Participants

Bios

Alvarado, Joaquin

Joaquín Alvarado,  Senior Vice President for Diversity and Innovation CPB, provides strategic guidance and leadership for strengthening the Corporation's capacity to serve as a catalyst for innovation and inclusion within public media as well as for broadening the reach and diversity of public media's audience. Joaquín has served as director of the San Francisco State University's Institute for Next Generation Internet (INGI) since its founding in 2005. Under his direction, INGI formed San Francisco's Digital Media Advisory Council and Digital Sister Cities initiative to connect communities around the world in efforts to stimulate economic development, innovation and diversity. Mr. Alvarado holds a B.A. in Chicano Studies from U.C. Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the UCLA School of Film, Television, and Digital Media. He has served on the board of directors for the Bay Area Video Coalition, the California Council for the Humanities, CineGrid, TechSoup Global, and Latino Public Broadcasting.

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Bradner, Scott

Scott Bradner has been involved in the design, operation and use of data networks at Harvard University since the early days of the ARPANET. He was involved in the design of the original Harvard data networks, the Longwood Medical Area network (LMAnet) and New England Academic and Research Network (NEARnet). He was founding chair of the technical committees of LMAnet, NEARnet and the Corporation for Research and Enterprise Network (CoREN).

Mr. Bradner served in a number of roles in the IETF. He was the co-director of the Operational Requirements Area (1993-1997), IPng Area (1993-1996), Transport Area (1997-2003) and Sub-IP Area (2001-2003). He was a member of the IESG (1993-2003) and was an elected trustee of the Internet Society (1993-1999), where he currently serves as the Secretary to the Board of Trustees. Scott is also a trustee of the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN).

Mr. Bradner is the University Technology Security Officer in the Harvard University Office of the Provost. He tries to help the University community deal with technology-related privacy and security issues. He also provides technical advice and guidance on issues relating to the Harvard data networks and new technologies to Harvard's CIO. He founded the Harvard Network Device Test Lab, is a frequent speaker at technical conferences, a weekly columnist for Network World, and does a bit of independent consulting on the side.

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Burnham, Brad

Brad Burnham began his career in information technology with AT&T in 1979. He held a variety of sales, marketing and business development positions there until 1990 when he spun Echo Logic out of Bell Laboratories. As the first AT&T "venture," Echo Logic was a catalyst for the creation of AT&T’s venture capital arm, AT&T Ventures. When Echo Logic was sold in 1993, Brad joined AT&T Ventures as an Executive in Residence. He became a principal at there in 1994 and a General Partner in 1996. At AT&T Ventures, Brad was responsible for 14 investments including, Argon Networks, Audible, Avesta Technologies, Classic Sports Network, Multex Systems, Physicians Online, and Paytrust.

Brad currently serves on the boards of Indeed, Pinch Media, Tumblr, Wesabe, Adaptive Blue, SimulMedia, UpCompany, Meetup, and Bug Labs. Brad has a BA in Political Science from Wesleyan University, is married with two kids and lives in New York City.

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Chase, Robin

Robin Chase is founder and CEO of GoLoco, an online ridesharing community. She also founded and leads Meadow Networks, a consulting firm that advises city, state, and federal government agencies about wireless applications in the transportation sector, and impacts on innovation and economic development. Robin is also founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world.

She is on the Board of the World Resources Institute, and the World Economic Forum Future of Transportation Council. She served on the Massachusetts Governor's Transportation transition team, and the Boston Mayor's Wireless Task Force. In 2009, she was included in the Time 100 Most Influential People. Robin lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment. Robin graduated from Wellesley College and MIT's Sloan School of Management, and was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow.

You can follow Robin on Twitter at @rmchase.

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Cherry, Barbara

Barbara A. Cherry is Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University. Dr. Cherry brings to her research an interdisciplinary academic background integrated with telecommunications industry experience. Prior to joining the faculty at Indiana University, she was Senior Counsel with the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis of the FCC. Prior to joining the FCC, she was Associate Professor and Associate Director of the James H. and Mary B. Quello Center for Telecommunication Management and Law at Michigan State University. Prior to entering academia, Barbara also worked on public policy issues while employed with Ameritech and AT&T. Barbara holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.A. in Economics and Law from Harvard University while recipient of a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Economics, and a B.S. in Economics summa cum laude from the University of Michigan.

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Cochrane, Jane

A successful manager and organizer with significant experience at the heart of complex public authorities, Jane has worked extensively at the interface between the public and private sectors. Her MBA focussed on organisational complexity, development and change management.

Past experience has included:

• Corporate strategy and policy development
• Business Planning
• Strategic Partnerships
• Community Strategy and public consultation
• Community regeneration/economic development
• Research and Information
• Sustainability & Local Agenda 21
• Recruitment & Selection for senior management posts
• Event planning & management

In addition Jane specialises in

• Coaching senior managers and management teams in political sensitivity and building their knowledge and ability to work with the public sector
• Providing research & liaison with public agencies on behalf of prospective private sector contractors
• Advising, proofing and undertaking research to support tenders, funding bids or contracts

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Cochrane, Peter

Peter is a futurist, technologist and business guru who invests his time and money as an agent of change and creator of new business. A seasoned professional with over 40 years of hands on technology and operational experience, he has been involved in the creation and deployment of new technologies, the transformation of corporations, and the starting of many new businesses. Peter has done everything from digging holes in the road to working as a technician, engineer, educator, manager, innovator, technology prophet, and business angel.

His career in BT saw him progress to Head of Research and CTO with a 1000 strong team engaged in studies spanning optical fiber, fixed and mobile networks, terminals and interfaces, artificial life and healthcare, through to war gaming, eCommerce, eRetail, eLogistics and business modeling. Peter's PhD was pivotal in BT deciding to go all-digital and all-optical in the 1970s, and he played a key technology role in a downsizing of BT from 242,000 to 110,000 people in the 1990s.

Peter has also spent time in academia as an educator. He was appointed as the UK's first Professor for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology @ Bristol in 1998. A graduate of Nottingham Trent and Essex Universities, Peter has received notable recognition with the Queen's Award for Innovation & Export in 1990 and Honorary Doctorates from Essex, Robert Gordon, Stafford, Nottingham Trent and Brunel Universities. He was awarded an OBE in 1999 for his contribution to international communications.

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Comstedt, Anders

Anders Comstedt is Senior Advisor and consultant in telecom issues, in particular related to deregulation, alternative shared infrastructure and business development. Trying to get away from the Nordic winters he is increasingly active in East Africa. The Nordic summers he try to spend on his yacht among the Stockholm islands, checking rural wireless.

He has the last years been a board member of a few smaller ventures, including both "VoIP" and Cabling companies. He has managed cross border sub-marine cable roll-out in Europe, to projects changing policy in developing countries. But he is more known for his early engagement as advisor to new fibre infrastructure initiatives out of being the first CEO of AB Stokab 1994 - 2002, a telecom network infrastructure provider in Stockholm, Sweden, pioneering leasing dark fibres in a large scale to all operators and end users in an area.

Affiliated to TS-Lab at KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, he talks on telecom policy issues and engages in some of the lab's capacity building projects in developing countries, including the creation of IX:es and lately the regional research and education network, Ubuntunet Alliance, in Southern and Eastern Africa, that will grow to connect African universities in a similar way to Geant in EU and Internet 2 in the US. He is co-author on some reports on transforming laggard markets to Open Access, including one on Sub Saharan Africa, but is more interested in changing processes on the ground than writing reports.

As a former chairman of the company handling domain names in the .se domain, he has been involved in the Swedish Internet development. Prior to that he has had several executive positions in the telecoms industry. This includes subsidiaries of both Telia, and the Ericsson group. He has also been an advisor in business development and developer of industrial controls. Born 1950, he has an MSEE from Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden.

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Ekman, Pontus

Pontus Ekman is a retired high-tech entrepreneur from Sweden.

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el-Imam, Nadia

Nadia EL-Imam is a young cosmopolitan from a multicultural background, interested in using digital technologies to address complex societal challenges. She is passionate about the power and potential for young people to make a difference in the world by creating and testing innovative solutions to local issues. She has co-initiated the "Wikicrats" project with the European Commission, an initiative to bring new perspectives to the EC's discussion of future technology and digital policy initiatives. Also, Nadia is a recent addition to the team behind Critical City, an urban gaming platform.

Nadia has a proven track record in designing usable, accessible, visually-arresting interactive interfaces. She combines creativity with expertise in usability research, and human-computer interaction to produce innovative digital communication products. She has a strong sense of aesthetics and attention to detail. She does prize-winning user experience design for a rage of clients including Syrup Stockholm and posts regularly on Kikazette, a pop/fashion blog.

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Felten, Benoit

Benoit Felten is a senior analyst in Yankee Group's Research group with expertise in Fibre to the Home/Business, both commercial and municipal projects, business models and economic and societal impact. He helps operators, vendors and end user businesses to understand the trends in the evolution of broadband connectivity and the drivers for adoption. His current work focuses on business models around commercial FTTH, public/private partnership mechanisms for local and national governments, services over very high bandwidth access and the economic and social impact of very high broadband. Before Yankee Group, Felten was at Arcome, a French telecom consultancy and analysis firm. He also writes the Fiberevolution blog in which he expresses some of his views on fiber to the home across the world.

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Freeburg, Tom

Tom is retired from Motorola, where he founded and headed the Canopy wireless broadband operation. Most of his 39-year career at Motorola has been focused on wireless data in one form or another; he has over 60 patents that span many of the basics for that industry. He is now Executive Vice President and Director of Corporate Strategy for MemoryLink, a company that is focusing on bringing new technologies and applications to the wireless Internet.

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Frischmann, Brett

Professor Frischmann is an associate professor with expertise in intellectual property and Internet law. He joined the Loyola faculty in 2002 after clerking for the Honorable Fred I. Parker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and practicing at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, DC. Professor Frischmann has held visiting appointments at Cornell Law School (2008-2009) and Fordham University, School of Law (Fall 2007).

Professor Frischmann's scholarship has engaged legal academics and economists and led to a variety of important scholarly exchanges. For example, Professors Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law), Harold Demsetz (UCLA Economics), and Anne Barron (London School of Economics) have published replies to his work; the Ecology Law Quarterly dedicated an issue to the exploration of his work on infrastructure and commons, featuring articles by Professors David Driesen, Gregory Mandel, and Marc Poirier, as well as by Professor Frischmann; and in early 2010, the Cornell Law Review will dedicate a Special Issue to his article, Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, co-authored with Professors Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg. The Special Issue will include commentary on the featured article by leading academics.

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Gaylord, Art

Art Gaylord is Director of Computer and Information Services, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Education: B.A & M.A. Wesleyan University, 1972, Chemistry, and M.S. University of California, Berkeley, 1973, Chemistry

Research Interests: Innovative uses of computing and communications technologies in research and education; large-scale distributed computing infrastructures; collaborative computing and dynamic resource allocation; preservation and retrieval of digital information in multi-disciplinary, accessible, active repositories; real-time data acquisition and analysis; life cycles of complex development projects; the communication of scientific and technological information across subject boundaries and to the general population.

Affiliations: Member IEEE and AGU

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Geddes, Martin

Martin Geddes is Director of Strategy at BT Innovate & Design, a division of BT Group. I am leading a team that integrates the activities of BT's IT and Network R&D division to deal with future challenges like Cloud Services. I have a specialist interest in the future of voice and personal communications, as well as the application of multi-sided market structures to the telecoms industry.

Following a period as an independent consultant, I was Chief Analyst at STL Partners from 2006-2008, where I co-founded the Telco 2.0 Initiative. This is designed to catalyse business model innovation, and collaboration across the telecoms-media-technology ecosystem.

For the period 2001-2004 I was a technology specialist at Sprint in Overland Park, KS, where I also started a popular strategy blog called Telepocalypse.

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Goldman, Alex

Based in New York, Alex Goldman covered the ISP industry for nine years for ISP-Planet. At InternetNews, Alex has been covering the rapidly changing enterprise software space, in which the Internet continues to disrupt old business models in new ways. After September 4, 2009, he plans to strike out on his own, and find out whether social capital really does work the way that Throwing Sheep says it does. He has worked on one broadband stimulus grant and is looking forward to other projects.

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Googin, Roxane

Roxane Googin publishes the High Technology Observer, a technology investment strategy service. Focused on long term trends rather than on short term trading ideas, one area of focus since 2000 has been on the continuing ramifications of the “Paradox of the Best Network”, which stipulates that the best network, perfectly plain and extensible, is also the perfect capital repellant. Like DRAM vendors, owners of such networks get caught in endless cycles of loss-leading capacity extensions. While service providers have hidden from this “bit pipe” future, behind favorable regulations, re-monopolization, as well as behind the hope of delivering new types of traffic or services beyond bandwidth and voice, these efforts are doomed to failure as ever smarter endpoints, including the iPhone, increasingly disintermediate them. This basic paradox has haunted Telecom investment for 8 years now, and will continue to do so until it is resolved.

As a cross-industry analyst, I am interested in more than bandwidth. I am particularly interested in how next-gen applications that bring together now forms of software, delivered over new forms of bandwidth and user devices, can deliver the next generation of productivity improvements. In earth-saving terms, I wonder how the intersection between IPv6, machine to machine communications, wireless access, GPS, social networking and collaboration, can act to transform energy intensive behaviors such as daily travel and supply chain management. I also wonder about the degree that we will collectively allow these forces to degrade our privacy in the name of conservation. Secondarily, since the primary source of atmospheric carbon comes from coal fired power plants, I wonder how power lines can be used to transmit data about energy usage to reduce peak loads, and hence minimize the need for new plants. As with the above example, the ultimate trade-off may again be between efficiency and privacy. Finally, if power lines are used to transmit usage data, one wonders how long it will take for them to be transformed into yet another bandwidth vehicle to the home.

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Hendricks, Dewayne L.

Dewayne Hendricks is CEO, of Tetherless Access, Inc. (TAI), a Fremont, California based company which does research, product development and deployment of broadband wired and wireless data devices and services. TAI is the new incarnation of Tetherless Access Ltd. (TAL) where he was its CEO and co-founder. TAL was founded back in 1990 and was one of the first companies to develop and deploy Part 15 unlicensed wireless metropolitan area data networks which used the TCP/IP protocols. TAL eventually went public in 1996. He is also a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Technological Advisory Council (TAC http://www.fcc.gov/oet/tac). He has participated in the installation of wireless networks in many parts of the world such as Kenya, Tonga, Mexico, Canada and Mongolia. He has been involved with radio since his teens, when he obtained his amateur radio operator's license.

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Hoskins, Hartley

Hartley Hoskins is Network Group Leader, Computer and Information Services, at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research interests include design of seismic sources and receivers; seismic field programs and analysis; applications programming; industrial liaison; technology transfer; communications engineering.

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Hovis, Joanne

Joanne Hovis, an attorney with a background in communications and commercial litigation, is President of Columbia Telecommunications Corporation (CTC), a national, public interest, communications engineering and consulting firm. She leads the company's work for non-profit organizations, public interest organizations, and academic and think-tank institutions. She also oversees CTC's educational offerings and training programs, which are offered by several Universities.

Hovis is a recognized authority on municipal and community broadband topics–and on the evolving role of government in the provision of communications services to the public. She leads the CTC team that advises the Cities of San Francisco, Seattle, Tucson, and Portland regarding fiber-to-the-premises networking. She has advised numerous other local governments and non-profits regarding community fiber and wireless networking, including the William Penn Foundation; the Institute for Next Generation Internet; the University of Illinois; and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Hovis also oversees all ongoing research and analysis for local government clients and frequently provides policy and business analysis on large CTC projects such as the regional, interoperable public safety communications network currently under development in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

Currently, she serves on the Board of Directors of NATOA, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, the national association that represents local governments and promotes community interests in communications matters. In that capacity, she has advised NATOA and the national municipal/county associations regarding the FCC's proposed national public safety broadband wireless network. As a NATOA Director, Hovis has also been active in the discussions in Washington regarding the broadband provisions of the 2009 "stimulus" bill and the United States Broadband Coalition.

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Isenberg, David

David S. Isenberg spent 12 years at AT&T Bell Labs until his 1997 essay, "The Rise of the Stupid Network," was received with acclaim everywhere in the global telecommunications community with one exception–at AT&T itself! So Isenberg left AT&T in 1998 to found isen.com, LLC (an independent telecom analysis firm based in Cos Cob, Connecticut), to publish isen.blog, and to produce conferences such as F2C: Freedom To Connect.

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James, Nathaniel

Nathaniel James is the Executive Director of OneWebDay, Inc. He brings over 8 years of experience in nonprofit administration, advocacy, community organizing, outreach and recruitment, field operations, and social research to his role as Executive Director, in addition to his lifelong commitment to vision of a 21st century communications system that facilitates democratic participation, the vibrant exchange of diverse perspectives, equitable access, and the fullest development of human creative potential.

Mr. James comes to OneWebDay, Inc. from a two-year engagement with the Media and Democracy Coalition. Previous to his work with the Coalition, Mr. James ran field campaigns, trained and managed field staff, and managed budgets and reporting databases with FieldWorks, MoveOn, Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. and the Fund for Public Interest Research. He also provided strategic consultation at Microsoft and for Greenpeace International, focusing on leveraging social networks and social media to achieve organizational goals.

Nathan earned a master's degree in Media and Communication Regulation and Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science in December 2006, submitting original research on "Social Interaction on Wikipedia.org: A Social Network Analysis of Article Talk Pages" for his dissertation. In 2004, he earned a bachelor's degree from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

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Jones, Mike

Mike Jones is Chief Technology Advocate of Google. Michael is charged with advancing Google's technology to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. He travels the globe to meet and speak with governments, businesses, partners, and customers to carry out this mission. He previously was Chief Technologist of Google Maps, Earth, and Local Search, the teams responsible for providing location intelligence and information in global context to users worldwide. Before its acquisition by Google, Michael was CTO of Keyhole Corporation, the company that developed the technology used today in Google Earth. He was also CEO of Intrinsic Graphics, and earlier, was Director of Advanced Graphics at Silicon Graphics. A prolific inventor and computer programmer since the 4th grade, he has developed scientific and interactive computer graphics software, held engineering and business executive roles, and is an avid reader, traveler and amateur photographer using a home-built 4 gigapixel camera made with parts from the U2/SR71.

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Kamman, W. Stephen

Steve Kamman is an Analyst covering Networking and Telecom Equipment at Fidelity Investments in Boston, MA. He joined Fidelity in 2006. From 2001-2006, Steve covered the Networking industry as an Analyst at CIBC World Markets. He was part of CIBC's Telecom Services research team from 1999 - 2000. In the 90's, Steve worked in Corporate Development at MCI Telecommunications Corp for 2 years and in Andersen Consulting's Tech, Media, and Telecom practice for 5 years. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA Cum Laude in both the History and Economics majors from Yale University. He is deeply indifferent to both the Red Sox and the Yankees.

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Kleiner, Art

Art Kleiner is the editor of strategy+business, the quarterly magazine and (as of Sept 1 2009) web-based management journal published by Booz & Company. He is a writer, educator, scenario planner and management/editorial consultant. He is the author of The Age of Heretics: A History of the Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2nd edition, 2008) and Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege and Success (Doubleday, 2003). He teaches a course on scenario planning to graduate-level new media students at New York University 's Interactive Telecommunications Program. His website is http://www.artkleiner.com. He has been editorial director of the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook project, columnist (on culture and change) for Strategy & Business, and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly. He lives outside New York City.

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Lebkowsky, Jon

A Social Web Strategies Founding Partner, Jon Lebkowsky is a culture and business strategist and thought leader focused on the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the social uses of digital technologies. An early online community moderator on The Well, and a founder of Fringeware – one of the first internet businesses, Jon has been a direct participant in the formative conversations that generated our contemporary global digital society. Writing on digital culture, technology, media, and global sustainability, he was one of the web’s first bloggers, having blogged regularly since 2000. He is an acknowledged authority on the social web, online communities, web development, public wireless broadband, and e-democracy.

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Maffei, Andrew

Andrew Maffei currently plays the role of Ocean Informatics Coordinator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. In the past Andrew has held several positions at WHOI including Systems Programmer, Network Manager, High-speed, fiber-optic, underwater network design specialist, data-visualization visionary, etc. He missed Bighook 2008 because he was on sabbatical at a yoga and meditation retreat center in Rhinebeck NY for 7 months.

Andrew currently leads a team at WHOI, including colleagues at the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensellear Polytechnic Institute, aimed at identifying and employing effective methodologies for ocean scientists and computer scientists to free up, effectively employ and make accessible widely heterogeogeneous oceanographic data types – with the hope of better understanding of how the oceans work. Current technology candidates for this work include ontology development, RDF, virtual organizations/observatories, semantic web, effective group facilitation, talking to people's beer, wine and/or good food and music. Years of attending Bighook have played a pivotal role in his research directions.

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Sascha Meinrath

Sascha is the Director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative. Sascha has been described as a "community Internet pioneer" and an "entrepreneurial visionary" and is a well-known expert on community wireless networks, municipal broadband, and telecommunications policy. In 2009 he was named one of Ars Technica's Tech Policy "People to Watch" and is the recipient of the 2009 Public Knowledge IP3 Award for excellence in public interest advocacy. Sascha is a co-founder of Measurement Lab, a distributed server platform for researchers around the world to deploy Internet measurement tools, advance network research, and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. He also coordinates the Open Source Wireless Coalition, a global partnership of open source wireless integrators, researchers, implementors and companies dedicated to the development of open source, interoperable, low-cost wireless technologies. He is a regular contributor to Government Technology's Digital Communities, the online portal and comprehensive information resource for the public sector. Sascha has worked with Free Press, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), the Acorn Active Media Foundation, the Ethos Group, and the CUWiN Foundation. Sascha serves on the Leadership Committee of the CompTIA Education Foundation as well as the Advisory Councils for both the Knight Center of Digital Excellence and the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. He blogs regularly at www.saschameinrath.com.

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Miller, Gardner

Gardner is the Airplane House caretaker, manager and Historian. He is a Jungian with degrees and belts in too many things, so he gardens now and tells outlandish stories which silhouette the truth in much the same way that weekends sneak up on Wednesday.

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Miller, John

John writes, "I grew up in a musical family, in the middle of five kids. My mother is a classical pianist and organist and piano and music teacher, and my dad was very musical, a good singer and played harmonica. We kids all learned musical instruments, too. By 1963, my older sister, MaryAnn, and brother, Alan, were both playing guitar and we were listening to a lot of Folk Music, starting to get into Country Blues, Old-Time and Bluegrass." John was in on the ground floor of the New Acoustic Music movement with Russ Barenberg, Tony Trischka, Matt Glaser and Rounder Records in the 1960s. He played on "Cowboy Calypso," in 1979. John moved to Seattle in the 1980s, where he's expanded his musical tastes to include jazz, Brazilian music, and other popular forms. There's lots more here.

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Noss, Elliot

Elliot Noss has been a leader in the Internet industry for nearly ten years and has been a driver in the evolution of Tucows Inc. for the last seven. Trained as a lawyer, he joined Tucows in 1997 as Vice President, Corporate Services. He was subsequently appointed president and CEO of Tucows Inc. in May 1999.

During his tenure, Tucows has grown to become a leading destination for Internet software and application downloads. In 2000, the company created the wholesale domain name registration market with the launch of the OpenSRS (shared registration services) platform. In August 2001, he helped orchestrate Tucows' merger with Infonautics, Inc., under the Tucows name. Since then, Mr. Noss has rapidly expanded Tucows wholesale services to offer digital certificates, DNS, and email services to a growing international Reseller channel.

He champions areas of vital interest to the Internet community including; privacy, ICANN reform and registrar matters, the implications of emerging technologies, and the emergence of small and medium-sized ISPs and web hosting companies as the unrecognized backbone of the Internet economy.

Mr. Noss chairs the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science Advisory Board and is a distinguished graduate of the University of Toronto where he earned a BA. He also earned an MBA and LLB from the University of Western Ontario.

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Nulty, Leslie

Leslie owns and manages Focal Point Advisory Services, providing strategic, M&A and fiscal management services to small businesses throughout Vermont. She also currently serves as Chief Administrative Officer for East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network, a consortium of 23 Vermont towns developing a universal fiber-to-the-home/premise network for their communities. Leslie also serves as Treasurer, Executive Committee and Board member of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, a 600+ business organization, the largest of its kind in the U.S. From 1999-2004 Leslie was General Manager of an upscale, $10 million, 100 employee, natural food store in Montpelier. From 1994-1998 she served as Controller for Central European Telecom Investments, a Budapest, Hungary-based venture capital fund developing start-up telecom companies throughout Central Europe. Leslie has an M.Sc. in Economics from Cambridge University, England.

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Nulty, Tim

Tim is CEO of East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network, a consortium of 23 Vermont towns developing a universal fiber-to-the-home/premise network for their communities. Formerly he was the developer and then General Manager of Burlington Telecom, a Burlington, Vermont city-wide fiber-to-the-premise network providing Cable TV, telephone and high-speed internet to city residents and businesses. BTís network is open access, providing wholesale transport on a non-discriminatory basis to any service provider. As of August 1, 2008, BT had 4000 customers and is expected to be profitable by the end of the year. Tim holds a Ph.D in Economics from Cambrige University and has held numerous telecom operating and policy positions at the World Bank, U.S. House of Representatives Commerce Committee and U.S. Senate Commerce Committee.

Much more here.

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Odlyzko, Andrew

Andrew Odlyzko is a Professor in the School of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota. He is engaged in a variety of projects, from mathematics to security and Internet traffic monitoring. His main task currently is to write a book that compares the Internet bubble to the British Railway Mania of the 1840s, and explores the implications for future of technology diffusion.

Between 2001 and 2008, he also was at various times the founding director of the interdisciplinary Digital Technology Center, Interim Director of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, Assistant Vice President for Research, and held an ADC Professorship, all at the University of Minnesota. Before moving to Minneapolis in 2001, he devoted 26 years to research and research management at Bell Telephone Laboratories, AT&T Bell Labs, and AT&T Labs, as that organization evolved and changed its name.

He has written over 150 technical papers in computational complexity, cryptography, number theory, combinatorics, coding theory, analysis, probability theory, and related fields, and has three patents. He has an honorary doctorate from Univ. Marne la Vallee and serves on editorial boards of over 20 technical journals, as well as on several advisory and supervisory bodies.

He has managed projects in diverse areas, such as security, formal verification methods, parallel and distributed computation, and auction technology. In recent years he has also been working on electronic publishing, electronic commerce, and economics of data networks, and is the author of such widely cited papers as "Tragic loss or good riddance: The impending demise of traditional scholarly journals," "The bumpy road of electronic commerce," "Paris Metro Pricing for the Internet," "Content is not king," and "The history of communications and its implications for the Internet." He may be known best for an early debunking of the myth of Internet traffic doubling every three or four months and for demonstrating that connectivity has traditionally mattered much more for society than content.

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Ortiz, Jorge

Jorge Ortiz is an entrepreneur involved in several startups:

• Interfibra.net Building FTTH communities in Mexican cities.
• RadioBus, MP3 based mass media for public transportation buses.
• Vozlibre.org, (in planning) Web based citizen media.

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Paynter, Frank

A writer, an activist,and an information technology consultant, Frank Paynter launched his first web site in 1995. By the end of 2001 he was blogging on a daily basis across a range of topics from progressive politics to environmental concern to critical theory and postmodernism. In those early days, a lot of his writing was a meta narrative: blogging about bloggers and blogging. Today he mainly writes about progressive politics, the environment, and social justice issues.

His educational background includes a BA and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin, and telecommunications engineering course work at UC-Berkeley and MIT. In 2007-2008, he received an honorary fellowship in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he studied disparities in criminal justice administration, and attendant issues in public policy formation.

His work has included design, engineering, and operations management of communications networks for the largest bank in California and the largest credit union in Wisconsin. In the early 1980s he led the application development team that created the first successful Office Automation suite, Wang Office. Today he is a student of online social networking and disintermediation in the fields of print and broadcast journalism. Among many other interests and activities, he is a cheerleader for slow food, slow money, and the Community Supported Agriculture qua locavore movement.

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Pepper, Robert

Robert Pepper (he prefers to be called "Pepper") is Vice President, Global Technology Policy, Cisco Systems Inc.

Robert Pepper leads a team driving Cisco's global agenda for advanced technology policy in areas such as broadband, IP enabled services, wireless, security and privacy and ICT development including working with governments across the globe on developing national digital and broadband strategies. He joined Cisco in July 2005 from the FCC where he served as Chief of the Office of Plans and Policy and Chief of Policy Development beginning in 1989 where he focused on issues cutting across traditional boundaries and led teams implementing telecommunications legislation, planning for the transition to digital television, designing and implementing the first U.S. spectrum auctions, and developing policies promoting the development of the Internet. Before joining the FCC, he was Director of the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy. His government service also included Acting Associate Administrator at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and initiating a program on Computers, Communications and Information Policy at the National Science Foundation. His academic appointments included faculty positions at the Universities of Iowa, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and as a research affiliate at Harvard University. He serves on the board of directors of the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI) and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), advisory boards for Columbia University and Michigan State University, and is a Communications Program Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He is a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce's Spectrum Management Advisory Committee and the UK's Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board. Pepper received his BA. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Reed, David P.

Dr. Reed is, by inclination, a designer of large-scale systems structures and concepts - algorithms, protocols, architectures, business models, and processes. His career includes 15 years as a student and professor of computer science and engineering at MIT, 10 years leading advanced commercial personal computer software innovation as v.p. R&D/chief scientist at Software Arts and Lotus Development Corp., 4 years as a senior scientist at Interval Research Corp., and 7 years as an independent technology strategy advisor and consultant to industry in areas related to computing and communications infrastructure and applications. He is known for key early contributions to the architecture of the Internet in the '70's. He has made major contributions to the design, implementation, and technology strategy of a variety of very successful commercial software and systems products. In recent years, he has contributed to several areas of public technology policy issues, including opening up the wireless spectrum, opening up the debate about Deep Packet Inspection and modification by Internet "carriers", and preserving the openness of the Internet worldwide. Reed is currently employed by the MIT Media Lab, and also as an independent inventor and consultant. As a part-time professor at MIT he co-leads both the MIT Communications Futures Program and the Viral Communications Research Group at the Media Lab.

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Russell, Jean

Jean Russell founded of Nurture.biz, a consultancy helping social benefit organizations communicate and cooperate. Jean has worked with grassroots co-ops and traditional corporations alike. She facilitates conversations and conferences in fields ranging from technology (especially social media), to philanthropy, currencies, green/sustainable design, community development, international development, and human rights.

Jean creates and nurtures conversations. She strives to achieve "aliveness" within social spaces. With broad knowledge of many aspects of social change work, she weaves together networks of purpose for enabling a thrivable world.

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Searls, Doc

Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and a fellow with both the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and the Center for Information Technology and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

At the Berkman Center, Doc leads ProjectVRM, which has the immodest ambition of liberating customers from entrapment in vendor silos and improving markets by creating a productive balance of power in relationships between supply and demand. At CITS his work centers around study of the Internet as a new form of infrastructure, and the creation of an Internet Infrastructure Institute.

Doc also has a consulting practice with The Searls Group, which has worked with Hitachi, Sun, Apple, Nortel, Borland, BT, Motorola and other leading companies, in addition to many start-ups. He also serves on the board of directors for PlanetEye, and on the advisory boards of Jabber, Inc., Ping Identity Corp., SocialText, SpikeSource, Krugle, B5 Media and Technorati.

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Seltzer, Wendy

Wendy is a Berkman Fellow and a visiting professor at American University.

She has taught Internet Law, Copyright, and Information Privacy at Brooklyn Law School and was a Visiting Fellow with the Oxford Internet Institute, teaching a joint course with the Said Business School, Media Strategies for a Networked World. Previously, she was a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property and First Amendment issues, and a litigator with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel in New York. She is a 1999 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1996 graduate of Harvard College.

Wendy founded and leads the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, helping Internet users to understand their rights in response to cease-and-desist threats, and to research the effects of these threats on free expression. She also studies the impact of copyright mandates on Free and open source software and user innovation.

Wendy serves as an advisor to the Citizen Media Law Project and on the Board of Directors of the Tor Project, supporting privacy and anonymity research and technology.

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Smith, Steve

Steve's company, Ampersand, performs a variety of professional services related to IP communications and VoIP. Steve founded Ampersand with his wife Marilyn Cugini in 1992, and has advised clients such as Intel, GE, Lavalife, Dialogic, as well as the US government. Current projects include a software-based conference bridge and several large call center VoIP implementations – "it's all about the packets". For 7 years Steve was CTO and Chief Scientist at Lavalife prior to their acquisition in 2005, directing the technical efforts of a 100-person department for voice, web, and mobile products. He successfully migrated the company to an all-IP architecture, moving 1 billion annual minutes off the PSTN to IP, and won the Canadian industry's CIPA award for the project. Additionally, Steve and his team at Ampersand are the authors of Voiceglue, an open-source VXML engine that works in conjunction with Asterisk to provide a 100% open source IVR.

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Snowe, Ginny

Ginny Snowe grew up with music all around her, in France and Germany. She took piano lessons from an early age, and earned a bachelor of music degree from Albion College in Michigan, and a master's degree from Catholic University in Washington D.C. She has performed as a soloist and in ensembles in Germany, France, Canada and the United States. Recently, she has been working on solo piano compositions, drawing on the wildly divergent influences of the likes of James Booker, Stefano Bollani, W. A. Mozart, Gabriel Faure, Bill Evans, Fats Waller. Her singing has centered on Bossa Nova and Samba of Antonio Carlos Jobim, Carlos Lyra, and Dori Caymmi.

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Turner, Brough

Brough [pronounced "bruff"] Turner is a communications industry engineer and entrepreneur. He is currently founder of Ashtonbrooke Corporation. Previously Brough was co-founder and CTO of Natural MicroSystems and NMS Communications. While his leading interests are technology and innovation, his career has included roles in engineering, operations, finance, marketing and customer support. He writes and is quoted widely on telecommunications topics in trade and general business publications and he is a frequent speaker at telecom industry events around the world. Since 2001, Brough has focused on the wireless infrastructure and mobile applications. His 3G and 4G tutorials are widely popular (Google '3G Tutorial' for more info). Brough blogs at http://blogs.dialogic.com/ on the technology, economic and social issues of communications at the intersection of telecom, mobility and the Internet. He holds a BS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Verclas, Katrin

Katrin Verclas is an expert in mobile communications for social impact. She is the co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones for social impact. She is also a principal at Calder Strategies, focusing on mobile campaign strategy and effectiveness and ROI of interactive campaigns. Previously she was Executive Director of NTEN, an organization devoted to helping nonprofits use all aspects of technology more effectively.

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Wagter, Herman

Herman Wagter is the CEO of GNA (Citynet Amsterdam). He has been involved in Citynet from its inception, as Program Manager. He holds a MSc. Degree and has 30 years of experience in various senior management positions in international companies, ranging from high-tech to services. He has an passion for investigating the drivers of the change we are experiencing (the end of cheap oil, hyperconnectivity, lean thinking) and writing about them in his blog www.dadamotive.com.

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Weed, Joe

Joe writes, "I grew up with music in the home. As a youngster in Dekalb, Illinois, I stood in awe of the two massive music cabinets that my dad installed in the living room. One held the record player and the radio, and the other a speaker. Gilbert and Sullivan’s theatrical pieces, Tom Leher’s irreverent and saucy commentary, symphonies, big band, European café music, and occasionally pop tunes filled our little two-story house that my dad had painted fire engine red." Today Joe records acoustic music at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has released six albums of his own, produced many projects for independent artists and labels, and does sound tracks for film, TV and museums. He recently worked on the PBS film “Andrew Jackson,” which premiered nationally in 2008.

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Weinberger, David

Dr. Weinberger began his "career" in the late '70s teaching philosophy at New Jersey's Stockton State College for five years. (He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto.) During this time he maintained his steady freelance writing of humor, reviews and intellectual and academic articles, publishing in places as diverse as The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Smithsonian, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and TV Guide.

In 1985, after being denied tenure because the tenure quota was filled, and after an enthusiastic but well-mannered student demonstration in his support, he became a junior marketing guy at Interleaf, an innovative start-up with new ideas on how to create and structure documents. At Interleaf he helped launch the industrys first document management system and its first electronic document publishing system, years ahead of the Web. He left Interleaf after 8 years, as VP of Strategic Marketing.

He founded the one-person strategic marketing company, Evident Marketing, in 1994 and within two years counted among his clients a wide variety of companies, including RR Donnelley, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, Esther Dyson's Release 1.0 and CSC Index.

In late 1995, he joined Open Text as VP of Strategic Marketing because he saw an opportunity to help shape the way intranets are used. As part of the senior management team, Dr. Weinberger helped Open Text move from one of the first Web search engine companies (the engine behind Yahoo!) to market- and thought-leadership in Web-based collaborative software.

After helping to take Open Text public in 1996, Dr. Weinberger returned to consulting, writing and speaking, helping to found a couple of dot-coms, and serving on industry and company boards. In 2000, Perseus published The Cluetrain Manifesto, of which is is a co-author. It became a national best-seller.

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Whitt, Richard

Richard S. Whitt is the Washington Telecom and Media Counsel for Google Inc. In that capacity, Rick is responsible for Google's wireline, wireless, and media advocacy before the Federal Communications Commission, other federal agencies, and the U.S. Congress. Most recently he has represented the company's interest in broadband policy issues (such as network neutrality), spectrum policy matters (such as the 700 MHz auction and TV white spaces proceedings), and the "unregulation" of VoIP and other Web-based applications.

Prior to joining Google in January 2007, Rick founded and headed NetsEdge Consulting, a public policy consulting firm that provided legal analysis, regulatory strategy, and advocacy counsel to Web-based companies. From 1994 to 2006, Rick worked at MCI Communications, where most recently he served as vice president for federal law and policy. Rick previously spent over five years as an associate attorney in the communications practices of two D.C.-based law firms. Rick is a 1988 cum laude graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, and a 1984 magna cum laude graduate of James Madison University.

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