People

June is a human computer interaction researcher at University of Maryland. He was brave enough to get involved with this crowd and is helping us make all our data available to everyone.

As an invaluable part of the volunteer community and later as p2pu staff, John’s s energy has resonated through the p2pu community since the pilot phase. P2PU has been able to make large leaps forward with John’s involvement: the Mechanical MOOC is his work, and the list of P2PU features John has been instrumental in developing is endless.

Without Lila P2PU would still be a clandestine operation targeting the foundations of institutional academia. Lila made us legit.

Volunteering his experience since P2PU’s inception, Larry continues to actively communicate P2PU to the world and innovate learning at his home institution UC Irvine.

Alison’s famous catchphrase: ‘Just like, do it.’ (free after a famous sportswear company) has stuck with p2pu since the fall of 2009. She ‘just made’ most of the instructional materials and has now left p2pu to do an open masters while inspiring others to ‘just keep doing’ as much as possible for p2pu.

Progressive views on education can and should also be tossed into the mathematics education equation, must have been what Maria thought 2 years ago when she started the school of the mathematical future. She was right.

Chris is the lead developer for P2PU’s Mechanical MOOC. He love’s making interactive learning experiences like what he has done with the School of Sound

Karen Fasimpaur is owner and manager of K-12 handhelds, an educational technology company focused on mobile learning. She founded the School of Ed at P2PU and is currently building her off-the-grid house in Arizona. From scratch.

As a board member, Ahrash takes care of staying true to our original values, while pushing us to be more experimental. He is a wise man.

If you are wondering why Delia’s title starts with ‘Commander’, ask Philipp. As a board member and active community member Delia makes sure things keep running smoothly at p2pu. Next to this she is involved in many of the legal aspects surrounding the organization.

One of the original pioneers of opening education, Cathy gave P2PU its very first grant when she was at the Hewlett Foundation. She currently promotes open and collaborative practices to culture, education, and science as ED of creative commons.

Pippa was the original ‘Webcraft Warrior’ who facilitated the setting up of Mozilla School of Webcraft on the previous p2pu platform. She is currently living in Austria where she makes, sells and sails boats.

Steve has been invaluable as an advisor and is grand-father of the mechanical MOOC. Pretty good work for someone who is actually not a robot himself.

If there would be one badge for most active community member who has never been employed by P2PU, it will be hard to pass Jose on volume and amount of work done for p2pu. Chances are good that you are doing one of his courses or using a feature he developed.

Keeps our finances tidy. And our monies safe. And our boss out of jail.

How people learn stuff and in online peer-based structures is one of the greatest enigmas of our time. You need one badass researcher who works on the fringe of technology and learning to deliver actionable results. Enter Vanessa, who makes delightful learning experiences with an (over)dose of charm.

Relationships with landlords are rarely easy but ours is a great exception, Gunner is not our workshop facilitator of choice without reason. He is executive director at Aspiration, helping NGOs, activists, foundations and software developers make more effective use of technology for social change.

Recently hailed as one of the ‘Fantastic 5’ in open education where he was portrayed as Ben Grimm, Stian has been destroying old institutional structures as a rock solid board member since p2pu’s inception.

If Bekka were ever to leave p2pu it would fall apart. We have in the past thought about renaming p2pu to the Kahn Academy but that created too much confusion with other initiatives. Bekka really is the heart and soul of p2pu; any users who are frustrated with the automaton p2pu.org come in and talk to Bekka. She’ll make you a nice cup of tea.

Alex has been working on a mentorship platform for people to connect with knowledgeable mentors to guide them through learning a topic. He is also applying his vast real-life experience in coming up with great opening lines to create an ice-breaker functionality to butter up online interaction.

Molly takes time out of her busy snacking schedule to drop copyright education bombs on the academic world. She’s a strong believer in understanding rights when it comes to creating and sharing content, especially in the open peer-learning world.

Piet has been quietly learning about learning for several years, many of them while working with the University of Michigan’s Open.Michigan initiative. He is a founding volunteer with the School of Open, but also contributes to P2PU’s work on mentorship, interface design, the Open Masters project, and pretty much any place people are thinking about the intersections of learning, identity, and information.

Gary is Dean of the Extension School at University of California Irvine. He taught Philipp everything he knows about accounting (in 45 min) and infused P2PU with an awesome “beg for forgiveness, rather than ask for permission” attitude from the start.

João is a user-centered design expert, and the projects he engaged in during his ‘UX design’ course have inspired much of the design of the early p2pu.org platform. João continues his journey at p2pu and aims to help build meaningful interactions among peers through the design thinking philosophy and tools.

Disappointed by the lack of easy access to learning about web design in Colombia, Dany gathered a group of people and engaged in learning web design through p2pu, setting up the “p2pu ambassador program” in South America in the process. He currently leads this ‘p2pu ambassador program’ for p2pu.

Different people are realizing that Open Education, Open Science, and Open Data are an intimately connected tricolon. For this reason Laura recently started developing the school of data at P2PU in a partnership with OKFN.

It appears to be so that Paul likes forks, regardless of whether these are pitchforks or software forks. It’s been great for him that he found his 2 places where he can combine his forking hobbies, his forked Mozilla drumbeat.org code is the basis of p2pu as we now know it, and he is currently employed as a developer evangelist at SoundCloud.

As original gang-star par excellence, Neeru didn’t think it was enough to theorize about starting a peer learning platform so she co-founded p2pu and created and organized the ‘Behavioral Economics’ pilot course at p2pu. Neeru has been at the root of P2U’s success in many ways and now employs her vast experience on the board.

Another founding volunteer who loves p2pu so much she made it her day job — almost. Jane works for Creative Commons and devotes 60% of her time to co-creating the ‘School of Open’ with open advocates from around the world.

As a founding volunteer and early course facilitator of Copyright for Educators, Andrew was instrumental at arriving to a choice for a specific open license and the legalities involved in implementing the license at p2pu. He was formerly the legal lead for Creative Commons South Africa.

Not just a pretty face, Philipp is the executive director of p2pu answering only to the board, the community and Delia (uhm, so, everyone.) How he still manages to get any work done is a mystery.

Jessy is P2PU’s resident Superwoman–brains, brawn and badassery. Jessy is passionate about the ways that openness and collaboration can advance science and research. At P2PU, she’s focused on bringing science to our everyday lives, opening up research to be accessible to many, and making moments for reflection.

Niels is a man of many talents. He’ll beat you hands down playing cards, but then he’ll make you dinner afterwards. A founding volunteer at P2PU, Niels ran courses on Poker and Strategic Thinking and Molecular Gastronomy, and keeps asking us difficult questions, which is why we like to keep him around.

In establishing p2pu’s visual identity, Aleksander has done a great job in translating the ideas of the the community into p2pu’s visual identity. Aleks now runs his own photography and design studio in Warsaw, Poland.

When Nadeem is not eloquently luring people at p2pu workshops into letting their emotions about peer learning run freely, he uses his vast experience in programming to contribute to the p2pu platform and add a developer perspective to the board.

Mark loves all things open, including wine bars in San Francisco that are still open at 2am. As Mozilla Foundation ED he is leading an army of webmakers to keep the web open. As board member of P2PU he helps Philipp get more done.

Possibly the hippest provost in the history of US academia, p2pu co-founder Joel has been upping the cool-level of p2pu since the early days as a co-founder. He currently sits on the board of P2PU and works for Rice University and the US Department of Education as a senior adviser and counsel.

While you’re surfing the web Dirk is probably surfing a crazy wave just off the coast of Durban. He is a software developer stoked to engage with the community and get the stuff the community thinks up implemented on p2pu.org. Any email to Dirk has to start with the words “Shot bru!”

If you would ever say a course is too difficult for you, Chloe would likely respond with “No, it’s a challenge :)”. After and before courses were called courses, Chloe designed the basic way in which you can now structure courses into meaningful and challenging chunks, creating a better learning experience for everyone.

Zuzel will probably rank high in any top list of most productive developers ever. P2PU would have been called about:blank if it weren’t for her.

Alan supports those who wish to move passionately in the direction of their dreams through creating projects and learning together as peers. He is a seeker and a perpetual incubator of projects, including: the Open Masters Program, Citizen Circles, Emergent Workshops, the Living Transcript, the School of Social Innovation…