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Below you will find the exceptional featured resource practitioners participating in the Information Activism: Turning Information into Action from July 8-14, 2009. If you would like to contact one of these practitioners, you may click on the names that provide a hyperlink to their New Tactics personal biography account. Please click on the 'contact' tab to send a message to their email.  

Tactical Tech

Bobby Soriano is working on the further development of the NGO-In-A-Box and was a lead developer of Mobiles in-a-box a. Bobby has fifteen years experience in systems and network administration, developing NGO-tools and implementing projects. He has also spent five years as an information and communications technology trainer.

Tanya Notley is providing skills building support to a number of Tactical Technology’s mobile and advocacy projects. She has more than 10 years of experience working with research institutes, international development agencies and community-based organisations in Australia, the UK, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. Tanya has produced training manuals for radio production, digital storytelling and participatory research methods and has delivered many workshops in these areas. In 2008 Tanya completed her PhD with the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (ici) at Queensland University of Technology. Her PhD thesis examines the different ways young people in Australia are using online networks to participate in society.

Fredrick Noronha is a writer, journalist, blogger, photographer... and someone interested in the online media. He has played a role in setting up community ventures in western India (and some areas beyond). Closely involved with the alternative/online media in India. He is also a co-founder of BytesForAll [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers] before the ICTforDEVELOPMENT idea became a trend. Also closely involved with writing on the Free Software movement in India, and some parts of Asia. Fredrick has been a professional journalist for 25 years, and an active blogger.

Lebogang Marishane is an ICT practitioner and is passionate about ICT's and their use for development. She has been a content manager, website mistress, knowledge strategy developer, technology programmer, a communucations manager and is passionate about technology. Lebo is no stranger to Women'sNet- she was an intern in 2001. She loves the bits and bytes that technology offers to empower people and is excited to be part of the Women'sNet team!

Melissa Gira Grant is the co-founder of the sex workers' advocacy blog, Bound, not Gagged, and the social media coordinator for St. James Infirmary, the only peer-run health care clinic for sex workers in the United States. Since 2007, she has partnered with the Open Society Institute's Sexual Health and Rights' Project and the Tactical Tech Collective to create trainings and educational guides for rights advocates using information/communication technology in their work. Melissa has spoken on the intersection of sexuality, human rights, and new media at the 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, the Third Wave Feminist Foundation, the University of San Francisco, the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, the Center for Sex and Culture, the New School for Social Research, and the UC Berkeley Labor Center. She's based in New York and is a contributor to Slate and $pread magazine.

Patrick Meier is Ushahidi ’s Director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships. He is the cofounder of the International Network of Crisis Mappers (INCM ) and the co-organizer of the International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM ) series. Patrick also cofounded the Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning (CM&EW ) at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI ) and recently consulted for UNDP/Sudan's Threat and Risk Mapping Analysis (TRMA) project. Patrick is also a PhD Candidate at The Fletcher School where his dissertation research  analyzes the role of new media and digital technology for civil resistance against repressive rule. He recently co-taught a full-semester course on Digital Democracy  at Tufts University and serves on the Board of Advisors for DigiActive  and Digital Democracy . Patrick has an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA ) and is an alumnus of the Santa Fe Institute’s (SFI ) Complex Systems Summer School for PhDs. Patrick was born in Cote d’Ivoire and grew up in Kenya. He blogs at iRevolution .

 Dr. Dan Mcquillan completed a Ph.D in Experimental Particle Physics and then worked with people with learning disabilities and as a mental health advocate. He took an early interest in the potential of the Internet for social change and founded Multikulti, a community-led multilingual site for asylum seekers & refugees which won a Global Ideas Bank Social Innovations Award, and SocialSource, an independent collective advocating for open source in the voluntary sector. After some personal experiences of human rights abuses, Dan joined Amnesty International as global web manager where he added some oomph to their ecampaigning by introducing blogging and the use of social networks. Recognising that the web was becoming a key terrain for human rights struggle, he headed Amnesty’s first delegation to the UN’s Internet Governance Forum. Dan is a  former Director of The Open Rights Group and is lead consultant for Interactive Tech Tools for Transparency which uses crowdsourcing and mashups to promote anti-corruption and good governance in Central & Eastern Europe. His current post is Digital Guru for the Make Your Mark campaign. In 2007 he co-founded Social Innovation Camp and he blogs about open source activism and social innovation at www.internetartizans.co.uk.

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