Kaitlin Thaney moves on...

I tend to want to make posts on Creative Commons related topics at the CC blog, but this is essentially a personal post, and I also want to have it as widely read in our community as possible.

Today is Kaitlin Thaney's last day at CC. She's been working for us on the Science Commons project for a long time - starting part time in mid 2006, full time in early 2007 - and she's been an absolutely essential part of our success over the years.

I first met Kaitlin because she was interning, while finishing at Northeastern, for a joint MIT-Microsoft project called iCampus. She started showing up at science talks and asking good questions, and I poached her so we could have her help us with our first Science Commons international data sharing conference, held at the US National Academies. Here are her hands organizing nametags that day.

From the get-go, she's been an incredible employee. She has taken on every task without question, and shown a remarkable level of skill and savvy and capacity, moving from the boring (nagging me on projects) to the remarkable (working with the Polar Information Commons to get their data towards the public domain) to the ridiculous (finding ironically appropriate plush kidney toys to give to our counsel). She's also become a dear friend, all the way to flying to Brazil to be a part of my wedding last year.

Kaitlin leaves us for a remarkable opportunity in online science that I am not going to describe in detail here. She'll be speaking for herself on this topic later in July. All I know is that we, as a group, will miss her, and that I as an individual will miss her too. It's a good move she's making, and I wish her all the best. You should follow her on twitter and subscribe to her blog.

Thank you, KT. You've been a linchpin.