Carlos Afonso
Member
Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (Brazil)

Carlos is a member of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGIbr), the .br governance organization in Brazil, and served as the chairman of ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) in 2006.He is also planning director of Rits (Information Network for the Third Sector), a Brazilian NGO based in Rio, dedicated to public policy monitoring on ICTs, implementation of digital inclusion projects, and provision of Internet services to other non-profit organizations worldwide.

Karen Banks
Network Development Manager
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) (Australia)

Karen Banks is a networking pioneer who has worked with ICTs and their application as a tool for social change since 1990. She coordinates the Association For Progressive Communications’ (APC) participation in the WSIS process and has been active in facilitation of the Civil Society content and themes group and an active member of the Human Rights, Information Security, Gender and European caucuses and working groups. She leads APC’s work in the CRIS (Communication Rights in the Information Society) campaign and has recently taken up position as Networking and Advocacy Coordinator for APC after coordinating APC’s Women’s Networking Support Programme for 8 years. She is a Director of GreenNet (the APC Member in the UK) and trustee of Privacy International, an international privacy rights and civil liberties watchdog based in the UK.

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
Senior Researcher
UNU Merit (Netherlands)

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh’s key experience:

Since 1995 - (Founding) international and managing editor of First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal covering Internet economics, law and technology.

Since 1999 - jury member, Global Bangemann Challenge (now Stockholm Challenge Award), a prestigious prize awarded to IT projects with socio-economic impact by the mayor of Stockholm.

1999 - Founder Member of the GII Internet Commerce Brain Trust.

1995 - 1999: editor, The Indian Techonomist, analytical newsletter on Indian media and communications targeted at a global audience.

1996 - 1999: analyst/newsletter contributor, Indian communication and media markets for US-based Paul Kagan Associates

1994-1995: Writer of a widely distributed weekly column on Internet society, Electric Dreams, http://dxm.org/dreams/

Since 1990: written widely, with over half a million words published in journals, newspapers and magazines worldwide, from PC Quest India to Wired Magazine, USA.

2000 onwards - initiated and led the FLOSS project and started a research focus on open source software

Andrea Glorioso

Andrea Glorioso (Italy) works as a graduate researcher in the Internet Media Group and in the NEXA Research Center for Internet and Society of the Politecnico of Torino. He has been working in the past ten years as a consultant on FLOSS technologies and business methodologies - including as a system/network administrator, software developer, pre-sales agent and project manager - with many public and private institutions, including the University of Padova, Linuxcare Inc., the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the European Commission.

His current research at the Politecnico - in which he can leverage his experience as a member of the Italian working group of Creative Commons - focuses on the analysis and development of multidisciplinar methodologies for promoting the uptake of copyright licenses and licensing frameworks built upon principles of sharing. Lately, he has been conducting research on policies and technologies for traffic shaping/management by network operators and on Internet filtering.

Andrea was granted an MA (”summa cum laude”) in Political Sciences and Sociology by the University of Padova, a specialisation diploma in Information Technology Law by the Centro Studi Informatica Giuridica and a LLM (”summa cum laude”, winner of the Microsoft prize for best research paper) in Intellectual Property Law by the University of Torino and the WIPO Worldwide Academy.

Georg C. F. Greve
President
Free Software Foundation Europe (Switzerland)

German citizen Georg C. F. Greve is initiator and president of the Free Software Foundation Europe.His responsibilities include European/Global coordination and planning for the FSF (Europe), supporting the local representatives in their work, working on political and legal issues as well as projects and giving speeches or informing journalists to spread knowledge about free software.Georg Greve has a degree of Physics in biophysics, with physical oceanography and astronomy as minor fields of study from the computer science department of the University of Hamburg. His interdisciplinary diploma thesis was written in the field of nanotechnology.

Greve’s first software development was when he was 12 years old. His first publication of a program was in a professional journal in 1991, it partly financed his studies when he managed the software development to evaluate SQUID-sensor data in the biomagnetometic laboratory in the University hospital of Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg, Germany.

In 1998, he was the European speaker for the GNU Project and began writing the “Brave GNU World,” a monthly column on free software published on the Internet in as many as 10 languages, and in international magazines including the German Linux-Magazin.

In early 2001, he initiated the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE or FSF Europe), the first Free Software Foundation outside the United States of America and, as of 2007, the only transnational Free Software Foundation. Greve was invited as an expert to the “Commission on Intellectual Property Rights” of the UK government and represented the coordination circle of German Civil Society during the first phase of the United Nations (UN) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as part of the German governmental delegation. He has also networked with the Civil Society working groups on European level as well as for the thematic working group on patents, copyrights, trademarks (PCT) and free software.

Meryem Marzouki
Senior Researcher
French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS) (France)

Meryem Marzouki is a Senior researcher with the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS), currently with the Computer Science Laboratory of Paris 6 (LIP6). She holds a PhD in Computer Science and an Habilitation à diriger des recherches, both from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble. In 2002, she started the PolyTIC research activity within LIP6, dealing with relationships between ICTs, public policies and the public space following a multi-disciplinary approach. Her current research interests include Internet governance and the transformation of the rule of law, privacy and personal data protection issues, and usages in mobile and broadband communications. Since 1996, Meryem Marzouki has also been an activist for the promotion of human rights in the information society; she is the president of the French NGO IRIS and has co-chaired the WSIS Civil Society Human Rights Caucus. She serves on the board of the European Digital Rights (EDRI) association, which she represents at the Council of Europe Group of Specialists on Human Rights in the Information Society. Meryem Marzouki is the author of numerous publications and talks on Internet governance, human rights and democracy. She is a member of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network.

Ram Mohan
Vice President of Business Operations and Chief Technology Officer
Afilias Limited (India)

At Afilias, Ram is charged with managing all of Afilias’ technical operations which support the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) .INFO and .ORG, in addition to a number of country code domains.With Ram’s guidance, Afilias was the first to implement an XML-based "thick" registry running on the new Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), and was the first to complete the largest transition of a domain registry when it successfully transitioned .ORG from VeriSign Global Registry Services on behalf of the .ORG registry operator, the Public Interest Registry. Before joining Afilias in September 2001, Ram was at Infonautics Corp., a pioneering online database and content distribution company. He has held various leadership positions at Infonautics, including Interim COO, CTO and VP, Product Marketing. Ram is the founder of the award-winning CompanySleuth product, and created the Sleuth line of business at Infonautics. He helped architect Electric Library, the United States’ most used online reference database in schools and libraries, and Encyclopedia.com, the first free encyclopedia on the Internet. Prior to joining Infonautics, Ram worked with First Data Corporation, Unisys Corporation and KPMG Peat Marwick in a variety of leadership, engineering and technology positions.

Ram’s educational background reflects his belief that technology is best used for business advantage and market leadership. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mangalore, an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from Bharathidasan University, and is completing a second Master’s in Computer Science at Philadelphia’s Drexel University.

Ram has been active in the ICANN community, serving on the Redemption Grace Period (RGP) implementation task force, the GNSO WHOIS task force, as well as the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) registry implementation committee. Ram is also a member of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC), which is an ICANN Board advisory committee comprised of Internet pioneers and technical experts including operators of Internet root servers, registrars, and TLD registries. In 2003, Ram was named one of the Philadelphia Business Journal’s 40 under 40. Ram also serves on the Board of the Philadelphia-based Metropolitan Career Center, serves on the advisory boards of several Philadelphia-area startup companies, and is actively involved in cancer-related nonprofits.

Milton Mueller
Founder & Partner
Internet Governance Project (US)

Milton Mueller teaches and does research on the political economy of communication and information. He uses the theoretical tools of property rights analysis, institutional economics and both historical and quantitative social science methods. He has a longstanding interest in the history of communication technologies and global governance institutions. Mueller received the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989.

Mueller’s most recent research projects explore the efforts of citizens and activists to shape communication and information policy, both globally and nationally. His acclaimed book Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002) was the first scholarly account of the Internet governance debates. His book, Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System (MIT Press, 1997) set out a dramatic revision of our understanding of the origins of universal telephone service and the role of interconnection in industry development.

His research has been cited and utilized by policymakers in the US, Europe, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. He is on the international editorial boards of the journals Telecommunications Policy, The Information Society, and Info: the journal of policy, regulation and strategy for telecommunication, information and media. For a complete listing of publications and current research projects see his Home Page: http://istweb.syr.edu/~mueller/

Nnenna Nwakanma
Director
Open Source Initiative (Ivory Coast)

Nnenna Nwakanma holds a triple Bachelors in the Social Sciences, History and English, and a Master’s degree in International Relations and Law. She has done large-scale work within International development organisations and institutions in Africa on Information, Documentation and International Relations. Among them, The Home Health Education Service, The Helen Keller Foundation (www.hki.org) and The African Development Bank (www.afdb.org). Co-founder of different pan-African organizations: The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), The Africa Network of Information Society Actors (ANISA), and the Africa Civil Society for the Information Society (ACSIS). One of the major Civil Society Actors in the World Summit on the Information Society, she represents the African Civil Society on the Digital Solidarity Fund (www.dsf-fsn.org), and advises on the Africa Information Society Initiatiave. Today she is Council Chair of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, and a Director of Open Source Initiative. She is also the co-author of Our Side of the Divide, Silenced: Censorship and Control of the Internet, Vision in Process, and The Incommunicado Reader. At present she works as a Consultant to governments, Civil Society organizations, business entities and International Development Organizations on various domains of her expertise in African Development:Human Rights, Conflict Management,Gender Mainstreaming and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Seth Schoen
Staff Technologist
Electronic Frontier Foundation (US)

Seth David Schoen is staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology civil rights organisation, and has been actively involved in discussing digital copyright law and encryption since the 1990s. He is an expert in trusted computing and is rumored to be writing a book on the subject.In October 2005, Schoen led a small research team at EFF to decode the tiny tracking dots hidden in the printouts of some laser printers.Schoen previously worked for Linuxcare, where he developed the Linuxcare Bootable Business Card. After he left Linuxcare, he forked the project to create the LNX-BBC rescue system, of which he is a lead developer. Before that, while attending UC Berkeley, he founded Californians for Academic Freedom to protest the loyalty oath the state made university employees swear. He never completed his degree.

Schoen has recently admitted that he is the author of the DeCSS haiku; the haiku was submitted through an anonymous remailer.

Schoen was formerly a board member and the Secretary of the Peer-Directed Projects Center, a Texas-based non-profit corporation. He stepped down in November 2006.

Tan Tin Wee
Professor
National University of Singapore (Singapore)

Dr Tan Tin Wee initiated a number of Internet firsts for Singapore, including the first WAIS server (biomed.nus.sg) in the region (1992); the first Gopher server (solomon.technet.sg) in the region (1992); joint first Web server and longest running in Singapore (1993) (http://biomed.nus.sg); Singapore InfoWeb (1994) (http://www.sg), the forerunner of the present National Web Homepage, InfoMAP; first WAIS and Gopher server in Japan (RIKEN); the first Internet Cybercast of Singapore’s National Day Parade and many other events since 1994.Under his leadership, Singapore hosted the first Chinese Website in 1994, the first Tamil Web site using Tamil scripts in 1995, and a multilingual web site in 1996. During his headship of the Internet Research and Development Unit (IRDU), Singapore became the first regional Java Web site, VRML Website, 6Bone node, ActiveX Web site and the world’s first operational Multilingual Domain Name system (iDNS).