Changing Education... Open Content, Open Hardware, Open Curricula

Cliff Schmidt is the Executive Director of Literacy Bridge (www.literacybridge.org), a nonprofit organization empowering children and adults with affordable tools for knowledge sharing and literacy learning.

Prior to founding Literacy Bridge, Cliff ran a successful software consulting business that developed technical, business strategy, and legal policy solutions for both nonprofit and for-profit organizations throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North America. His expertise included intellectual property issues, nonprofit governance, privacy policies, export controls, and community development. He also served many nonprofit open source organizations, such as The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the Eclipse Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation, including positions on the board of directors and as the Vice President of Legal Affairs for the ASF.

In the 12 years prior to his consulting work, Cliff worked as a software developer and industry standards representative for Microsoft, as the manager of open source programs for BEA Systems, and as a nuclear engineer and submarine officer for the US Navy.

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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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Mark Shuttleworth is an African entrepreneur with a love of technology, innovation and space flight. He funds HBD Venture Capital, an investment company based in South Africa, along with The Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to social innovation in Africa with a particular focus on education. He currently lives in London, where he is an active member of the Ubuntu community, working to create a universal, freely available high quality desktop software environment for everyone.

Shuttleworth was born in the dusty gold-mining town of Welkom in South Africa, and grew up in beautiful Cape Town. His passion for technology first showed up as a love of computer games, a fascination that continues today. While studying for a business science degree in finance and information systems at the University of Cape Town (UCT) he first encountered the Internet, and quickly became intrigued by the changes it would bring in business and society.

In 1995, his final year at UCT, Shuttleworth founded Thawte Consulting as an internet consulting business. The focus of the company quickly shifted to internet security for electronic commerce. Thawte became the first company to produce a full-security e-commerce web server that was commercially available outside the United States. This brought Thawte to the world of public key infrastructure, which is the basis for all encrypted and authenticated internet transactions. Thawte was one of the first companies to be recognized by both Netscape and Microsoft as a trusted third party for web site certification, and it quickly established a leadership position helping businesses around the world accept secure transactions over the web. By 1999 Thawte was the fastest-growing internet certificate authority, and the leading certificate authority outside of the USA. Shuttleworth sold Thawte to VeriSign in December 1999 and began to look for new challenges.

After the dizzy days of 1999, he formed a new project team called HBD. The name is a reference to the phrase “Here Be Dragons”, which legend has it was used to describe uncharted territory on early maps. HBD is a venture-capital company seeking to invest in innovative companies that are based in South Africa but that have the potential to serve a global marketplace. HBD has invested in several South African companies in a variety of sectors, such as software, pharmaceutical services, electronics, and mobile phone services. In addition to funding HBD, Shuttleworth also serves as a non-executive director on the board of the company.

In the hope that risk capital can be as important for social development as it is for the economy, Shuttleworth has also created a non-profit organization that supports social innovation in education in Africa. The Shuttleworth Foundation funds projects that have the potential to bring about dramatic improvements to some aspect of the education system and hopes to improve both the quality and the reach of education in Africa. The Foundation has worked in all 9 provinces of South Africa, funding initiatives from teachers, small businesses, and private individuals. The Foundation is also an advocate of the role of open source software in education and in developing countries.

In April 2002 Shuttleworth realized a lifelong dream to fly in space. He spent a year working on the project, including seven months of formal training at Star City in Russia, and almost as much time in medical testing, science program development, and negotiations. The First African in Space project was without doubt the most challenging and exciting project any geek could wish for. He was a member of the crew of Soyuz TM-34, launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, and docked with the International Space Station two days later. The mission included 8 days working on the ISS, conducting a program of South African science experiments, and enjoying the extraordinary environment of weightlessness before coming back to earth with a bump. Since then, he has worked on a roadshow to share that experience as well as his excitement about science, mathematics, and technology with pupils across South Africa. The science and maths show has been seen by more than 100,000 pupils from nearly 2,000 schools. It has spawned a plethora of initiatives under the Hip2BSquare brand, which aim to make mathematics and science sexy to pupils who are choosing their subjects for high school.

In between projects, Shuttleworth tends to focus on catching up with the world of technology, particularly software and the Web, in the search for new ideas and opportunities.

In early 2004, Shuttleworth founded the Ubuntu project, which aims to produce a high quality desktop software environment that is freely available all over the world. The project brings together the very best of the free software stack, and has resulted in the creation of a number of unique tools for free software developers, such as the Bzr revision control system and Launchpad.net. Sub-projects include specialized desktop environments for schools, and for the needs of people in specific countries or industries, such as Edubuntu and Kubuntu.

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Derek Keats is Executive Director of Information & Communication Services at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa, and has a mandate to use information and communications technologies to strengthen UWC as a national institution of higher education in a global context. He is a biologist with strong interests in using technology to improve teaching and learning, to enable higher education in the developing world to respond to the challenges of globalization, and to promote sustainable development while maintaining the quality of the environment.

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Dr. Kurshan has spent her career committed to using technology to improve children’s learning. She has founded several successful companies focused on technology and education. In her new position as the Executive Director of Curriki, she plans to build a global community that will provide the best open source curricula just a click away. Earlier in her career, Dr. Kurshan developed the first children’s software products for Microsoft – Creative Writer and Fine Artist and also created award-winning products for McGraw-Hill, Apple, CCC (Pearson) and others. As a professor, she helped students research the impact of technology on learning. Dr. Kurshan also publishes articles based on personal research exploring women’s attitudes toward technology, how kids use computers, and new ways of learning through understanding. She has been quoted in many influential journals and serves as a reviewer and advisor to research projects for the National Science Foundation and other government and business groups.

Currently, Dr. Kurshan serves on the boards of WorldSage, a for-profit higher education system to address education for the 21st Century and Interschola, a company that helps education clients turn idle assets into cash by selling the goods via online auctions, as well as several education technology companies, including Fablevision. Among numerous honors, Dr. Kurshan received the Education Academic Society’s Making It Happen Award and the Highest Leaf Award from the Women’s Venture Fund. She is listed in Who’s Who in Technology Today.

Dr. Kurshan received her Ed.D. and M.S. from Virginia Tech University and her B.S. from Newcomb College at Tulane University.

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Dr. David Wiley is Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University, President of the Governing Board of the Open High School of Utah, and Chief Openness Officer of Flat World Knowledge. He was formerly Associate Professor of Instructional Technology at Utah State University and Director of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, a Nonresident Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, a Visiting Scholar at the Open University of the Netherlands, and is a recipient of the US National Science Foundation’s CAREER grant. He is the founder of OpenContent, coining the term “open content” and releasing the first open license for content in 1998. His career is dedicated to increasing access to educational opportunity for everyone around the world.

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A board member at CollabNet and the Mozilla Foundation, but mostly now a free agent on all things open source.