Mark Surman

Mark Surman is in the business of connecting things: people, ideas, everything. A community technology activist for almost 20 years, Mark is currently Director of telecentre.org, a $21 million program that invests in grassroots computing networks around the world. He is also an open philanthropy fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation and co-convenes conversations about open cities in his hometown of Toronto.

Mark's biggest fetishes are community, conversation and collaboration. He has facilitated over three dozen participatory workshops and unconferences, including Hollyhock's Web of Change, CopyCamp, PenguinDay.ca and countless telecentre.org events.

Mark likes to write about community, technology and changing the world. He's written: From the Ground Up (why telecentres matter), Commonspace (web 2.0, before there was web 2.0) and Appropriating Technology for Social Change (activism on the Internet). When he was an idealistic student, he wrote From VTR to Cyberspace, about Gramsci, community television and the Internet. He also blogs.