Archive:Press releases/Advisory Board

ST. PETERSBURG, FL – The Wikimedia Foundation announces the creation of an Advisory Board to the Board of Trustees. Comprised of individuals well known in their respective fields, the new Advisory Board will provide Wikipedia's governing body with their expertise and consultation in several areas, including strategic long term planning. Angela Beesley, former Wikimedia Foundation Board member and co-founder of Wikia, will act as Chair.

"We are extremely fortunate to have such amazing and talented individuals join the Wikimedia team. We look forward to working with the Advisory Board, and taking advantage of their skills and knowledge, " stated xxxxxx.

The new Advisor Board members include:

• Angela Beesley, Co-Founder of Wikia and former member of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation

• Ward Cunningham, Director of Committer Community Development of the Eclipse Foundation, and Co-Founder of Cunningham & Cunningham.

• Heather Ford, Executive Director of iCommons

• Melissa Hagemann, Manager of Open Access Initiative, Information Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI)/Soros foundations.

• Danny Hillis, Co-Founder of Thinking Machines Corp., Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Applied Minds, Inc, and Founder of the Long Now Foundation. Hillis is also attributed with inventing tendon-control robot arms, touch sensitive robot skin, and a 10,000 year mechanical clock.

• Mitch Kapor, Co-Founder of Lotus Development Corp., Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mitchell Kapor Foundation, and Open Source Applications Foundation. He is currently an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

• Joris Komen, Executive Director of SchoolNet Namibia, and former bird curator at the National Museum of Nambia. Komen has played an intrinsic part in promoting the computerization of African museum collections.

• Rebecca MacKinnon, Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre. MacKinnon is also the former Bureau Chief of CNN Beijing and CNN Tokyo.

• Benjamin Mako Hill, Debian hacker and author of the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible and The Official Ubuntu Book. Currently, Hill works in the Computing Culture group of the MIT Media Lab.

• Erin McKean, Chief Consulting Editor, American Dictionaries, for Oxford University Press, and Editor of VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly.

• Trevor Neilson, Partner in the Endeavor Group, and former Director of Special Projects at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

• Achal Prabhala, freelance writer based in Bangalore, India, and expert on the "access to knowledge" movement.

• Jay Rosen, Professor and former Chair of New York University's School of Journalism. Rosen has written for The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New York Times, among others.

• Clay Shirky, faculty at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and former Chair of the Library of Congress’s Working Group.

• Peter Suber former professor of philosophy and law at Earlham College, and principal drafter of the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

• Raoul Weiler, Chair and Founder of the World Academy of Art and Science, and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of European Papers in the New Welfare.

• Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices, and research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

To view complete bios, please visit http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board.

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