2007 Summit Participants
Panel Coordinators
Sylvia Cadena - WiLAC
Sylvia is an Industrial Designer. She has worked with non-profit initiatives involving civil society organizations, government and international aid programs and projects, and socially responsible citizens. She became interested for the first time in ICTs for development when she was selected to be the United Nations National Volunteer assigned to the Southlinks Project, for almost 2 years. She has been an active member of the APC Women's Networking Support Programme as a trainer and designer, and also with other regional and global initiatives such as the Latin-American School of Networks-ESLARED where she coordinates the technical training workshops about content since 1997. In July 2003, she received the Annual Award for Young Professionals in Communications for Development offered by the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas – ICA and the International Development Research Centre – IDRC. She served at IDRC regional office in Montevideo, Uruguay until November of 2004. Right now,she is working as a consultant for several ICT projects with global scope, providing content reviews, web platform design and training.
Marco Figueiredo - CCI
Marco Figueiredo is an affiliate member faculty at the Computer Science Department of Loyola College in Maryland. He also directs the Center for Community Informatics (CCI) at Loyola College since January 2006. Marco engaged in digital inclusion activism in 2001, first supporting the Brazilian government as a consultant and later estabilishing the Gems of the Earth Rural Community Telecenter Network in the northeast of Brazil. He is also the president of the Gems of the Earth Network, a non-profit organization that mobilizes the Brazilian Diaspora to support social development in Brazil. Marco has been a high-performance computing researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center since 1992.
Laura Forlano - NYCwireless
Laura Forlano is a Ph.D. candidate in Communications at Columbia University researching the socio-economic implications of the use of mobile and wireless technology. She is a board member of NYCwireless, a non-profit organization that promotes the deployment of free public WiFi networks, who she currently represents on the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee. From 2002 to 2005, Forlano worked as Project Manager for the Information Technology and International Cooperation program at the Social Science Research Council. From 2000 to 2005, she wrote a monthly technology column for Gotham Gazette, a New York City news and policy Web site. She has also consulted for international organizations including the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union and United Nations. Forlano received her Master's in Science and Technology Policy from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
Ian Howard - Adapted Consulting Inc.
As a managing partner at Adapted Consulting, Ian finds new ways to use technology and business ideas to improve the lives of those in areas where others do not see opportunities. A technologist at heart, Ian has worked in management and team building capacities, while still tinkering with technologies and finding new ways to employ them. Combining his passion for economic development with an aptitude for re-purposing technology, he has pioneered the use of processes and systems to address the needs of under-served markets. Ian is presently enrolled in the International Masters of Business Administration (IMBA) at the Schulich School of Business, in Toronto, Canada. He specializes in entrepreneurial development, strategic management and sustainable value creation.
Leon Aaron Kaplan - FunkFeuer
Aaron studies math and computer sciences in Vienna, Austria. He is from the generation when network access was still extremely expensive in Vienna before the big internet boom. He is Unix user and programmer since 4.3BSD-Lite / FreeBSD 1.0. He has been working for major telecoms, IBM, ESA, banks and heavy industries mostly doing Unix consulting/programming since 1997. Aaron is also one of the founders of the FunkFeuer, a wireless community network in Austria. FunkFeuer covers Vienna, Graz and certain areas which have little or no DSL connectivity in Austria (Weinviertel, Bad Ischl). Since its creation , FunkFeuer has been constantly expanding and innovating. Currently Aaron is working on the OLSR-NG project in order to enhance the possibilites and scalability of the OLSR (RFC 3626) mesh routing protocol.
Michael Lenczner - Île sans fil
Michael Lenczner is a community organizer for development of local ICT infrastructure and healthy community information ecologies. He has been working in the field since 1998 and has been a partner or researcher in related academic groups since 2003. He is the initiator and co-founder of Île sans fil and CivicAccess and he has been a contributor to the FLOSS project WifiDog since it's inception. His blog is at mt13p.ilesansfil.org.
Michael Maranda - Chicago Digital Access Alliance
Michael Maranda advocates and organizes around media policy issues and the public use of technology. He fights for digital literacy, access & equity as executive director of CTCNet Chicago, founding chair of the Illinois Community Technology Coalition, and co-founder of the Chicago Digital Access Alliance. As president of the Association For Community Networking (AFCN), Michael promotes local and regional networking—the foundation of the global community information and communications technology (ICT) movement. Michael bridges community media and technology sectors locally through Let’s Talk Media networking events. He established Get Illinois Online [GIO] as the center of statewide dialogue and as a rallying cry for broadband deployment proponents of all stripes. Among community technologists, he actively applies the principle of Movement as Network, opening space for cross-sector dialogue and partnership. An avid proponent of community-owned and driven solutions, Michael is dedicated to promoting cooperative solutions and creative support structures in the non-profit/voluntary sector. Michael is a co-founder of NPOTechs, a Chicago volunteer network bringing open source and free technologies to non-profits.
Sascha Meinrath - CAIDA
In 2006, Sascha became the Director for Municipal and Community Networking for the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and heads up the COMMONS Project, an initiative to interlink municipal and community wireless networks utilizing national fiber infrastructure. Sascha is the co-founder and Executive Director of the CUWiN Foundation, the world's leading open-source wireless projects. From 2004-6, Sascha worked as a policy analyst for Free Press and continues to regularly brief Federal Communications Commission and Congressional staff on issues related to wireless and broadband networking. Sascha is Vice President of CTCnet, a US-based network of more than 1000 organizations united in their commitment to improve the educational, economic, cultural and political life of their communities through technology. In 2006, Sascha founded The Ethos Group an international consulting firm focusing on maximizing the community benefits of broadband technologies. In 2004, Sascha organized the First National Summit for Community Wireless Networks, helping to launch what has now become known as the Community/Municipal Wireless Networking Movement. In 2005-2006, Sascha coordinated the Community Wireless Emergency Response Initiative – helping rebuild mission-critical telecommunications infrastructure during post-hurricane Katrina disaster recovery. Sascha is also an editor for MuniWireless.com, the leading source for municipal wireless news and information, and a regular contributor to Government Technology’s Digital Communities, the online portal and comprehensive information resource for the public sector.
Ben Scott - Free Press
Ben Scott is the Policy Director for Free Press. He heads up the Washington, DC office, dedicated to monitoring and analyzing media policymaking in order to increase public awareness and participation. Before joining Free Press, he worked as a legislative fellow handling telecommunications policy for Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the US House of Representatives. He is also in the final stages of his doctoral degree in communications from the University of Illinois. He is the author of several scholarly articles on American journalism history and the politics of media regulation as well as co-editor of Our Unfree Press (The New Press, 2004) and The Future of Media (Seven Stories, 2005).
Dana Spiegel - NYCwireless
Dana Spiegel serves as the Executive Director and a member of the Board of Directors of NYCwireless, a New York City non-profit organization that advocates and enables the growth of free, public wireless networks. The organization was formed in 2001, and is primarily focused in New York City and surrounding areas. It is most widely recognized for its work in deploying free Wi-Fi access a number of New York City public spaces, including Bryant Park, City Hall Park, Tomkins Square Park, and the South Street Seaport. NYCwireless is a member of the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee, and is an international leader among Community Wireless Groups. As Executive Director, Dana created and produced Spectropolis: Mobile Media, Art and the City, a three-day event in the Fall of 2003 and 2004 that highlights the diverse ways artists, technical innovators and activists are using communication technologies to generate new urban experience and public voice. Spectropolis was co-produced by the Lower Manahattan Cultural Council and sponsored by the Alliance for Downtown New York. He has also appeared as a speaker at Wireless and Media Industry conferences, and has guest lectured at NYU, SUNY Purchase, Parsons School of Design, and The New School University.
Nemanja Topovic - BGWireless
Nemanja organizes social happenings for the BGWireless Community Network. In the last seven years, he has organized many humanitarian activities, including computer schools, sporting events and tournaments, many educational events, and seminars. He has participated in and lectured at many seminars. Currently, he is part-time lecturer of Computer Science at the International School in Belgrade, Serbia.
John Zoltner - CTCNet
John Zoltner is a Santiago, Chile-based consultant working with public, non-governmental and private entities to design strategies, projects and methodologies that take advantage of the power of information and communication technologies to empower individuals, organizations and communities. John is currently working as an advisor for the telecentre.org program and the Chilean chapter of the Center for the Democratization of Information Technology. John also raises funds for and/or manages innovative development projects involving ICTs on the national and regional levels in the Americas.
Matt Westervelt - Seattle Wireless
Matt Westervelt is the founder of Seattle Wireless and an evangelist for FreeNetworks worldwide. He left the corporate world to start Metrix Communication LLC, a company created to supply FreeNet workers with high quality, standards-based wireless networking products. As a child, he watched a lot of Sesame Street and has a firm (perhaps misguided) belief that cooperation can solve a lot of the world's problems.
Panelists
Jim Baller - Baller Herbst Law Group
Jim Baller is the founder and president of the Baller Herbst Law Group in Washington, DC. Over the last decade, he has been involved in most of the Nation’s leading municipal cable, fiber, and wireless projects and in every major legislative and judicial fight against state barriers to public involvement in the communications field. NATOA named him its Member of the Year for 2001 and MuniWireless awarded him its first “Esme Award” in 2006. The Fiber to the Home Council and the Public Technologies Institute have both called him "the nation's most experienced and knowledgeable attorney on public broadband matters."
Robin Chase - GoLoco
Robin Chase is founder and CEO of GoLoco, an online ridesharing community. GoLoco helps people quickly arrange to share car trips of all lengths between trusted friends, neighbors, and colleagues, and handles online payments from passengers to drivers for their share of the trip costs. Robin is also founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world. Zipcar’s use of the Internet and wireless technology enables rental cars to emulate personal cars. Robin is frequently consulted by transportation and planning departments, city and state government agencies, and NGOs about wireless and mesh networking applications in the transportation sector, innovation and economic development. She served on the Boston Mayor’s Wireless Task Force, and the Governor-elect’s Transportation Transition Working Committee. Robin graduated from Wellesley College and MIT's Sloan School of Management, and was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children.
kc claffy - CAIDA
kc claffy is principal investigator for the distributed Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), and resident research scientist based at the University of California's San Diego Supercomputer Center. kc's research interests include Internet workload/performance data collection, analysis and visualization, particularly with respect to commercial ISP collaboration/cooperation and sharing of analysis resources. kc received her PhD in Computer Science from UCSD in 1994.
Kristijan Fabina - Croatian Wireless Association HRFreeNet, Dugave.net
In 2004, Kristijan founded Dugave Wireless, a local wireless community in Zagreb, Croatia. Today, Dugave Wireless is one of the biggest, most respected networks in Croatia. As the President of Dugave Wireless, Kristijan also administers Dugave Wireless network servers & routers. In 2005, Kristijan was one of the founders and the first president of Croatian Wireless Association - HRFreeNet. Today, Kristijan is the HRFreeNet Project manager and heads up a few projects for HRFreeNet with Metronet Telecommunication company and Croatian Academic and Research Network. As the President of Croatian Wireless Association he was the youngest presenter on the 1st and 3rd SouthEast-East Europe Telecom Arena in Zagreb (2005-2007). Kristijan is also an independent journalist and the founder, administrator and editor for Novi-Zagreb.info, one of the leading sources of information and news in New Zagreb. He is a student on the Technical University for Information and Communication technology in Zagreb, specializing in the field of networks and mobile communications. At the moment Kristijan works for the family firm Tehnet as a sales manager and as a consultant focusing on municipal wireless networks and wireless broadband technologies. In his spare time, Kristijan is also the webmaster, administrator and editor for Sah-Dugave.org chess web portal in addition to playing soccer for local soccer club "NK Zelengaj" and Jiu-Jitsu.
Harold Feld - Media Access Project
Harold Feld is Senior Vice President of the Media Access Project. He is the primary author of many of the current public interest filings on spectrum proceedings at the FCC. He joined MAP in August 1999 after practicing communications, Internet, and energy law at Covington & Burling. In 2002-2003, he served on the ICANN Names Council as representative of the Noncommercial Constituency, and currently serves as the Noncommercial Constituency representative to the Advisory Committee of the Public Interest Registry (which administers .org). Mr. Feld has written numerous articles on Internet law and communications policy for trade publications and legal journals. Media Access Project is a nonprofit public interest law firm working to ensure a public voice in telecommunications policy.
Peter Fleck - Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Coalition
Peter Fleck was a member of the Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Coalition which drafted the original Community Benefits Agreement which served as a base for community benefits in the final contract for wireless network deployment in the City of Minneapolis. The Agreement provides for the funding of initiatives that will bring broadband Internet to low-income households and will provide diverse and localized content. He uses his PF Hyper Blog as a means of reporting on broadband initiatives in the Twin Cities. Peter currently serves on the Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Task Force Portal Committee which is deciding on freely available content for the entry pages to the Minneapolis wireless network. He is also a member of the newly-created Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Board which will oversee and fund digital inclusion proposals in Minneapolis. During the day, Peter is the Technical Webmaster for the University of Minnesota Cancer Center. In addition to keeping the web servers happy, he champions collaborative web tools like wikis, social bookmarking, podcasting, and blogs. He graduated in 1989 from Metropolitan State University. He is currently pursuing his Masters of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute. After a childhood on northern Minnesota's Iron Range, most of his life has been spent in Minneapolis. He is long-married to lovely wife Mary and fortunate to enjoy his daughter's three beautiful grandsons, ages nine, three, and one.
Joanne Hovis -
Joanne Hovis is President of Columbia Telecommunications Corporation. At CTC, she leads the company's work for non-profit agencies and the Federal Government. She also oversees CTC's educational offerings and public interest training programs. Joanne has co-authored extensive white papers on communications topics for government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, and non-profit organizations such as the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society, the William Penn Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the ACLU. She leads the CTC team that advises the City and County of San Francisco regarding fiber-to-the-premise networking and served as lead author of CTC's pathbreaking fiber report for San Francisco. She has advised numerous local governments and non-profits regarding community networking, including Los Angeles; Tucson, AZ; and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Joanne also serves on the Board of Directors of NATOA, the national association that represents local governments and promotes community interests in communications matters.
Pablo Osuna Garcia - EHAS Foundation
Born in 1980, he got his telecommunication engineering degree in 2006 from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). In 2003 he started to work for Telefonica I+D, in 2004 he moved to Ireland and worked for Digiweb, an innovative Irish Wireless ISP, mainly involved in wireless setups (Wi-Fi and preWimax equipment). In 2005 he started to work for the EHAS Foundation (Enlace Hispano Americano de Salud), an NGO whose main concern is to give health service providers access to a series of low cost communication tools and telemedicine services, both adapted to rural areas in developing countries. He is currently working for EHAS as Wi-Fi consultant, mainly involved in the development of a low-cost Wi-Fi router. His current technical interests are Mesh networks, long distance Wi-Fi links, Wimax technology and its adaption to low cost scenarios. He is currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Benoit Gregoire - Île sans fil
Benoit Grégoire holds a computer engineering degree and primarily works as a consultant to Québec's public education sector, specializing in e-learning, learning objects standards, metadata management and UI, free software project management, and wireless technologies. Benoit was heavily involved in several Open Source software projects (he started the LibOfx (OFX banking protocol implementation), was a core developer of GnuCash (accounting software), and is the current projectn leader and main architect of the WifiDog project. He also has a keen interest in telecom policies, privacy issues and the ethical background of community wireless policies (he is responsible for putting most of Île sans fil's in writing).
Andrew Greig - Koolu
Mr. Greig is recognized as a futurist and visionary with an outstanding talent for conceiving creative ideas and making them both successful and profitable . A born entrepreneur certified in Novell NCLS, Nortel Fibre Optics splicer/tester, Broadband Internet V-Sat Installation and Wireless Infrastructure Installation, Mr. Greig has 20 years of experience in building companies including a Consumer Electronics company which yielded over 1 million in revenues in its first year in business.
Jon Maddog Hall - Linux International
Maddog is the Executive Director of Linux International, a non-profit association of computer vendors who wish to support and promote the Linux Operating System. During his career in commercial computing which started in 1969, Maddog has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager and educator. He has worked for such companies as Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, VA Linux Systems, and SGI. Maddog has worked on many systems, both proprietary and open, having concentrated on Unix systems since 1980 and Linux systems since 1994, when he first met Linus Torvalds and correctly recognized the commercial importance of Linux and Free and Open Source Software. He has taught at Hartford State Technical College, Merrimack College and Daniel Webster College. He is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, many presentations and one book, "Linux for Dummies". He has consulted with the governments of China, Malaysia and Brasil as well as the United Nations and many local and state governments on the use of Free and Open Source Software. He serves on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit organizations, including the USENIX Association. He has traveled the world speaking on the benefits of Open Source Software, and received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University, and his MSCS from RPI in Troy, New York. In his spare time, Maddog is working on his retirement project: maddog's mansion for math, music, microcomputing and microbrewing. He still likes talking to students over pizza and beer (the pizza can be optional).
Dewayne Hendricks - Tetherless Access
Dewayne Hendricks is currently CEO, of the Dandin Group, Inc., based in Fremont, California. Dandin Group offers a comprehensive range of products and services for wireless communications via the Internet. The Dandin Group will begin to deploy the first exclusively wireless-based communications system, including voice, data and video, in the Kingdom of Tonga later this year. He is also an active member of the Federal Communications Commission Technological Advisory Council (FCC/TAC). He has been involved with radio since receiving his amateur radio operator's license as a teen. He currently holds official positions in several national non-profit amateur radio organizations and is a director of the Wireless Communications Alliance, an industry group representing manufacturers in the unlicensed radio industry. Dewayne’s background includes several other entrepreunerial positions as CEO and founder, and inclusion on various “top 100” lists as an innovator in the industry.
Josh King - Acorn Active Media
Josh studied both Computer Science and Philosophy. He utilizes his computer skills in a variety of areas related to political and social activism. As a member of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, he applies his knowledge of Linux system administration to the task of maintaining the Chambana.net community webhosting service. As a network engineer for the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network, he uses his skills in web-programming and application development to work on the Alexandria community media-portal project, as well as deploying wireless networking hardware by clambering over roofs like the trained monkey he is. Normally an elusive creature in the wild, if cornered he will talk your ear off about Leibniz, Spinoza, and YouTube videos.
Satish Jha - James Martin & Co India, Digital Partners India
Satish is actively engaged in non-profit activities and over the years co-founded Tarahaat, Baramati Initiatives, DESI Power, and Digital Partners India among others and chairs e-Healthcare Foundation. Four projects supported by him were selected as finalists at the Stockholm Challenge Award and one of them was awarded the honor. He also co-founded PUCL Bulletin, the civil Rights Journal of India in early 1980s and has supported a couple dozen initiatives in ICT for Development. He also co-founded Jansatta, a national language daily for the Indian Express Group and was the chief editor of Dinamaan, the newsweekly of the Times of India Group and has written for journals across Asia, Europe and the US. His focus is on using contemporary technologies for improving quality and design of work and efficiency as well as development that improve the quality of life for the common people. Since joining Hoffmann-La Roche in 1990, Satish has been closely associated with managing IT in pharmaceuticals and healthcare sectors. Initially, he was recruited to start the healthcare and pharmaceuticals practice of James Martin & Co in the US and was also asked to oversee the US operations of Telos Consulting. His clients included Pfizer, Westchester Hospital, Dr Reddy’s Lab, Ranbaxy, Apollo Hospital, Escorts Heart Institute, State of J&K, Employee State Insurance Corporation. Lately he has been supporting healthcare organizations such as Caremark in their integration efforts due to merger of three large Pharmacy Benefit Management companies.
Eddan Katz - Yale Information Society Project
Eddan Katz is the Executive Director of the Information Society Project and Lecturer-in-Law at Yale Law School. He has written articles and teaches in the areas of cyberlaw, intellectual property, telecommunications, and bioethics. He also wrote the hypertext poem Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, which has since been made into a T-shirt through the public domain license under which it was released. Eddan received his J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at UC, Berkeley in 2002, with a Certificate in Law and Technology and honors in Intellectual Property Scholarship. He was a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information Management and Systems at UC, Berkeley in 2002-3; and a Resident Fellow with the ISP in 2003-4. Eddan received his B.A. in philosophy from Yale in 1997.
Naveen Lakshmipathy - New America Foundation
Naveen Lakshmipathy, Program Associate for the Wireless Futures Program for the New America Foundation, contributes to the program’s efforts to broaden public access to the airwaves through research, writing, and outreach. In addition, he manages the program’s web content and print publications.
Michael Lewis - Wireless Harlem
Michael Lewis is founder of Wireless Harlem Initiative, a New York based non-profit, which is advocating to bring affordable wireless broadband to Harlem in order to close the digital divide. He has more than 15 years of communications marketing, policy and grassroots campaign work for high innovation and advocating on behalf of open, standards-based computing. Over the years he has worked with MCI (Washington, D.C.), Hewlett-Packard, Oracle (San Francisco), Avaya and GSM Association (New York). Following passage of the Telecommunications Act, Lewis helped devise MCI’s messaging and outreach strategy on Capitol Hill and for local markets. For HP, he led a team focused on its Linux server market which won the coveted Gold SABRE award for strategic marketing and communications.
Casey Lide - Baller-Herbst Law Group
Casey Lide is an associate attorney with The Baller Herbst Law Group, PC, a national law firm based in Washington, DC, and Minneapolis, MN, that specializes in representing local governments and public power utilities in matters involving telecommunications, cable television, high-speed data communications, Internet access, wireless telecommunications, right-of-way management, pole and conduit attachments, and barriers to the public-sector entry into telecommunications.
Andreas Marksteiner - FunkFeuer
Andreas Marksteiner is a student of computer sciences (and a little electrical engineering) at Vienna University of Technology. He works as software engineer in projects related to automotive, gui-apps, streaming media and 802.11 - mainly using the programming languages C and C++. Andreas is one of the founders of FunkFeuer - a wireless community
network in Austria. He contributes to many sub projects within FunkFeuer and is one of the initiators of the cost-covering community housing project from FunkFeuer. Andreas is also involved in maintainance and expansion of the backbone infrastructure from FunkFeuer Vienna, which is collectively used by the wireless network and housing project.
Daniel Meredith - CuWin
Dan is a self-described technologist who utilizes over 7 years of experience to apply technology to address social justice and community needs. Dan is one of the founding board members and Senior Network Engineer of the CUWiN Foundation (Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network), one of the world's leading open-source, ad-hoc mesh network research and development projects. Dan is also a leading tech member of the Chambana.net project, a low-cost web hosting services for non-profit organizations, small businesses, and individuals, both locally and internationally. Along with his professional work as system administrator for OJC Technologies, Dan volunteers as the system administrator for both Radio Free Urbana (WRFU 104.5FM) and the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.
Richard Mackinnon - Austin Wireless City Project/Less Networks
Richard MacKinnon is president and founder of the Austin Wireless City Project, a cooperatively-owned community network of 100 Free WiFi hotspots sharing common authentication, logging, statistics, monitoring, reporting, and branding. Founded in Fall 2002, AWC's nearly 150,000 registered users with roaming capabilities in 73 cities and 9 countries sharing the same platform have diverted $3.7M in unpaid access fees to their venues in the form of increased business revenues. Richard is also founder and CEO of Less Networks, a commercial-grade Free WiFi solutions provider for small and medium-size businesses and corporate franchises in retail, hospitality, and automotive industries. Less Networks provides complimentary services to eligible non-profits, charities, and select divisions of governments such as the Austin Public Library, Belton Wireless Project, Shreveport Parks and Recreation, Capital Metro Transportation Authority, Garden Grove Chamber of Commerce, and KDHX Radio.
Toby Morning - Urban Technology Ventures
Toby identifies and unveils the hidden potential of IT companies. As CEO of Urban Technology Ventures LLC (UTV), he has made UTV into one of Americas leading investors in seed, early and expansion stage minority owned technology companies. Through investments in technology, UTV plans on participating in the development and nurturing of minority owned firms for the 21st century and beyond. Their investments to date have primarily been focused around digital media and providing technology solutions for Entertainment Company’s. The next ten years will see UTV focusing on investment vehicles for Africa to support the rapid growth the internet in these emerging markets where there is less then 2% internet penetration currently. Toby has a strong background in wireless technologies and is currently in an advisory role helping oneVillage Foundation to identify relevant technologies around a entrepreneurial program to ensure the rapid replication of effective ICT4D strategies in Africa. His company has social responsibility mission that is committed to “MAKING POVERTY HISTORY” and distributes a portion of his company’s profits goes towards that goal.
Steve Okay - Inveneo
Stephen Okay is a volunteer technologist and trainer with Inveneo, a San Francisco social enterprise which designs and supports affordable, sustainable communications systems for organizations (NGOs, governments, private enterprises) who operate in remote in rural places in developing countries regions.He has been involved in a number of ICT wireless networking projects and conferences since 2002. From 2004 through 2005 he worked with Mark Summer and Bob Marsh to develop the first version of the Inveneo Communication Station.He is a passionate proponent of the Free Software movement, wireless networking and mobile computing.
Dillip Pattanaik - Information Resource Management-India
Dillip Pattanaik is the Director of Information Resource Management Association-India, a non-profit organization that promotes information technology in rural communities to assist in sustainable development.
Ermanno Pietrosemoli - EsLaRed
Ermanno lives in Merida, Venezuela, where he has taught Telecommunications at Universidad de los Andes since 1970. He designed RETIEM, the wireless network of the state of Merida, and as Project Leader for Spike Technologies has performed wireless networks planning and installations in Argentina, Nicaragua, Peru, Trinidad and other cities of Venezuela. Ermanno is president of Fundacion EsLaRed (Latin American Networking School) and has been participating in ICT training workshops and development projects for Latin America and the Caribbean since 1992. In 1996 he was a lecturer at the wireless training workshop held at ICTP in Trieste, Italy and has continued to contribute to these annual events. Having an interest in low cost telecommunications solution, has been experimenting in long range WiFi and in April 2006 was able to span 279 km using off the shelf inexpensive routers and modified reflectors.
Alison Powell - Île Sans Fil
Alison Powell is a PhD candidate in the Communication Studies department at Concordia University in Montreal. Her work focuses on the uses of mobile and wireless internet technologies in public spaces, as well as on the politics and culture of community wireless groups, and their impact on the development of communications policies and practices. She is a member of the Canadian Research Alliance on Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), where she examines community and municipal wireless projects. She is also a member of the LabCMO research group on computer-mediated communication, at Université du Québec à Montréal. She has presented and published on the relationships between ICTs, citizenship, and public space, as well as on the emergence of community technology groups in Canada. She is also the academic liaison for the community wireless network Île Sans Fil. She was an invited researcher at l’École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris in the Summer of 2006.
Francois Proulx - Île Sans Fil
Francois Proulx is currently completing a B. Eng. IT Engineering degree in Montreal, Canada. He is also the V.P of R&D for the non-profit community wireless group Île Sans Fil. Over the past few years, he has taken part in the Montreal open source community through his contributions on the WifiDog captive portal solution. He built the prototype for the HAL project that now enables local artists to distribute their music and short films on small servers on the Île Sans Fil network. Recently he was a researcher at the MIT SENSEable City Lab where he designed and developed iFIND, a location-based social software using the Wi-Fi access points as a positioning system.
Ramon Roca - Guifi.net
With 20 years of experience working for IT industry leaders Mr. Roca, like many of the activists interested in wireless networking, started to use wifi for access broadband for teleworking at home, in a rural area north of the region of Barcelona in early 2000. In 2003, after having discussions with other activists in the region, he realized that although building wifi communities is a local phenomenon, the technology skills were not generally available to fill the need for resources to make community networks truly available to those hoping to effectively overcome the digital divide. To solve this, in early 2004, Mr. Roca founded guifi.net with other activists from other municipalities.
Bogdan Tančić - BGWireless
Bogdan is one of the founders and network administrators of BGWireless community network, a non-profit organization that promotes information technology and builds independent network infrastructure in the city of Belgrade, Serbia. As the biggest network in region, their goal is to become the most relevant factor in the telecommunications branch in the country. Many technical projects from this community network are used worldwide. Working for Siemens, Bogdan did considerable research on the telecommunications industry in Serbia. Also, he has been a lecturer in many seminars in Serbia. He is finishing his studies on Electrotechnical faculty in the department for computer technology and informatics.
Joy Tang - oneVillage Foundation
Joy has a background on ICT marketing with Cisco. After a 7 years at Cisco first in marketing and then as Cisco Fellow she helped to pioneer Cisco’s Emerging Market strategy. She then went on to found oneVillage Foundation. She is now as VP of marketing for Accton; an electronics company based on Taiwan that makes routers and other networking equipment. She will discuss the role of ICT in transforming lives and building human networks. This will include examples of how FOSS and community wireless networks can impact the wireless environment at the corporate level, while keeping its values and integrity at the grassroots level while keeping in mind that corporate system might offer some guidance especially with consideration to mass dissemination of wireless/telecenter best practices.
Lee Thorn - Jhai Foundation
Since 1967, Lee has worked as a strategist and activist on an international basis within the Independent Living movement for people with disabilities and the Veterans movement for peace. He wrote legislation, lobbied, fundraised, and created strategy at the highest levels. He also developed first multi-service, peer-led agencies. Lee founded in January 1998 and run since the Jhai Foundation, an international reconciliation and rural development NGO that has spun off six businesses, two NGO’s, and a coffee cooperative. He has created and tested the low power, low cost JhaiPC and communication system. He developed Jhai Networks, a method for the illiterate to use the internet; has helped the Jhai Coffee Farmers cooperative sell coffee at prices up to double their competitors in Laos, doubling their co-op’s sales yearly. He has won the Stockholm Challenge Award in education, laureate status in the Tech Awards and five ‘best practices’ designations, including one from the UN Secretariat.
Anthony Townsend - Institute for the Future
Anthony has been researching the implications of new technology on cities and public institutions for over a decade. At the Institute for the Future (IFTF), Anthony's research focuses on several inter-related topics: pervasive computing, the urban environment, economics and demographics, public and nonprofit organizations, and the media industry. Prior to joining IFTF, Anthony enjoyed a brief but productive academic career at New York University, where he directed research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security. Anthony is active in international futures research networks, and received a Fulbright scholarship in 2004 to study the social impacts of broadband in South Korea. He was one of the original founders of NYCwireless, a pioneer in the municipal wireless movement. Anthony received his Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003.
Steve Walker - Informatics Coalition
Steve Walker is President of Steve Walker & Associates and Managing Partner of Walker Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund specializing in the Mid Atlantic region. Previously, Steve was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Trusted Information Systems, Inc. (TIS), which he founded in 1983. Before its purchase by Network Associates, TIS had become a publicly traded company, employing more than 350 people with offices throughout the world. Prior to TIS, Steve had a 22-year career with the Department of Defense at the National Security Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Steve was a member of a team that developed the ARPAnet, the breakthrough packet switching system that evolved into the Internet. He is nationally recognized for his pioneering work on the DoD Computer Security Initiative, establishment of the National Computer Security Center and the Defense Data Network. Steve is currently the chairman of the Technology Leadership Consortium, a volunteer group of leaders of technology organizations across the region. In that role he is leading the Informatics Coalition, an effort to recognize the significance of informatics in all aspects of our region’s development.
