BigHook 2011

Participants

20July11
Name E-Mail Company Name Blog Twitter
Marvin Ammori ammorim@gmail.com Independent yes yes
Jim Baller jim@baller.com Baller-Herbst Law Group    
Scott Bradner sob@harvard.edu Harvard University yes  
Barbara Cherry cherryb@indiana.edu Indiana University    
Judi Clark judic@manymedia.com ManyMedia yes yes
Steve Crocker steve@shinkuro.com Shinkuro, Inc.    
Mary Evslin mary@evslin.com - - -
Tom Evslin tom@evslin.com Evslin Consulting yes yes
Benoit Felten benoit.felten@gmail.com Yankee Group yes yes
Jim Forster jrforster@mac.com (independent)    
Tom Freeburg tom@memorylink.com MemoryLink    
Art Gaylord agaylord@whoi.edu Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution    
Martin Geddes mail@martingeddes.com Consultant yes yes
Lev Gonick lev.gonick@case.edu Case Western Reserve University yes yes
Roxane I. Googin rgoogin@comcast.net Global Investment Research    
Dewayne L. Hendricks dewayne@warpspeed.com Tetherless Access, Inc. yes yes
David S. Isenberg isen@isen.com isen.com, LLC yes yes
Guy Jarvis g.jarvis@nextgenus.net NextGenus yes yes
W. Stephen Kamman steve@kamman.org (independent)    
Maggie Koerth-Baker maggie.koerth@gmail.com Boing Boing yes yes
Gary Lauder gary@lauderpartners.com Lauder Partners   sort of
Levi C. Maaia levi@fullchannel.com Full Channel yes yes
Sascha Meinrath meinrath@newamerica.net New America Foundation yes yes
Susan Mernit susan@oaklandlocal.com Oakland Local yes yes
Jerry Michalski jerry@sociate.com Sociate yes yes
Gardner Miller elmaddog@capecod.net The Airplane House   yes
Desiree Miloshevic dmiloshevic@afilias.info Afilias    
Chris Mitchell christopher@ilsr.org Institute for Local Self Reliance yes yes
Ram Mohan rmohan@afilias.info Afilias yes yes
Elliot Noss enoss@tucows.com Tucows, OpenSRS   yes
Andrew Odlyzko odlyzko@umn.edu U Minnesota Digital Tech Center yes  
Noah Pepper noah@luckysort.com Lucky Sort, Inc. yes yes
Robert Pepper rmpepper@cisco.com Cisco    
Mark Peshoff mpeshoff@me.com (independent)    
Vinny Raniolo vinny@vinnyraniolo.com Musician in Residence    
Matthew Rantanen mrantanen@sctdv.net S. California Tribal Chairmen's Assn.    
Carlien Roodink carlien.roodink@me.com City of Amsterdam yes yes
Jean Russell jeanmrussell@gmail.com thrivable.org yes yes
Bill St. Arnaud bill.st.arnaud@gmail.com (independent) yes yes
John St. Julien john@johnstjulien.com (independent) yes  
Doc Searls doc@searls.com Berkman Center for Internet & Society yes yes
Gwenn Seemel gwenn.seemel@gmail.com Artist in Residence yes yes
Wendy Seltzer wendy@seltzer.com Yale Law School Info Society Proj yes yes
Micah Sifry msifry@gmail.com Personal Democracy Forum yes yes
Christopher Soghoian chris@soghoian.net Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University yes yes
Brough Turner broughturner@gmail.com netBlazr Inc. yes yes
Frank Vignola fkvignola@juno.com Musician in Residence    
Herman Wagter herman.wagter@citynet.nl Diffraction Analysis yes yes
Richard Whitt whitt@google.com Google sort of sort of
Steve Worona SLW1@cornell.edu (independent) yes yes
Fumi Yamazaki fumi.yamazaki@gmail.com Google yes yes

BigHook2011 Home

Bios

Ammori, Marvin

Marvin Ammori is a lawyer whose expertise is in areas of Internet law and the First Amendment. He has acted as counsel on some of the most important cases involving the future of the Internet. As Free Press's first lawyer in Washington, DC., he was the lead lawyer before the FCC on the Free Press-Comcast case (also known as the Comcast-BitTorrent case), regarding network neutrality. It has been called a "model of the free-speech battles of the future" and shaped debate in Washington, DC for several years.

He also authored a major report on the future of online television, which consumer groups filed with government authorities; the issue became central to the Comcast-NBC merger review and prompted merger conditions.

He has argued cases before the D.C. Circuit (including the Comcast case) and the 7th Circuit, has filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court, has testified before government bodies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, has advised government officials on four continents, and has delivered addresses at conferences in East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America.

Before practicing, he studied at Harvard Law School, and had fellowships at Yale and Georgetownlaw schools. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He is also a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Until recently, he taught cyberlaw and international and domestic telecommunications at Nebraska Law, thanks to US Strategic Command's support for a space & cyber program. Since that program's founding, with Ammori as founding faculty, Nebraska's program has become the world-leading program, and, according to the general heading Strategic Command, has been "doing exactly" what the military hoped it would do: train the first generation of lawyers advising our nation on the laws of technology and warfare.

[back]

 

Baller, Jim

Jim Baller is a Senior Principal of the Baller Herbst Law Group, a national law firm based in Washington, DC, and Minneapolis, MN. The Firm specializes in representing local governments and public power utilities in matters involving telecommunications, cable television, high-speed data communications, Internet access, wireless communications, right-of-way management, pole and conduit attachments, barriers to the public-sector entry into communications, bankruptcy, and antitrust. His clients include the American Public Power Association (APPA), the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA), regional and state utility associations and municipal leagues, numerous other public and private entities in more than 35 states. He is also a founder and spokesman of the Community Broadband Coalition, a broad consortium of associations, consumer groups, and high technology companies that support community broadband initiatives.

The Fiber to the Home Council has called Jim "the nation's most experienced and knowledgeable attorney on public broadband matters," and MuniWireless has called him "the foremost legal expert on U.S. public broadband matters."  In 2001, NATOA made him its Member of the Year.  In 2006, MuniWireless awarded him its first “Esme Award,” for “working tirelessly to protect the interests of municipalities, many times in the face of huge opposition.”  In 2007, NATOA named Jim its first "Community Broadband Visionary of the Year," for "almost single-handedly putting the issue of the need for a national broadband strategy to the forefront of public consciousness."  Also in 2007, Washingtonian Magazine listed Jim as one of Washington's "Best Lawyers" (defined as the top one percent).

Jim is a graduate of Dartmouth College ('69) and Cornell Law School ('72). He is a member of the Bars of the Supreme Court of the United States; the United States Circuit Courts of Appeal for the Federal, District of Columbia, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Circuits; and the courts of the District of Columbia. He holds Martindale-Hubbell's highest AV rating; is a member of the Board of Directors of FirstMile; and is recognized in Who's Who in America.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

Clark, Judi

Judi Clark has been helping people understand and use computers (and other appropriate technologies) since the punchcard days. She has done community development, network and domain administration and site hosting, and even taught web site design long before it was fashionable. Judi is trained to do scenarios and unconferences (and more mundane things like law and semi-truck driving). She loves to engage in conversation about speculative, the impossible, and the unknown.

[back]

 

Crocker, Steve

Dr. Crocker is CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro, Inc., a start up company focused on dynamic sharing of information across the Internet. He is also on the board of the Internet Society, and chair of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee. Dr. Crocker has been involved in the Internet since its inception. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, while he was a graduate student at UCLA, he was part of the team that developed the protocols for the Arpanet and laid the foundation for today's Internet. He organized the Network Working Group, which was the forerunner of the modern Internet Engineering Task Force and initiated the Request for Comment (RFC) series of notes through which protocol designs are documented and shared. He remained active in the Internet standards work through the IETF and IAB. For this work, Dr. Crocker was awarded the 2002 IEEE Internet Award. Dr. Crocker experience includes research management at DARPA, USC/ISI and The Aerospace Corporation, vice president of Trusted Information Systems, and co-founder of CyberCash, Inc. and Longitude Systems, Inc. Dr. Crocker earned his BA in math and PhD in computer science at UCLA, and he studied artificial intelligence at MIT.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

Evslin, Mary

(need bio)

[back]

 

Evslin, Tom

Tom Evslin's career has taken him from nerd to CEO to novelist and consultant with a brief stop as Vermont's Transportation Secretary in the early 1980s.

Recently Tom was volunteer Chief Technology Officer for the State of Vermont. Immediately prior to that he was Chief Recovery Officer for the State responsible for coordinating the state's use of federal stimulus funds and focusing them on the priorities of universal broadband penetration, a smart electrical grid, e-health, and e-education.

Tom's novel hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble is available free online and for purchase from Amazon in hardcopy or Kindle form. A short story "The Interpreter's Tale" can be downloaded to Kindle. His personal blog Fractals of Change is at blog.tomevslin.com.

Tom's bio continues...

[back]

 

Felten, Benoit

Benoit Felten is the founder of Diffraction Analysis, a research and consultancy firm focusing on the circumstances and consequences of the wireline access revolution driven by fiber optics. His expertise is particularly 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 starting Diffraction Analysis, Benoit was a Director of Access Research at Yankee Group, and previously he was Director of Residential Services at the French Telecom consultancy Arcome. He also writes the Fiberevolution blog in which he expresses some of his views on fiber to the home across the world. He's also an amateur musician and fanatical photographer.

[back]

 

Forster, Jim

Jim Forster is passionate about extending the Internet. He started at Cisco when it was quite small and spent 20 years there, mostly in IOS Software Development and System Architecture, and becoming a Distinguished Engineer. While at Cisco he started working on projects and policies to improve Internet access in developing countries, speaking at conferences in Africa including the East Africa Ministerial Broadband Workshop in Kigali, Rwanda in 2007; and the TEDGlobal event in Arusha, Tanzania. Now he engaged in both for-profit and non-profit efforts to extend communications in Africa and India. He is on several Board of Directors, and an Angel investor in US and international projects, including Range Netoworks / OpenBTS and MedCommons in the US, Esoko Networks in Ghana, and AirJaldi in India.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

Gaylord, Art

Art Gaylord is the Director of Computer and Information Services at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where he is responsible for all non-administrative computing, networking and telecommunications services including a mixed fiber optic and wireless network serving six major private and federal government organizations in the Woods Hole area. Prior to taking this position in 1999, he developed and directed computing facilities at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and University of Illinois. He has over 40 years of experience in information technology with expertise in collaborative and distributed computing, scientific computing, networking and voice over IP. He has led several large research projects funded by state and federal government agencies as well as major corporations including Digital Equipment, HP, IBM, GTE and Hughes.

He is a co-founder and Chair of the Board of OpenCape, Inc., a non-profit corporation bringing advanced network services to support the economic, educational, public safety and governmental needs of the southeast Massachusetts region. OpenCape was awarded a BTOP grant as part of the ARRA stimulus program which is being matched by state, county and private funding.

He holds BA and MA degrees in chemistry from Wesleyan University and an MS (1/2 thesis short of PhD) in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Gaylord has been a speaker at numerous conferences worldwide and has publications in both computer science and chemistry.

[back]

 

Geddes, Martin

Martin Geddes is a consultant on the fusion of the IT and telecoms industries.

I have a specialist interest in the future of voice and personal communications, and believe there is a major change ahead as telephony gets 'Googled', becoming a feature of global commerce platforms. My current focus is on Cloud Communications.

Earlier lives have included being Director of Strategy at BT Innovate & Design, a division of BT Group, and I was Chief Analyst at STL Partners from 2006-2008, where I co-founded the Telco 2.0 Initiative, a consulting, research and events business 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.

[back]

 

Gonick, Lev

Lev Gonick has been teaching, working, and living on the Net since 1987.

Lev Gonick is vice president for information technology services and chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He is also the founder and now Board Chair Emeritus of OneCleveland now known as OneCommunity, the award winning project to create a connected community throughout Northeast Ohio through ultra broadband wired and wireless network connectivity. In 2010 Gonick and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve launched the nation's first gigabit fiber to the home research program called the Case Connection Zone.

In 2011 Government Technology awarded Lev one of their "Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers in Public-Sector Innovation." In the same year Crain's Business Cleveland named Gonick one its "10 Difference Makers" in Northeast Ohio and Broadband Properties honored him with their Cornerstone Award for "using fiber to build an inclusive society and empower individuals." In 2010 he received recognition as "Visionary of the Year" from NATOA. In 2006, Lev was recognized by ComputerWorld as a Premier 100 IT leader and honored in the same year by CIO magazine with a CIO 100 Award. In 2007, he and Case Western Reserve were recognized with a ComputerWorld Laureate for leveraging technology to address community priorities.

Lev currently serves on the Boards of Moodlerooms and Monarch Teaching Technologies, (educational software developers for persons with autism). He is also an active member of the Cisco Corporation Higher Education Executive Exchange. Finally, he serves on numerous community Boards including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland and the Bellefaire JCB for Children.

Lev has served as co-chair of the CIO Executive Council's higher education committee, as president of the board of the New Media Consortium, and on the board of the National LambdaRail (NLR), the nation's next generation advanced networking research effort.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

Jarvis, Guy

Guy is founder and Managing Director of NextGenUs UK CIC, a social enterprise dedicated to changing the terms of trade in the interests of the customer by applying the Isenberg Principle of opening up the digital taps and replacing artificial bit scarcity with the actual abundance that fibre makes possible.

Guy is an infrastructure kind of Guy – as a kid he liked motorbikes so rather naively thought that studying mechanical engineering would mean tinkering with machinery rather than the actuality of hardcore applied calculus!

As a student Guy worked in petrochemical utility services, installing pumps, working on plant operations and maintenance then started out his graduate career in Middle East and Africa with CBI (Chicago Bridge & Ironwork) building pipes and storage tanks, of which FTTH is a kind of bonsai version!

Following excursions in between into Adult Education, door-to-door selling, cafe dish washer and yoyo packer, Guy shifted into ICT delivery then management and consultancy in Australia.

Returning to the UK a decade ago, having half a decade before left behind the best dial up internet deal around (courtesy of a happy nexus between untimed calls from the local telco and the ISP PoP offering a local number!), Guy  discovered a distinct lack of decent broadband access and has been doing things to help remedy that digital deficiency ever since.

[back]

 

Kamman, W. Stephen

Steve Kamman has been self-unemployed since January 2011. After some initial false starts, Steve has generally succeeded in enjoying the here and now and NOT focusing overmuch on the future. Under a non-compete until January 2012, he is now starting to think (cautiously) about what might come next. Currently located in the San Francisco Bay Area, but mostly just happy to be out of Boston.

For the previous 5 years, Steve was an Analyst covering Tech in general and Networking and Telecom Equipment in detail 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.

[back]

 

Koerth-Baker, Maggie

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net, an award-winning technology and culture blog with several million monthly readers. She also writes for magazines like Discover and Popular Science, and for websites like Scientific American and National Geographic News. Her book, "Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before it Conquers Us" will be published by Wiley and Sons in March 2012.

[back]

 

Lauder, Gary

Gary Lauder is the Managing Partner of Lauder Partners LLC, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm investing primarily in information technologies. He has been a venture capitalist since 1985, investing in over 75 private companies. He is also Chairman of ActiveVideo Networks, a developer of interactive television technology for cable, IPTV and other forms of internet delivery. Other directorships: Promptu, MediaFriends and ShotSpotter. Investments are primarily in television/IPTV technology and WWW arenas. In the 1980's, he worked at the venture firms of Aetna, Jacobs & Ramo Technology Ventures, as well as Wolfensohn Associates. He holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania; a BS in Economics from the Wharton School; and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the co-creator of the Aspen Institute's Socrates Society with Laura, his wife. He is a member of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute's Henry Crown Fellowship Program. He has had a working cable modem (usually) in his home since 1994. He is co-inventor of 12 patents, has spoken at over 90 industry forums, and, since 1992, has published several articles about the future of the cable industry...that he still stands by.

[back]

 

Maaia, Levi C.

Levi C. Maaia is a graduate research fellow at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Center for Education Research on Literacy & Inquiry in Networking Communities. His research focuses on digital literacies in teaching and learning. As the teacher and curriculum developer of the digital media course at the Anacapa School, he also works directly with middle school and high school students.

In 2004 Levi joined Full Channel, a family-owned broadband provider in Bristol County, R.I. Under his leadership as the company's vice president, Full Channel has successfully turned around a declining subscriber base while making its first forays into digital and high-definition television, IP telephony and renewable energy solutions. In 2008 he developed and launched Full Channel's renewable wind energy initiative GreenLink through a partnership forged with sustainable energy provider People's Power & Light. As a result, cable industry trade publication CableFAX honored Full Channel with its 2009 Top Op Community Service Award.

[back]

 

Meinrath, Sascha

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.

[back]

 

Mernit, Susan

Susan Mernit is editor & publisher of Oakland Local, a news & community hub for Oakland, CA focused on social justice issues that combines reported stories with community media & diverse voices and training to bridge the digital divide.

A former VP at AOL & Netscape, & a former Yahoo Senior Director, Mernit was consulting program manager for The Knight News Challenge, 2008-09, as well as a consultant to organizations including Salon.com & TechSoup Global, where she led the re-design of their portal. She is also a circuit rider for The Knight Community Information Challenge and a frequent facilitator for The Knight Digital Media Center at The Annenberg School of Journalism, USC.

A popular trainer and speaker, Mernit was the Keynote program chair for the October 2009 Online News Association conference in San Francisco. She spent the summer 2008 at TechStars, incubating a company that died; that experience has super-fueled her energy. She is a CE at BlogHer, an avid blogger, and a recovering journalist. She is also a consultant focused on local media, community engagement & the future of news at houseoflocal.org.

Mernit is super interested in how tech and civic engagement amplify both social change and economic development and is trying to put some of her ideas to work in Oakland, CA. In her free time, she's into hiking, growing veggies and urban farms, poetry, blogging, and her new dog.

More data here:

[back]

 

Michalski, Jerry

Jerry Michalski (ma-call-ski) is the founder and president of Sociate, a technology consulting firm. Through Sociate, Jerry offers advice, speaks, writes and invests, taking a more hands-on role in developing the products and services he has written about for a dozen years. His interests lie mainly in the many ways that technology and people interact -- in private and business settings, and at all scales: as individuals, businesses, economies and societies.

Jerry is working on his first book, which offers (among other things) a humanist answer to the dysfunctions of consumer capitalism, innovative approaches to improve the world's culture and help creators make a better living, and ways for corporations to make transparency and openness profit drivers, not just ethical guidelines.

For the five years before he founded Sociate, Jerry was the Managing Editor of Release 1.0 , Esther Dyson's monthly newsletter, and co-host of the annual PC Forum. For the five years before that, Jerry was an industry analyst and research service director with New Science Associates, which was later bought by Gartner Group. Jerry earned an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA in Economics from UC Irvine. He was raised in Peru and Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish, German and French.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

Miloshevic, Desiree

Désirée Zeljka Miloshevic is the Special Advisor to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Advisory Group Chair, and International Affairs and Policy Advisor at Afilias, a global leader in domain name services. In addition, she represents the Gibraltar ccTLD (.GI) at CENTR, and other major European institutions. First elected to the ISOC Board in 2004, she also currently serves on the Board of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (2004-2007), Creative Commons UK (2004- ), the Irish ENUM Forum Policy Advisory Board (2005- ), is a member of Advisory Council of Open Rights Group UK (2005- ). She is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and has been a judge in the Technical Innovation Section of the annual Webby Awards since 2003.

One of the founding European members of the ICANN ccNSO (March 2004), Ms. Miloshevic's work in the internet field began in 1993 as one of the first hostmasters for Demon Internet, the United Kingdom's first consumer Internet access provider. She participated in the informal, peer-coordinated policy making process for the .UK domain until supervision of the UK ccTLD was assumed by Nominet in 1996. In subsequent years she has worked as an expert technical and policy consultant for new top-level domains (e.g., .MUSEUM and .PRO), and has participated in the work of many Internet councils, workshops and constituencies in the areas of DNS policy and Internet governance. She has also contributed lectures to CEENET, the South East European CyberSecurity Cooperation Forum, the Eastern European Networking Association, the Stability Pact for South East Europe, and many other regional fora.

Désirée's decade-plus of close and productive interactions with regulators, intergovernmental leaders, academics, artists, and community activists throughout the world provide her with a unique set of resources with which to engage the often complex, cross-sectoral challenges of Internet technical coordination and governance.

[back]

 

Mitchell, Christopher

Christopher Mitchell is the Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative. He has worked as a server administrator, web geek, and in automated software quality assurance. He earned a Master's degree in Public Policy from the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Macalester College.

Christopher's work focuses on telecommunications–helping communities ensure the networks upon which they depend, are accountable to the community. He has published several reports, articles, and interviews while also offering technical assistance to communities around the country. He can be contacted at christopher@ilsr.org

In the Minneapolis office, Christopher tries not to distract his colleague John Farrell more than 5 times per day. He is also a sports photographer and rock climbing enthusiast. While on rock-climbing trips, Chris is known to stop by nearby community broadband networks for a tour.

[back]

Mohan, Ram

Ram Mohan is Executive Vice President, & Chief Technology Officer of Afilias Limited. Ram oversees key strategic, management and technology choices for the company's business, which includes fifteen generic top-level domains (gTLDs) including .INFO and .ORG. Ram has led the strategic growth of the company in registry services and security as well as new product sectors such as Managed DNS, RFID/Auto-ID, and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

Before joining Afilias in September 2001, Ram held various leadership positions at Infonautics Corp., a pioneering online database and content distribution company. Ram is the founder of the award-winning CompanySleuth product, and helped architect Electric Library, a widely used reference database, and Encyclopedia.com. Ram is also founder of the technology behind TurnTide, an anti-spam company acquired by Symantec.

Ram serves on the Board of Directors of ICANN, and has authored numerous global internet-industry standards and is a co-founder of the Arabic Script IDN Working Group.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

Pepper, Noah

Noah Pepper is the founder and CEO of Lucky Sort, Inc., a data mining and visualization company based in Portland, OR. Before founding Lucky Sort in May 2011, he was Director of Research and Development for Qmedtrix, a Portland-based firm in the medical insurance industry, where he led a team that developed a machine learning and visualization platform to detect fraud & abuse in medical reimbursements.

Noah is a graduate of Reed College where he studied economics and math. In 2007, while at Reed, he joined the Reed Artificial Life Lab in the Center for Advanced Computation. This research focused on understanding the evolutionary dynamics of technology by applying language processing and network analysis techniques to United States patents.

In addition to continuing his work with the Artificial Life Lab, he serves as a Collaborative Researcher at Apple, Inc. and advises several other companies on data analysis problems.

Noah’s current research focuses on making humans more productive when working with large amounts of data through appropriate interface design and visualization. At Lucky Sort he is building a system designed for financial analysts who are presented with more news, opinion and commentary than they could ever read. The product, TopicWatch, is a visual data mining platform for easily seeing "The Big Picture." TopicWatch provides the ability to search and observe the aggregate patterns of text use on the Internet. Unlike sentiment analysis platforms or search engines, it provides a platform for understanding high level trends and events quickly.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

Peshoff, Mark

Mark Peshoff recently retired from Cisco, where he was Senior Director of Executive Thought Leadership where he managed a team that supported solving Cisco's customer's most important business problems.

Mark joined Cisco in 1996. His previous position was Director of Service Provider Marketing for Cisco Systems where he led several Cisco teams including Solutions Management & Marketing, Segment Marketing, Strategic Marketing and Press Relations/Analyst Relations. He also was Director of Marketing for Cisco's Integrated Access Business Unit and Director of International Marketing for the company's Optical Transport Business Unit.

Prior to Cisco, he spent 14 years with Hewlett-Packard, building the company's first Network Consulting Organization.

Recently Mark wrote,

"My last position was leading the re-structure of Cisco. It was a great opportunity. Not often do you get to re-structure a $40B company! After many months of creating the strategy and getting the board to approve, I discovered that I qualified for the early retirement program that was being offered. After almost 16 years there, I decided the timing was right to end this chapter and start a new one."

Mark will tell us of his future plans at BigHook2011.

[back]

 

Raniolo, Vinny

Even though his career in music is only at the beginning, Vinny has already had many opportunities that take most players a lifetime to achieve. Now playing guitar along side many of the finest musicians in the world, he is very excited to see where his music career will take him. At age 26, Vinny has already toured the United States, many Caribbean islands, Europe and Asia many times and performed at some of the top venues in the world with his music.

Vinny is very dedicated to his career as a professional touring musician, studio musician, educator and arranger. Beginning to play guitar at age 13, Vinny has already experienced a very diverse in his 13 years of playing music. After performing his first gigs at the age of 16 in local jazz clubs, rock n' roll bars, and musical theatre pit bands he began to catch the ears of other professional musicians and began to tour and work in recording studio. Vinny has been on numerous recordings with Frank Vignola, Bucky Pizzarelli, Tommy Emmanuel, Tony Trishka, Matt Flinner, Ken Peplowski to name a few. Vinny is also an experienced educator and has taught classes at Bowling Green University, Kent State University, Asiago Music Conservatory and others. He has also worked for many educational companies such as Mel Bay and Truefire.com. Vinny now tours the world with jazz guitar great, Frank Vignola and guitar virtuoso from Austrailia, Tommy Emmanuel. Vinny also works with many singer songwriters to arrange, record and produce their music.

"One of the brightest young guitarist on the scene" -Frank Vignola, World Renowned Guitar Virtuoso

"The best rhythm guitarist I've played with" -Tommy Emmanuel

"My favorite guitarist to listen to" -Donny Celenza, Blues Guitar Great

[back]

 

Rantanen, Matthew

Matthew R. Rantanen is the Director of Technology for the Southern California Tribal Chairmen's Association (SCTCA) and Director of the Tribal Digital Village (TDV) Initiative that was started back in 2001 designing and deploying wireless networking to support the tribal communities of Southern California. Matthew, of Cree Indian, Finnish, and Norwegian decent, has been described as a "cyber warrior for community networking" and is considered an expert on community wireless networking. He is an advocate for net-neutrality, broadband for everyone, and opening more unlicensed spectrum for public consumption, always looking out for the unserved and under-served. Matthew helps the member tribes of SCTCA with technology development and strategy from radio station applications to tribal administration computer purchases.

He has helped SCTCA develop a spin-off for-profit tribal technology corporation that manages several business development ventures within networking and business to business marketing solutions.

Matthew serves on the board of directors and is the treasurer for Native Public Media(NPM). He was named to the FCC Native Nations Broadband Task Force by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Matthew is frequently a guest subject matter expert speaker on community wireless networking and grassroots efforts to support unserved and under-served communities, with emphasis on tribal communities. He has been invited to speak at CTC conferences, the Ford Foundation, Google, Grantmakers in the Arts, Community Technology Foundation of California (ZeroDivide), the New America Foundation, the California Emerging Technology Fund, Palomar Community Colllege, Community Wireless Summit(s), City WLAN Conference (Lahti, Finland), the AirJaldi Summit (Dharamshala, India), and the International Community Wireless Summit, Vienna Austria, and the White House, USA. He has testified several times at hearings for the Federal Communications Commission and the California Public Utilities commission.

Matthew has worked with National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), New America Foundation, FreePress, Media Access Project, and the FCC rural ITI conference. Matthew got his undergraduate degree at Washington State University.

[back]

 

Roodink, Carlien

Since March 2010 Carlien Roodink is a member of the City Council of Amsterdam for D66, the Dutch liberal democratic party. Besides her political activities Carlien worked until recently as a Director for the Dutch program on Service Innovation& ICT. The program stimulated innovations on themes as e-payments, connectedness, crowdfunding, open data and e-identity and was initiated by a a wide range of partners in mainly the financial and creative sector. Since July 1st she works for IIP/Create (ICT Innovation Platform Creative Industry), a national thinktank in the field of creativity, technology and entrepreneurship. Recently Carlien is asked to join the Advisory Board of TEDxBaghdad.

Carlien studied political science and organizational studies. Later on she got a degree as a certified public auditor. For most of the years she worked in the banking and financial sector as a consultant, controller and CFO. Nowadays she is highly interested in social money initiatives, timebanking, crowd sourcing and social production.

[back]

 

Russell, Jean

Jean Russell is a facilitator and social ecosystem designer. As your guide to a thrivable world, Jean takes entrepreneurs, social innovators, and business builders on tours of network culture. She navigates clients through the crucial questions of creating and nurturing teams and networks to develop healthy and productive collaborations.

"Jean Russell is a visionary poet and master of network dynamics. She's been a great teacher to me. I now have a next generation blueprint and operating principles for the growth of my tribe." - Michael Margolis, Dean, Story University, Founder, Get Storied

Convinced the crucial roadblock to flourishing is collaboration, Jean is driven by curiosity about how each of us can work (and play) better together to make things that matter. Her quest to understand how groups operate and be useful has lead Jean to explore:

  • motivation, persuasion, and influence (trained in neuro-linguistic programming and coaching)
  • flows and risk analysis (via international finance),
  • how to make a difference (specifically philanthropy - as co-founder of donor education leader, Inspired Legacies, as well as social entrepreneurship coach and advisor)
  • methods of collaboration (facilitation of small groups and in the tech world designing online community spaces with game dynamics).

As a founder of the thrivability movement and a premier expert on collective thriving, Jean speaks to and with change agents, innovators, builders, and edge-riders from Malmo to Melbourne, and London to San Francisco (the not-so-secret-hub of network culture). Demonstrating collaboration, she curated, Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch in 2010 with 65 inspiring people. She currently writes passionately about Breakthroughs for a World that Works.

Her super-hero skill: amplifying the power of others around her and was thus dubbed "NurtureGirl" online.

[back]

 

St. Arnaud, Bill

Bill St. Arnaud was the former Chief Research Officer for CANARIE Inc., Canada's Advanced Internet Development Organization. At CANARIE Bill St. Arnaud was responsible for the coordination and implementation of Canada's next generation optical Internet initiative called CA*net 4. He was also instrumental in developing Canada's cyber-infrastructure strategy linking together advanced networks, high performance computing and instrumentation to enable a new generation of eScience. He was the principal architect of the User Controlled LightPath technology applying Service Oriented Architecture to allow users to create their own Internet network and cyber-infrastructure solutions.

Currently he is involved with a Green IT broadband and cyber-infrastructure initiative to build a "zero-carbon" next generation Internet and to work with clients to identify new business opportunities in a future low carbon economy. These projects are intended to help reduce global warming by reducing CO2 emissions at universities, businesses and society in general through the use of ICT and networks. He is working with various R&E networks and industry partners around the world to develop new Green IT revenue strategies and to explore how these networks can become the linchpin of building a low carbon economy. In pursuit of these objectives he was successful in developing several research partnerships in green cyber-infrastructure and networking between Canadian and Californian universities under the CCSIP program. As well he is working closely with several international R&E networks and industry participants to explore the development of a next generation wireless "5G" network that will provide a national, if not international low cost, green cell phone service for students and faculty that will be seamlessly integrated with today's R&E backbone networks.

Previously Bill St. Arnaud was the President and founder of a Toronto based network and software engineering firm called TSA ProForma Inc. TSA was a LAN/WAN software company that developed wide area network client/server systems for use primarily in the financial and information business fields in the Far East and the United States.

Bill St. Arnaud is a past and present member of various committees and boards including the Board of Trustees for ISOC, NomComm committee for ICANN, the UKlight Steering Committee, the GLORIAD policy committee, Neptune Canada DMAS Committee, Globecomm Fellow and the GLIF policy committee amongst others. He has also participated in many NSF, CFI, EC and NSERC project review and strategic planning committees.

In 2002 he was featured by TIME Magazine Canada as the engineer who is wiring together advanced Canadian science. In 2005 he won the World Technology Summit award for Communications. He June 2010 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Athabasca in June 2010 in recognition of his contribution to the advancement of research and education networking in Canada and his leadership in promoting Green ICT for a low carbon economy. He is also the recipient of the ORION Leadership Award for 2010. Bill St. Arnaud is a frequent guest speaker at numerous conferences on the Internet and research and education networking. He is a graduate of Carleton University School of Engineering.

[back]

 

St. Julien, John

John St. Julien is a community technology activist and a native of Lafayette, Louisiana. There he played a critical role in organizing the citizens of Lafayette to pass Lafayette's municipal FTTH network overwhelmingly. He continues to play a active role promoting technology in local schools, working with the tech community, and promoting digital equity in that community.

Formerly he was a teacher of education working at LSU, the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champagne, and the University of Delaware where he focused on curriculum design, learning theory, after-school programs, project-based learning, and interface design. He's convinced that new technologies make the necessary space available for discarding discredited educational frameworks. The major impediment to that transition is the lack of universal, inexpensive broadband. He's currently riveted by apps emerging on hand-held touch devices which 'teach' a much wider range of skills and perceptions than have classically be considered part of the curriculum. The rise of such devices open an supplimental pathway to educational reform.

[back]

 

Searls, Doc

Doc Searls a fellow with Center for Information Technology and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an alumnus fellow at the Berkman Center at Harvard University. At Berkman he continues to lead ProjectVRM, which has the immodest ambition of liberating customers from entrapment in vendor silos and of 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, which should lead to a new book after he finishes the one he's currently writing for Harvard Business Press, titled The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge, due out next April.

Doc is also Senior Editor of Linux Journal, and co-authored The Cluetrain Manifesto with fellow Bighooker David Weinberger, plus Chris Locke and Rick Levine.

[back]

 

Seemel, Gwenn

Gwenn Liberty Seemel is named after the Liberty Bell, a cracked ding-dong with a venerable history.

Born in Saudi Arabia in 1981, Seemel has lived most of her life in France and the US. In Brittany, she attended the same grammar school her mother did growing up, and she also learned to play a mean game of boule bretonne for an eight year old. Eventually, her family settled in the US, in Oregon, and, these past few years, she has stayed on, graduating summa cum laude from Willamette University in 2003.

Seemel is a full-time artist who has sold her soul to the genre of portraiture. Her work comes in two varieties: the individual portrait and the portrait in a series. She paints likenesses of individuals for commission but also portraits of groups of people for the purpose of exploring a particular issue.

Seemel writes and creates videos in English and in French for her award-winning blog about her work, portraiture, and all of art-kind. She is the recipient of grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Oregon Arts Commission, the Celebration Foundation, the Haven Foundation, Change Inc, and Artists' Fellowship Inc. Her work has been written about by the esteemed portraiture scholar Dr. Richard Brilliant and it is also in the collection of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.

[back]

 

Seltzer, Wendy

Wendy Seltzer is a Fellow with Yale Law School's Information Society Project, researching "openness" in intellectual property, innovation, privacy, and free expression online. As a Fellow with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Wendy founded and leads the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, helping Internet users to understand their rights in response to cease-and-desist threats. She serves on the Board of Directors of The Tor Project, promoting privacy and anonymity research, education, and technology.

She has taught Intellectual Property, Internet Law, Antitrust, Copyright, and Information Privacy at American University Washington College of Law, Northeastern Law School, and 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 online civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property and First Amendment issues, and a litigator with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel.

Wendy speaks and writes on copyright, trademark, patent, open source, and the public interest online, seeking to improve technology policy in support of user-driven innovation. She has an A.B. from Harvard College and J.D. from Harvard Law School, and occasionally takes a break from legal code to program (Perl and MythTV). She blogs occasionally at http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/ and http://freedom-to-tinker.com/

[back]

 

Sifry, Micah

Since 2004, Micah L. Sifry has been co-founder, editor and curator of the Personal Democracy Forum (PdF), a website and annual conference that covers the ways technology is changing politics. He is also the editor of TechPresident.com, PdF's award-winning group blog on how politicians are using the web and how the web is using them. Sifry also speaks and writes widely on the topics of technology, politics and transparency and consults on how political organizations, campaigns, non-profits and media entities can adapt to and thrive in a networked world. He is the author or editor of six books, most recently WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency (ORBooks, 2011); the former associate editor of The Nation magazine, and a graduate of Princeton University (BA Politics, 1983) and New York University (MA Politics, 1989). He lives with his wife and two children in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Sifry's work with Personal Democracy Forum and TechPresident have won him wide recognition. In awarding TechPresident the 2007 Knight-Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism, the judges said, "The site not only reports on, but encourages, citizens to participate more directly in the political process. It's an amazing source of information from a non-traditional news outlet." The Washington Post has called TechPresident "the Internet citizenry's new consensus taker," and has recognized PdF as the world's "largest annual gathering of political technology geeks."

As a consultant, Sifry has been a senior technology adviser to the Sunlight Foundation since its founding in 2006, and has played a central role in crafting its overall mission and strategy, and assisting in its growth to the leading national transparency organization in the country, with nearly forty staff members and a budget of $7.5 million. He also joined the board of directors of Consumers Union in October 2010. In the spring of 2012, he will be a visiting fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, teaching a new course called "The Politics of the Internet."

[back]

 

Soghian, Christopher

Christopher Soghoian is a Washington, DC based Graduate Fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, and a Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. His research is focused on the intersection of online privacy, law and public policy.

Although a computer scientist by training, he has used the Freedom of Information Act and several other investigative techniques to expose the methods and scale of law enforcement surveillance of Internet communications and mobile telephones. This work has been widely cited in the press, by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and featured on the Colbert Report.

He was the first ever in-house privacy technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, and has worked at Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, NTT DoCoMo Euro Labs, Google, Apple and IBM Research Zurich.

[back]

 

Turner, Brough

Brough Turner [pronounced "Bruff"] is a communications industry engineer and entrepreneur. He is currently founder of netBlazr Inc., a startup working to change the landscape for broadband Internet access in the US urban areas. 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.broughturner.com on the technology, economic and social issues of communications at the intersection of telecom, mobility and the Internet.

[back]

 

Vignola, Frank

Frank Vignola is one of the most extraordinary guitarists performing before the public today. His stunning virtuosity has made him the guitarist of choice for many of the world's top musicians, including Ringo Starr, Madonna, Donald Fagen, Wynton Marsalis, Tommy Emmanuel, the Boston Pops, the New York Pops, and guitar legend Les Paul, who named Vignola to his "Five Most Admired Guitar List" for the Wall Street Journal. Vignola's jaw-dropping technique explains why the New York Times deemed him "one of the brightest...stars of the guitar."

Frank's full bio is here.

[back]

 

Wagter, Herman

Herman Wagter is the Fiber Evangelist of GNA (Citynet Amsterdam) and Senior Analyst at Diffraction Analysis. He has been involved in Citynet from its inception, as the Program Manager. He has worked as an independent entrepreneur since 2001 on complex transitions. His work ranges from FttH (architecture, regulatory aspects, advanced services business models), to sustainable mobility.

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.

Business (Diffraction Analysis) Website www.diffractionanalysis.com.

[back]

 

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.

[back]

 

Worona, Steve

Steve Worona is an independent speaker and consultant on Internet policy and law. He recently left his position as Senior Policy Director at EDUCAUSE, the professional association for IT leaders in higher education. He was the Founding Director of the EDUCAUSE/Cornell Institute for Computer Policy and Law and was the creator, producer, director, and host of "EDUCAUSE Live!", a Webcast featuring conversations with leaders of information technology in higher education. During his 35-year career at Cornell University, Steve developed CUinfo (the first Campus-Wide Information System) and Dear Uncle Ezra (the first online counseling service), both still in operation. He taught courses in Cornell's Computer Science Department and Graduate School of Management, founded Cornell's Computer Policy and Law Program, and managed award-winning projects in electronic publishing, digital libraries, programming languages, and factory automation. He has lectured internationally on a wide range of topics, focusing on the impact of technology on our social and legal systems. At EDUCAUSE, he worked on a broad spectrum of campus and national IT policy issues, such as intellectual property, privacy, network neutrality, broadband initiatives, and the .EDU top-level Internet domain. He holds degrees in Philosophy and Computer Science from Cornell and hangs out on IM and twitter as SLWorona.

[back]

 

Yamazaki, Fumi

Fumi is the Japan Country Lead for Developer Relations Team at Google. She started her career working at NTT—the largest telecom in Japan for 7 years and moved to Interscope—a marketing research company, then joined Digital Garage which Joichi Ito cofounded where she worked on localizing blog search engine Technorati to Technorati Japan, helped Creative Commons Japan and iCommons, invested as VC and helped startups and organized conferences such as New Context Conference and iCommons Summit. She joined Google after freelancing as a traveler, researcher, consultant and a journalist. She is currently a fellow of Creative Commons Japan, and fellow at International University of Japan, Center for Global Communications. Her personal projects includes Hack For Japan (an initiative to use IT for Japan to recover from 311 disaster) and social media team for TEDxTokyo.

[back]

 

BigHook2011 Home

BigHook Home

BigHook2011