve added two new ways for you to engage with the CC Summit, these include art submissions and digital research posters! Before submitting a proposal, art submission, or digital research poster idea, please read through the submission guidelines!

CC Summit Scholarship Fund 

Finally, in order to reach the largest number of community members possible, we invest a significant amount of resources into our CC Summit Scholarship Fund and invite community members from around the world to submit an application for a scholarship. Learn more about our scholarship program!

Mark these important deadlines on your calendar! 

• Proposal submissions: 12 February 2020
• Scholarship applications: 12 February 2020
• Art submissions: 19 February 2020
• Research poster submissions: 19 February 2020

Questions? Contact summit@creativecommons.org! Interested in becoming a sponsor for the 2020 CC Global Summit, learn more about our sponsorship opportunities by contacting CC’s Director of Development Jami Vass at jami@creativecommons.org.

The post CC Global Summit: Call for Proposals and Scholarship Applications appeared first on Creative Commons.

Creative Commons is pleased to be a part of the second annual Public Domain Day (PDD) celebration held in Washington D.C. on January 30, in collaboration with the Internet Archive, the Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and SPARC.

In order to celebrate the public domain and highlight the work of artists around the world who contribute to the global commons, we are excited to showcase the creative works of six artists during the PDD celebration in Washington, D.C. Following the event, these works will be made available under a CC License or released into the public domain. 

Meet the artists below! 

• Darnell Gardner

Darnell Gardner is a photographer from Detroit. He explores how our senses of self form, fall, and form again.

Connect with Darnell on Instagram @dgardnerjr.

• David Amoroso

David Amoroso shows his admiration for Latin culture through his artwork. Although the majority of his work is dedicated to painting portraits of everyday people, he also represents Mexican pop culture through his work. David has exhibited and worked in the D.C. Metro Area, New York, California, Arizona, North Carolina, and Mexico, as well as Central and South America.

Connect with David on Instagram @amorosoart.

• Laci Jordan 

Laci Jordan is a multidisciplinary designer, illustrator, Creative Director, and the true definition of a modern-day renaissance woman. Laci’s work concentrates on color, pop culture, the representation of marginalized people, and the intersectionality that exists amongst all of these spheres.

Connect with Laci on Twitter @SoLaciLike or on Instagram @solacilike.

• Naturel 

Naturel is a celebrated artist and leader in the creative community and we are excited that he will be showcasing some of his works during our event. Naturel’s influence in the art world and pop culture demonstrates the power creators of color have to shift culture once they are given direct access to their audiences and the power to build their own platforms. 

Connect with Naturel on Twitter @therealnaturel or on Instagram @naturel.

• Rikasso

Rikasso’s work is best described as a collage of various components that work in tandem to create one cohesive picture. Viewing the various components becomes an engaging game of look-and-find. By using various relatable references, Rikasso gives viewers a sense of themselves in the work. 

Connect with Rikasso on Twitter @Big_Rikassi or on Instagram @rikasso.

• Tenbeete Solomon

Tenbeete Solomon, aka Trap Bob, is a visual artist, illustrator, and animator based in the D.C. Metro Area. She is known for her use of bold colors and gestures to convey both the humor and struggles of everyday life. Her work is socially conscious and frequently inspired by activism and community issues, with an aim to bridge the gap between her audience and her message. As the founder of Trap Bob World, LLC, a freelance design and product company, Tenbeete has worked with leading corporations, brands, and organizations—including Giphy, Pabst Blue Ribbon, the Elizabeth Warren Campaign, Apple, and Refinery 29. 

Connect with Tenbeete on Twitter @trapbob or on Instagram @trapxbob.

Stay tuned for a follow-up post showcasing these artists’ final works!

Interested in attending the event? Register here! If you’re not able to join us, there will be a webcast available here, starting from 6:30 PM EST on January 30, 2020!

The post Meet the Artists Commissioned for the Public Domain Day Celebration appeared first on Creative Commons.