Wikimedia Foundation Appoints Jing Wang and Mimi Ito to its Advisory Board
SAN FRANCISCO May 11, 2010 -- The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that
operates Wikipedia, today announced the appointment of two new members to its Advisory
Board, Mimi Ito and Jing Wang. Mimi Ito is a cultural anthropologist with a focus on new
media use among young people. Jing Wang is an author and professor of Chinese cultural
studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the chair of the International
Advisory Board of Creative Commons China Mainland.
Mimi Ito is a cultural anthropologist examining children and youth’s changing
relationships to media and communications. She is an Associate Researcher with the
University of California Humanities Research Institute with appointments in the Department
of Anthropology and the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine.
Her research in Japan focuses on use of mobile technologies, and she has recently
completed a multi-year project on digital kids and informal learning. She has authored and
edited three books on kids' use of technology, and most recently, she has led a
three-year collaborative ethnographic study, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, examining
youth new media practices in the US, focused on gaming, digital media production, and
Internet use. She has worked at the University of Southern California's Annenberg
Center, the Institute for Research on Learning, Xerox PARC, and Apple Computer. She has a
PhD in Education and a PhD in Anthropology, both from Stanford University in Palo Alto,
California.
"Although we're seeing more and more examples of crowdsourced, non-commercial,
and community produced media on the Internet today, Wikipedia continues to set the gold
standard," said Mimi Ito. "At a time when so many of our past models of
knowledge making and circulation are being challenged, Wikipedia provides proof of a
sustainable and robust form of public media in the digital age. I'm delighted to be
part of Wikimedia and the movement that it represents."
Jing Wang is an author and editor of seven books, Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies at
MIT and founder and organizer of MIT’s New Media Action Lab. She is also an affiliated
faculty with MIT's Comparative Media Studies. In spring 2009, Professor Wang launched
an NGO 2.0 project in collaboration with two Chinese universities, three Chinese NGOs, and
three corporate partners including Ogilvy & Mather China and Frog Design. The project,
funded by Ford Foundation in Beijing, is designed to enhance the digital literacy of
grassroots NGOs in the underdeveloped regions of China and will deliver an interactive
platform complete with Web 2.0 training courses and a Chinese field guide to best
practices and software of social media for nonprofits. Professor Wang started working with
Creative Commmons in 2006 and serves as the Chair of the International Advisory Board of
Creative Commons Mainland China. She also worked as the co-organizer of the Policy Culture
Research Project with Anthony Saich at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University.
"I'm excited to join Wikimedia's Advisory Board," said Jing Wang.
"The challenge of increasing the diversity of participation in regions such China can
be difficult to navigate. The Foundation has radically impacted access to free knowledge
for everyone in the world. I'm thrilled to volunteer my time to help create richer,
higher-quality information resources by increasing the diversity of voices that contribute
to the projects."
"I am thrilled to welcome both Jing and Mimi to the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory
Board," said Michael Snow, Chair of the Board of Trustees. "Both Mimi and Jing
are respected academics who will bring new expertise to us in their respective areas, and
I look forward to them making a substantial contribution."
The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the volunteer-written encyclopedia with a staff
of just over 30 people, created its Advisory Board in January 2007 as a mechanism for
input from leaders and thinkers in fields such as education, technology, and free culture.
Advisory Board members convene with Wikimedia's leadership once a year at the annual
Wikimania conference, and also support the organization in their specific areas of
expertise.
The current Advisory Board membership includes:
Angela Beesley Starling (Co-founder, Wikia)
Ward Cunningham (Developer of the first wiki)
Melissa Hagemann (Open access and open education advocate, Open Society Institute/Soros
foundations)
Mimi Ito (Cultural Anthropologist at University of California, Irvine)
Mitch Kapor (Founder/Co-founder Lotus Development, EFF, Mozilla Foundation)
Neeru Khosla (Co-founder, CK-12)
Teemu Leinonen (Professor, Media Lab, Aalto University)
Rebecca MacKinnon (Journalist; founder, Global Voices Online)
Wayne Mackintosh (Education specialist, Commonwealth of Learning)
Benjamin Mako Hill (Author, free software advocate)
Domas Mituzas Former Executive Secretary, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees; Database
Engineer, Facebook)
Roger McNamee (Venture capital, musician)
Trevor Neilson (Partner, Global Philanthropy Group)
Craig Newmark (Founder,
Craigslist.org)
Florence Nibart-Devouard (Former Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees; Consultant
in Collaborative Media)
Achal Prabhala (Researcher and writer)
Clay Shirky (Associate Teacher, Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU)
Jing Wang (Professor, MIT; Founder MIT New Media Action Lab)
Ethan Zuckerman (Research Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law
School)
About the Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.org
http://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia and the other projects
operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 370 million unique visitors per
month, making them the 5th most popular web property worldwide (March 2010). Available in
more than 270 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 15 million articles contributed by a
global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people. Based in San Francisco,
California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded
primarily through donations and grants.