Mark Surman

Mark Surman is in the business of connecting things: people, ideas, everything. A community technology activist for almost 20 years, Mark is currently the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, with a focus on inventing new ways to promote openness and opportunity on the Internet. On the side, Mark convenes conversations about ‘open everything‘ in his home town of Toronto and around the world.

Before joining Mozilla, Mark was an open philanthropy fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation in South Africa, he invented new ways to apply open source thinking to social innovation. Earlier, he was the founding director of telecentre.org, a $26 million effort to network community technology activists in countries around the world. Mark has also served as president of the Commons Group, Director of Content and Community at Web Networks and senior advisor to the Volunteer @ction Online grants program team. Mark’s first real job was training social activists to make their own documentaries in the early 1990s.

Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Russell

Josh Russell has a diverse background in creating businesses, and doing strategy for small startups and large organisations on a range of projects. Most notably for Comic Relief on the Live 8 and Make Poverty History campaigns, where scale, pressure and innovation are really tested, and at Microsoft as a user experience evangelist taking technologies to new audiences.

In 2003 he created one of the first networks of free wifi hotspots, to support the emerging community of nomadic technologists. This evolved into Metranet, an independent and robust next generation wireless infrastructure company, currently shaking up the telco industry with Wimax, or 4G mobile networks.

His passion is in making things work, from the ground up, with strong and sustainable business models, and clear understanding of industry trends and opportunities.

Read the rest of this entry »