The Next Big Thing
Almost three years ago I wrote about how I was [Changing Paths, Staying The Course](). Well, I am doing it again. All things come to an end, even good ones, as that is the only way new things can start. Today was the last day of my job at Creative Commons.
As I wrote earlier, I have been associated with CC since October, 2006 when I got involved with Science Commons. I worked at a breakneck speed for the past two and a half years, traveling around the world, 100+ days every year, evangelizing, giving talks and presentations, leading workshops, helping, supporting, doing all I could to help make the products and practice of science more open. With the help of a wonderful Science Advisory Board, we had many achievements some of which are:
- getting the Paleobiology Database to move from a very restrictive license to CC BY;
- participating in making an important statement on the need for open licensing in taxonomy;
- supporting text and data mining (TDM) initiatives around the world and helped craft The Hague Declaration on Knowledge Creation in the Digital Age;
- pushing for well-formed principles for data citation;
- promoting legal interoperability of research data;
- signing the Bouchout Global Declaration on Open Biodiversity; and
- helping the major open access publishers and data repositories successfully move to the latest CC BY 4.0 license.
We got a lot more done, but a lot more remains to be done. I will continue to work in this area, but first, I am going to take a sabbatical. After years of non-stop work, I am generating ideas faster than I can act on them. I need to go to where I can think, write, walk, code, and walk more, where I am not distracted by social media or news websites. I want to do this for a few months and then I want to start thinking about the next big thing.
The next big thing will be around the ideas that I have started developing in [A Manifesto for Science](). If anyone reading this knows of an interesting, challenging opportunity that would help change the culture of science, help make the entire process and products of science open, please contact me. I have the experience, skills and interest to do just that.