Commons News

Creative Commons Canada would like to extend our warmest of welcomes to our newly-formed advisory board! Our call for applicants was a huge success, with our decisions between many outstanding candidates coming down to choosing representatives who cut across the diverse sectors and geographical regions which Creative Commons aims to serve.

We are pleased to welcome back several familiar faces who have excitingly accepted to serve on our board in this new capacity. Our Advisory Board includes former Creative Commons project leads Andy Kaplan-Myrth and Olivier Charbonneau, as well as former volunteer and Montreal salon-organizer Celine Celines. Joining them are Ariel Katz, Ashwin Kutty and Brian Lamb:

Ashwin Kutty is a Professor with the Faculty of Health Professions, the Faculty of Computer Science, and the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University. His research interests are currently in the fields of Leadership, Social Interaction & 21st century Management, supervising research for the likes of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Government of Canada, Health Canada, etc.

He currently works with Capital District Health Authority, as a Program Manager for the Addictions & Mental Health Program, as well as a District Manager with the eHealth portfolio. He is also the owner of WeUsThem Inc., a consulting think tank in the fields of Marketing & Communications, Public Relations, Change Management, Strategic Management, Industrial Design, to name a few with clients such as the Government of Egypt, Government of Guyana, Halifax Regional Municipality, Xerox Canada, Wilson's Fuel Co. and the Kempinski Group. His community engagements include being on the Board of the Victorian Order of Nurses delivering much needed programs & services to the community while providing sound business advice as a Business Advisor for the Entrepreneurs Forum. [Further details]

Olivier Charbonneau is an Associate Librarian at Concordia University. He is primarily interested in copyright issues as well as questions of open access and social media (Web 2.0). He is a doctoral student at the Faculté de droit, Université de Montréal. He has over 15 years of professional involvement in library and cultural communities. He holds two masters degrees from Université de Montréal, one in information sciences and another in law, as well as an undergraduate degree in commerce from McGill University. He has kept a research blog since 2005 in French at www.culturelibre.ca and a work blog since 2011 in English at OutFind.ca. [Further details]

Andy Kaplan-Myrth is a policy advisor in the Digital Policy Branch at Industry Canada and a member of the team that developed and is implementing Canada's Anti-spam Legislation. Andy was called to the Ontario Bar in 2005 and managed the Law & Technology Program at the University of Ottawa until 2009. He enjoyed his role as a Project Lead for Creative Commons Canada so much that he wanted to stay involved on the Advisory Board. When Andy isn't fighting spam or promoting Creative Commons licences, he is busy raising his three wonderful kids in Ottawa.

Ariel Katz is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, where he holds the Innovation Chair in Electronic Commerce. Professor Katz received his LL.B. and LL.M from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his SJD from the University of Toronto. His general area of research involves economic analysis of competition law and intellectual property law, with allied interests in electronic commerce, pharmaceutical regulation, the regulation of international trade, and particularly the intersection of these fields. Between 2009 and 2012 Professor Katz was the Director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy. Prior to joining the University of Toronto Professor Katz was a staff attorney at the Israeli Antitrust Authority. While there, he litigated several merger appeals and restrictive arrangements cases before the Antitrust Tribunal and negotiated regulatory settlements. Professor Katz currently teaches courses on intellectual property, cyberlaw, and the intersection of competition law and intellectual property, and shares some of his current thoughts on these issues on his blog. [Further details]

Céline Semaan Vernon (on the web known as CelineCelines) is a web-native designer, skilled in many aspects of design: human behavior, interaction design, information architecture, content strategy and visual design. She can make magic happen digitally (in all these web-related roles) and physically (as an event promoter/coordinator). She loves and supports Open culture, Open Web Standards, Creative Commons and the Open web.

Celine was born in Lebanon, grew up in Montreal, studied in Beirut and Paris, and specialized in Inter Media and Cyber Arts in Montreal. She worked in New York and has been involved in promoting Creative Commons in Lebanon and Montreal. Being part of many cultures and a mix-marriage of many languages, she is always an ambassador of story-telling every where she goes. Her artist name is celinecelines because she believes that all of us are many people living in one, and we can do many things, and have many different destinies. She loves people, and is very passionate about freedom and culture. Her goal is to facilitate and give the opportunity for people to cultivate their positive destinies and inspire social innovation and progressive change. Recently launched her fashion line mixing Open Data and Fashion under the brand slowfactory.com

Brian Lamb is the Director of Innovation Open Learning at Thomson Rivers University. He has founded some the earliest campus services for blogs and wikis. He authors the weblog abject.ca.