Open Source / Open World

Danese Cooper has a 15-year history in the software industry and has long been an advocate for transparent development methodologies. Cooper worked for six years at Sun Microsystems, Inc. on the inception and growth of the various open source projects sponsored by Sun (including OpenOffice.org, java.net and blogs.sun.com). She was Sun’s chief open source evangelist and founded Sun’s Open Source Programs Office. She has unique experience implementing open source projects from within a large proprietary company. She joined the OSI Board in December 2001 and currently serves as Secretary & Treasurer. In March 2005, Cooper joined Intel to advise on open source projects, investment and support. She speaks internationally on open source and licensing issues.

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Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is Founding International and Managing Editor of First Monday, the on-line journal of the Internet, and Senior Researcher at the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) at the United Nations University, the Netherlands. He has written about the economics of free software since 1994, and has led several major research projects on the topic, funded by the European Commission, the US National Science Foundation and the Dutch government.

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Martin Michlmayr has been involved in various open source software projects for well over 10 years. He used to be the Volunteer Coordinator for the GNUstep Project, acted as Publicity Director for Linux International and served as the leader of the Debian project. In the two years as the leader of Debian, Martin represented the project and performed important Martin works for HP as an Open Source Community Expert and acts as the community manager of FOSSBazaar. Martin holds Master degrees in Philosophy, Psychology and Software Engineering, and earned a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Biography notes on Nnenna Nwakanma

Nnenna Nwakanma is Dreamfish Community Lead and Chair of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa. She has been one of the major Civil Society actors in the World Summit on the Information Society and advices on the use of technology for development.

A key participant in the Global Information Society, she advises on the African Information Society Initiative (AISI) and is also an accomplished Civil Society trainer on major Information Society issues.

Nnenna Nwakanma has been part of the founding members of various ICT initiatives in Africa – The African Civil Society on the Information Society (ACSIS), the African Network of Information Society Actors – ANISA, and the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa – FOSSFA.

Nnenna has lived in in Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast. She speaks English, French and local West African languages

Nnenna is running an ICT consultancy firm, nnenna.org. She is one of the Directors of Open Source Intiative, Chair of FOSSFA council and Vice President of the Digital Solidarity Fund. Check on what Nnenna is doing on www.nnenna.org www.fossfa.net www.opensource.org www.dsf-fsn.org

And contact her on nnenna@nnenna.org nnenna@opensource.org

PHOTO A certain article online has a picture to it. http://www.mujeresenred.net/africa/spip.php?article21

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Bruno F. Souza Bruno F. Souza is the number one Java Evangelist in Brazil, responsible for hundreds of Java presentations throughout the country and internationally. As a Java consultant, Bruno participated in some of the largest Java projects in Brazil. As founder and coordinator of SouJava (the Java Users Society) Brazil’s most important Java User Group, and one of the largest worldwide, and also working with many other JUGs, Bruno helped drive the growth of the Brazilian Java community. Working with JUGs for so many years, Bruno helped unite the Brazilian JUGs community. Bruno is now a community manager at Sun Microsystems. Bruno is also Director of the Open Source Initiative, were he defends and promote usage and development of open source software worldwide.

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Alolita Sharma has been involved with open source since the early days of Linux. She has actively promoted open source software adoption in industry, government and developing economies for the past 12 years to enable change and transparency. She believes that the ideas of open source can generate unbounded opportunity for the development of technology and economic prosperity in developing nations. She is co-founder and CEO of Technetra and has over 15 years in the IT industry. She is also a member of the board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). She co-created India’s first open source business conference LinuxAsia, to serve as a platform for global industry leaders to interact with India’s open source players. She has published widely and spoken at international conferences on open source trends and technologies. Her blog can be read at opensourcebuzz.technetra.com.

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