A few years ago, Mohamed Nanabhay was considering joining SensePost and i was trying hard to convince him it was the way and the light. He had been a KPMG auditor in a past life (but i promised not to hold that against him).

We were not sure what he would do at SP, since he was kinda moving away from hardcore tech, but we always said that we would take quality people, even if we didnt have a niche for them, cause quality people will make a new niche.

In the end he chose to be “head of new media, for Al Jazeera”.

Earlier this month, Al Jazeera announced “The Al Jazeera Creative Common Repository” which “hosts select broadcast quality footage that Al Jazeera has released under various Creative Commons licenses.”

Now it must have been quite an undertaking to get an organization that makes money selling news, to give their footage away free, but along with the Internet itself, i think the CC repositary played a huge role in alerting the world to the realities of the situation in Gaza. As an achievement for M, i think its huge, i think its meangful and impactful (and in truth i think im even secretly jealous).

While i am sad that we didnt get him (because i think we could have done cool stuff together), i’m glad we didnt because the world would have been (at least) a creative commons media repository poorer..