History and Appreciations

Many, many people have had a hand in envisioning, creating and populating Social Source Commons. While no list can do justice to the vast networks of knowledge and talent we've tapped in bringing the project to life, the following folks have been essential in establishing and sustaining the platform. Our gratitude knows no bounds!

Matt Garcia Matt Garcia is Community Manager for Social Source Commons. Matt was originally an Americorps VISTA through the CTC VISTA program and now spends his time making sure all the ducks are in a row at SSC. This includes managing the SSC Twitter and SSC Facebook accounts and playing with HTML for our eNewsletter. Matt is also the primary contributor on the SSC Blog.
Josh Crawford Josh Crawford is co-founder of the Brattleboro Tech Collective in Vermont, and has been the lead SSC engineer for the past year. Josh's keen coding skills, superb process chops and practical approach to software development have been invaluable in the maturation of the platform.
SSC User Community Social Source Commons would be nothing without our passionate, committed user community who share their tools and knowledge. We wish we could name you all individually, but that would make this page very long. Instead we thank you for all you've done to make SSC the resource that it is, and we pledge to keep incorporating your feedback and building on the value of the data you've shared with us.
Tim Wescott Tim Wescott served as the Social Source Commons Product Manager. Tim came to Aspiration via the CTC Vista project, and has been nothing short of herculean in his entry of tools and shepherding of the community. Tim took SSC from its infancy and it's largely due to his daily care and feeding that SSC is at the quality level that it is today.
Ben Mauer Ben Mauer is SSC's UI Designer/Artist in Non-Residence. Working with Quilted out of Boston, Ben has overhauled the SSC look and feel, replacing the initial "neo-wireframe" look with something much more pleasing to the eye. Ben is an untiring advocate for the user, and a voice of simplifying reason whenever creeping complexity sneaks into design discussions.
Jonathan Peizer Jonathan Peizer, Aspiration Board Chair and Principal and President at Internaut Consulting, has provided foundational thinking, vision and strategic guidance for SSC. His 2003 paper, Realizing the Promise of Open Source in the Nonprofit Sector helped catalyze the vision for the platform, and JP has been an ongoing advisor to the project, offering insight on technology, feature priorities, and fundraising.
Janet Haven Janet Haven, Aspiration Board Member and Program Manager in the Information Program of the Open Society Institute. Janet has bridged her board and funder roles to provide a unified voice of reason, strategy and support in the establishment of SSC. Her understanding of the global NGO technology landscape has helped steer SSC's evolution such that it has the potential to offer value well beyond the North American context. She has been a passionate champion and unyeilding supporter, and SSC would simply not exist without her.
Ethan Zuckerman Ethan Zuckerman is co-founder of Global Voices Online and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. Ethan's work at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and his push for a "Social SourceForge" that would use the social internet to map software tools for NGOs led to SSC's initial funding, and Ethan has served as an ongoing advisor and visioneer to the project.
Peter Trudelle Peter Trudelle has been a significant contributor in both spirit and body to the SSC effort. Peter led the SSC interface redesign process at FLOSS Usability Sprint III, applying his tough love and common sense as the sprint team herded a lengthy feature list into a coherent user experience. Peter's project management philosophies and practices have also greatly influenced oversight of the development effort.
Kellan Elliot-McCrea Kellan Elliott-McCrea is SSC's Code Daddy. Kellan selected Ruby on Rails as the implementation environment, laid down the first SSC code base, and deployed the initial live platform. Kellan did such a good job of crafting SSC that Flickr hired him away for some industrial-strength application development. He will never be forgotten!
Ruby Sinreich Ruby Sinreich turned concept into reality for SSC. During her short stint on Aspiration's staff, Ruby made a huge impact by drafting the wireframes for the initial user interface. Drawing on her savvy sense of emerging internet trends, Ruby's design set SSC on the course that it still tracks to this day.
Mary Chant Mary Chant, focused on website and software usability has contributed much support and full usability testing for Social Source Commons to make it a better experience for the end-user.
Andy Brooks Andy Brooks came out of nowhere to make a huge difference in the quality of the SSC user interface. Passionate about Human-Computer Interaction, Andy participated in FLOSS Usability Sprint IV, and led design and execution of the usability testing process for SSC's latest version.
Dave Evans

Dave Evans is Brattleboro Tech Collective's other co-founder, and has put his own essential mark on the SSC code base.

mike Mike Roman, Operations Manager of Aspiration, makes all the trains run on time in SSC land, managing operations and finances, and contributing tools he finds useful in his work.
gunner Allen Gunn, Executive Director of Aspiration, has directed Social Source Commons since its inception. Gunner has tapped Aspiration's global network of allies and advisors to facilitate a user-driven vision of how the platform can serve technologists in social change organizations. He's also to blame for anything you don't like about SSC :^)
  Aspiration is very grateful to the Information Program of the Open Society Institute for their ongoing support of Social Source Commons.