Brian is the Creative Commons Qatar Affiliate Community Lead, and also Communications Manager at ictQATAR, the government agency in Qatar that regulates the telecoms sector and serves as the ICT policy body. He is originally from Buffalo, New York in the U.S., but has lived in Qatar for the past 3 years. He is increasingly a tech geek, who loves travel, good food, sports and being in the know.

- How did it all start?

As part of my job at ictQATAR, I write for Digital Qatar, a blog on technology trends and issues. In all my reading, digital content rights kept emerging as an important topic, and it was obvious to me that traditional copyrights just weren’t working in the digital age. In researching the topic more, I discovered Creative Commons and thought that their approach to content rights made perfect sense. I wrote a blog post on CC, shared it with CC headquarters, and next thing I know the head of the Arab region, Donatella, was in touch with me and our collaboration was launched.

Together, CC and itQATAR hosted an event in Doha in October 2010 that addressed the benefits of “open” in the digital realm, and after that, Qatar hosted the CC Arab Regional meeting. At the close of that meeting, ictQATAR’s Secretary General Dr. Hessa Al-Jaber committed to signing an MOU with Creative Commons to bring an affiliate to Qatar. I was lucky enough to be tasked with heading up the MOU and planning for a Qatar affiliate.

On May 31, 2012 we officially launched and now I am leading the community side of CC Qatar. It’s amazing to be able to work with so many of the “creatives” in Qatar in helping them share their work and discover new opportunities for collaboration and collective innovation.

- Why do you think CC is important for the Middle East (Qatar specifically)?

To me, Creative Commons Qatar really creates a platform or forum for all the creative people in Qatar to channel their ideas and innovations, share them more openly and find amazing ways to work with others in the community. The Internet has made it so much easier to share our creativity, and when it is shared, it has the potential to grow, flourish and inspire. Qatar is a young, dynamic country, and the creativity from here and the region should be shared as broadly as possible. CC Qatar can help make that happen by offering resources that make sharing easy, scalable and legal. Our primary goal is to bring more voices from Qatar into the open digital realm.

- Any special thoughts/messages you would like to share?

I have really been inspired by the creative community in Qatar. There are so many people here that are embracing Creative Commons and its principles, including artists, designers, researchers, architects, bloggers, filmmakers, poets and many more. Major institutions such as the Qatar Museum Authority, Al Jazeera and Bloomsbury Publishing-Qatar have also become very engaged and are working to incorporate CC into their digital efforts. I am excited to work with all of them to grow a vibrant CC community in Qatar and I really expect amazing things from our CC community.

Notes:

- Follow Brian here

- Check out (and bookmark!) CC Qatar’s website

Thank you B! ;)

Here is the *long overdue* wrap-up of the CC UAE meetup that took place in Dubai a few weeks back when Donatella was visiting.

Although around 11 people (besides the organizers) registered to attend, only a few of them showed up – besides the usual suspects.

But we were delighted to meet and welcome Nadia (@NadiaBarclay) to the community. She is visiting Dubai for a few months and wanted to learn more about Creative Commons to explore the possibility of licensing the content of the *amazing* family project she is involved in: Al-Hakawati (a post about this really great initiative will follow – in the meantime, have a look here).

Among the topics covered were the upcoming CC Arab world regional meeting in Tunis and the CC Iftar that is scheduled to take place some time in August.

Another meetup should take place soon. So if you are interested to attend, get in touch!

It’s been (at least) a week already since the announcement was made, but I guess this is still *big* news.

YouTube *finally* launched support for CC BY and a CC library featuring 10000 videos from organizations such as C-SPAN, PublicResource.org, Voice of America, and Al Jazeera.

‘When users upload a video, they now can choose to license it under CC BY or to remain with the default “Standard YouTube License.” They may also change the license on existing videos by editing each video individually.

The YouTube Video Editor now contains a CC tab that allows users to search the Creative Commons video library and select videos to edit and remix. Users may remix videos directly on the editor platform, and any video that is created using CC BY-licensed content will automatically display the linked source videos’ titles underneath the video player. Since CC BY is enabled as a licensing option, the library will grow as more users choose to license their work under CC BY.’

Read the full CC blog post here.

More details are also available on the YouTube blog.

Donatella will be visiting Dubai for a couple of days, so we thought it would be a great opportunity to bring the community together.

We will be having an informal gathering for anyone interested in learning about and helping with our efforts to promote the Creative Commons in the UAE.

The meeting will be at 8pm on Monday 6th June, location is Oscar’s Vine Society, 4th floor, Crown Plaza, Dubai (Sheikh Zayed Road).

Please fill in this form if you are coming so that we can keep track of numbers – You can also get in touch with @Lurnid for more information.

I was planning on attending the CC Qatar (@ccqatar) launch but didn’t end up making it to Doha. Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to catch the two first hours of the event online: it was live streaming, and grand – to say the least.

Here are a few links to articles and pictures of the event:

• Creative Commons Qatar’s launch post

• Gulf Times’ article

• Qatar is booming’s  post

• CC Qatar Flickr photo stream

• @celinecelines ‘s blog post

• Yasser Masood Khan (@yasserm86)’s launch story on Storify

• Search for the #CCQatar hashtag on Twitter for more pictures and thoughts from many attendees

Notes:

- If you attended the launch and would like to share links to articles, posts or pictures, please post them in the comments section below

- The live (and amazing) performances of @celinecelines and @Naeema will hopefully be posted online soon [will update with links when available]

- Pictures taken from the CC Qatar Flickr stream

This week is CC Qatar’s (@ccqatar) big week so it was only natural for us to dedicate some posts and give some love to the amazing team that has been working really hard on making this important launch a success.

And one detail we certainly can’t omit is the venue that was picked to host the event: the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha.

This unique piece of architecture was designed by the world renowned architect I. M. Pei (who designed the glass and steel pyramid at the Louvre museum in Paris in the early 1980′s).

‘It was the first of its kind in the Persian Gulf and has a very large collection of Islamic art, plus a study and a library. The museum has a total area of 45,000 m² and lies on the edge of Doha harbour at the south end of Doha Bay. In the museum are displayed a collection of works gathered over the last 20 years, including manuscripts, textiles and ceramics. It is one of the world’s most complete collections of Islamic artifacts, ranging from Spain to Egypt to Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India and Central Asia’ (Wikipedia).

More information about the museum, the collections, current exhibitions, visiting hours as well as a full gallery of photos can be found on the official website.

Notes:

- The picture of the museum is taken by Jemasmith (Flickr stream)