Code for Science & Society Expands Board

We held our first board meeting in San Francisco last week where we welcomed two new board members and a board advisor. Our board oversees operations and will support us as we develop sustainable strategic vision for Code for Science & Society (CSS) and the Dat Project.

The role of CSS, a nonprofit, has been two-fold, it has housed Dat leadership and acted as a fiscal sponsor for other projects (learn more at codeforscience.org). As we formalize the structure of CSS, we will ensure Dat governance is in line with open source best practices and the community's needs. CSS will continue to employ people involved in Dat Project, but new community-rooted processes will govern Dat and bring more transparency to the project. We will communicate more on the process of establishing a new governance model over the coming months. In the meantime, we’d like to introduce our board:

Kaitlin Thaney is the Endowment Director of the Wikimedia Foundation and is our new  🎉 Board Chair 🎉!!! Her work focuses on long-term sustainability and support for the free and open knowledge movement. Prior to joining Wikimedia, she oversaw the Mozilla Foundation's network of community programs, a $10 million portfolio crossing science, education, Internet of Things, advocacy, and gender-based programming. She also worked to build programs such as the Mozilla Science Lab, Digital Science, early Open Access and Open Data work with Creative Commons, and Datakind UK. Kaitlin was formerly on the Dat project advisory board. Kaitlin was elected to the position of Board Chairperson at our February meeting - we are thrilled to have her at the helm of our board.

Karissa McKelvey is an open source programmer, who has been a core Dat team member for four years, and now a member of the Digital Democracy team. You may know her as @okdistribute online, and maybe you saw her Full Stack Fest Keynote. She managed the Dat desktop application and DatBase public registry projects. She is an innovative software developer as well as an accomplished writer, public speaker, and activist who works to support an equitable web. Formerly a research scientist at Indiana University, her work studying online political communication resulted in multiple peer-reviewed papers and press in outlets such as NPR and the Wall Street Journal. She has successfully led teams to success with diverse projects throughout her career in academia, non-profits, and industry. Her deep understanding of the technology and experience working on open web issues will bring valuable perspective to the board.

Kristen Ratan is co-Founder and Executive Director of the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission to evolve how knowledge is created, produced, and shared. Kristen has a 20-year history working to accelerate advances in science and research communication, most recently as Publisher at the Public Library of Science (PLOS).  Prior to that Kristen held leadership positions at HighWire Press, Atypon and BIOSIS.  Kristen is on the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Physics Publishing and the nonprofit Community Resources for Science. She also serves on numerous advisory boards and industry committees.

Waldo Jaquith is with 18F’s State and Local Acquisitions practice, working with governments across the U.S. to help them better acquire software to serve the needs of the public. Previously, he was the Senior Advisor to the Sunlight Foundation, Director of the Knight-funded U.S. Open Data, ran the Knight-funded State Decoded project, and worked for the White House Office of Science and Technology. He serves as an advisor to and on the board of various organizations that sit at the intersection of technology and government.

Joshua M. Greenberg, PhD is joining as a board advisor. He is director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Digital Information Technology program. Dr. Greenberg received his Bachelor of Arts in History of Science, Medicine and Technology from the Johns Hopkins University, and both Masters and Doctoral degrees from Cornell University's Department of Science & Technology Studies. Before Sloan, he was Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship at the New York Public Library, where he created the NYPL Labs team and launched a number of projects focused on deepening engagement through access to digital collections.

Join us in welcoming our new board members! We had a great time in San Francisco. We spent three straight days with our friends at the Internet Archive, got the chance to hang out with the Beaker Browser team, and linked up with many others.

Dat Protocol Working Group members at the Internet Archive: Tara, Joe, Bryan, Paul, and Danielle

Most of the Dat protocol working group at the @internetarchive! Missing @okdistribute and @mafintosh pic.twitter.com/JaAGqnlvK3— Tara Vancil (@taravancil) February 1, 2018

Stay tuned for more updates. As always, you can reach out to Danielle and Joe at [email protected] anytime.