Craigslist Returns a Favor, or Another Programmer Heard From

It's not every day that a famous person crosses my path, but about a year ago I was able to shake hands with Craig Newmark, as in "Craigslist." The event was the SD West 2007 conference, where Craig was co-hosting the Jolt Awards and I was backstage going crazy trying to set a Second Life session with Grady Booch. Alas, with all the craziness, I didn't get the opportunity to sit down and smell the coffee with Craig and I've regretted it ever since.

Fast forwarding, the next I saw Craig, he was a guest on Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report". And just like in person, he came across as a nice guy. Darn, I said, that could have been me instead of Stephen Colbert, but then I might have had to wear a tie. Oh well.

Proving again that he is a well-intentioned and all-around good guy, the latest thing that Craig can add to his list of good deeds is that through Craiglist he's donated $1.6 million to establish the first endowed faculty chair at the The University of California at Berkeley's Center for New Media. The donation, which will support research, symposia, and lectures, will be matched with $1.5 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for a total of $3.1 million. The matching funds come from the foundation's landmark challenge grant that it gave to UC Berkeley to create 100 new endowed chairs.

"The Berkeley Center for New Media and craigslist share a fundamental respect for alternative thinking in the public interest," said its director, UC Berkeley engineering professor Ken Goldberg. "Our mission is to critically analyze and help shape developments in new media by facilitating research with unorthodox ideas, designs, artworks and experiments."

Founded in San Francisco in 1995 by Craig Newmark, craigslist began as an e-mail list of events for the San Francisco Bay Area. Jim Buckmaster became the company's CEO in 2000 and has led craigslist to become the eighth largest Internet company in the world in terms of English-language page views, and the most used classifieds service worldwide in any medium.

The Berkeley Center for New Media supports research and teaching from a diverse community of more than 100 affiliated faculty members, advisors and scholars at UC Berkeley. They work in over 30 departments, including architecture, philosophy, film studies, art history and performance studies, as well as in the College of Engineering, the schools of information, journalism and law, and the Berkeley Art Museum.

"We're thrilled to support UC Berkeley at a time when unprecedented wealth is being lavished upon private institutions," said Buckmaster.

Hear, hear! I couldn't have said it any better myself.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 02:33 PM  Permalink