Kevin Cole

547 points
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Washington DC

By day, a consultant for NOVA Web Development. By evening and weekend, he dons his costume (which looks remarkably like the jeans and T-shirts he normally wears), and goes out doing battle against the forces of proprietary software. He was the team contact for the Ubuntu DC "LoCo" and one of the hosts of the former OLPC Learning Club/Sugar Labs DC. (He has also served as a Red Hat Ambassador.)

Authored Comments

After many years of trying, a few of us have finally managed to get 6 students to actually come to a meeting to discuss the possibility of having a computer club... Open source isn't even on their radar yet, other than the fact they're the latest victims of a rant by that one crazy guy on campus who's has been talking about it incessantly for the past 18 years. [Said lunatic pleads the 5th.] ;-)

(We're a liberal arts school, with a low percentage of techies.)

I was not happy with the "regime change" in DC that pushed Bryan Sivak out. I met him when I learned of his <a href="http://www.dc.gov/DC/OCTO/About+OCTO/Opportunities/DC+Community+Broadband+Summit+Digital+Divide">Community Broadband Summits</a>, reaching out to wire parts of DC that were very under-served by technology in general. He spoke of winning a rather sizable pot of money to do the work, his mobile WiFi van -- a "bookmobile" for the 21st century that would go into areas where residents had no computers or understanding of why one might be useful -- and in a private conversation, after I kept showing up at the same places preaching the gospel of Open Source, mentioned that he would be presenting at the Open Source Government conference. I hope I wasn't too much of a gadfly. ;-)

I haven't sought out info about his replacement, but I hope whomever it is will be able to continue that work.