Ejovi Nuwere

Of all the things I’ve done this year, the most exciting has to have been building the North American Board of Advisors for FON. We have an awesome group of people all of whom joined because they believe in FON and its possibilities. We are supposed to be officially launching the end of January but FON has taken on a mind of its own. I’ve been meeting with wireless groups and trying to convince them of the importance of FON and 10 minutes into it they are telling ME why FON is important!

I’ve been involved in a fair number of startups but never something that has moved so fast, been to widely embraced and considered as controversial as FON. We offer our board of advisors stock in the company but none of them joined because of that, take a look at the current board, none of these people need money and they all have very little time to dedicate to projects. Like me, they only get involved in projects they feel passionate about. These are the people you want on your team.

Andrew Rasiej - Anyone who has read my blog for some time knows about Andrew and his campaign for Public Advocate. He truly believes in the need for WiFi as a way to empower citizens to do more then connect to the internet and read email.

Ethan Zuckerman - Co-founder of Tripod, Geekcorps and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkmen Center and co-creator of Global Voices. I first came in contact with Ethan because I was interested in figuring out how to use technology to help poor communities, one of his passions and the reason why he founded Geekcorps. I think Ethan more then anyone understands the potential for a grassroots WiFi network to change the way people communicate.

Rebecca MacKinnon - I secretly idolize Rebecca for her accomplishments. She was one of CNN’s youngest Bureau Chiefs (China, fluent in Chinese), named one of the few Global Leaders of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. She left CNN and became a fellow at Harvard’s Berkmen Center and founded Global Voices with Ethan Zuckerman. She has a perspective and insight into international relationships and bridge building that just can’t be bought.

Dan Gillmor - Dan is one of the countries most prominent technology writers. He wrote for the Detroit Free Press and Kansas City Times before going to the San Jose Mercury News in 1994 where he covered the boom and eventual bust of the Internet economy. Because of his many years of experience covering technology and ability to simplify complex problems he has a unique ability to cut through all our technical non-sense. Often times his emails are less then 3 or 4 sentences but leave you thinking “geez, why didn’t I see that?”

David Weinberger is a technologist in its truest form. Probably best known as co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto. His focus has been how the Internet is changing human relationships, communication, and society. A philosopher by training he really has a grasp of the “big picture.” He was an advisor to Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign along with Andrew Rasiej and advises a number of companies and TV networks on technology.

Joi Ito Joi is one of Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs turned venture capitalist. He doesn’t live in the USA now but spent his teen and college years here. Most of his business is with American companies. One of the first investors in Technorati and Six Apart. Among the many companies he brought to Japan the one most recognizable to Americans would be InfoSeek

Wendy Seltzer is visiting assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School teaching Internet Law and Information Privacy. I met Wendy at Martin Varsavsky Safe Democracy forum…two years ago? Most major battles for privacy or digital rights on the Internet have Wendy’s name attached. This was especially the case during her time as an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Surrounded by this group I sometimes feel like I’m in heaven. Caeser is on one side and Socrates on the other. Times like these you just want to get the people in a room and listen to them talk.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 at 4:40 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.