Encyclopedia of Earth

URL: http://www.eoearth.org/

Role: Co-founder

Overview: The Encyclopedia of Earth is an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is a means for the global scientific community to come together to produce the first free, expert-driven, massively scaleable information resource on the environment, and to engage civil society in a public dialogue on the role of environmental issues in human affairs. It contains no commercial advertising and will reach a large global audience.

The EoE is written and governed by scientists, educators, and professionals working in a unique collaborative environment, with oversight from a distinguished International Advisory Board. It has been released through the initial work of over 1,500 Authors, Topic Editors, and student volunteers that produced over 4,000 entries. It has also developed relationships with an impressive initial group of Content Partners.

The EoE is an Open Source project that uses a modified version of MediaWiki as its authoring platform. Unlike some other wikis, the EoE's author wiki is restricted to individuals judged to be expert in their field by an editorial board, and articles are reviewed and approved by a subject-specific editor prior to publication.

The EoE was launched in September of 2006 through the work of it's co-founders Cutler J. Cleveland, Peter Saundry, and Ida Kubiszewski, and many others.

Solutions

Role: Founding Managing Editor

Overview: Solutions will be an online and hard-copy hybrid between a journal and magazine solving the challenges of creating a sustainable and desirable future. Today, there is much research and many journals focusing on the problems that currently exist within the environment. A new type of forum is required that will take the known problems and attempt to create comprehensive solutions. Solutions will provide the outlet for substantive discussion of the integrated design and analysis of human social and economic systems, urban systems, ecological reserves, building systems, and all other components of the integrated earth system to achieve a desirable and sustainable human future. It will allow in-depth and far-reaching discussion of social goals and future visions, including: quality of life, ecological sustainability, social fairness, and economic efficiency.

This journal is intended for the practitioners of the design sciences, broadly conceived, as well as for a broad audience that reaches far beyond traditional academic journals to the informed public at large. This includes everyone from academics, professionals, specialists, scholars, and the educated lay public who are interested in environmental issues but also have concerns about potential solutions on all scales. With the environment entering the forefront of news, politics, and everyday discussions, the potential market will increase significantly over the coming years.

Solutions launched January 2010. It's primary editors include Robert Costanza (Editor-in-Chief), David Orr, John Todd, and Paul Hawken.

MetaCourses

URL: http://www.metacourses.org/

Role: Founding Project Manager

Overview: In today's world of global interconnection, the Internet has become a primary means of communication in all aspects of society, including education. Education is shifting from being primarily classroom-based, to include the rich content that the Internet offers: access to international expertise, worldwide communication with peers, and extensive multimedia capabilities. The MetaCourses seek to capitalize on these strengths while providing a means of communicating reliable information to students of all ages and backgrounds.

One of the primary goals of the MetaCourses is to provide full access to the content to students and the general public, but also to educators all over the world. Many online courses developed by other universities have all their content within a 'blackbox,' one which can be access only through registration. Here, we make all the content freely available for students, educators, and the public to provide as wide distribution of the content as possible. Educators are free to use any content for the development of their own courses.

MetaCourses launched in the summer of 2008 with two courses required for the University of Vermont's Certificate in Ecological Economics.  Initial content contributions came from Robert Costanza, Josh Farley, Jon Erickson, and Roel Boumans.

The Energy Library

URL: To be launch summer 2010

Role: Co-founder