Don Means - Participant

With over 25 years experience in ICT, in 2018 Means started the national Community SecondNets initiative, a wide area wireless community intranet strategy for libraries, schools and other anchors as second responders in disasters. SecondNets, as a 2 year development project, won an IMLS grant and launched Oct. 1, 2018.

In 2013, he created the Libraries WhiteSpace Project to advocate library community leadership in utilizing new long range public spectrum to dramatically expand access to public library WiFi in communities everywhere. The project is an initiative of the Gigabit Libraries Network (GLN), founded by Means in 2012 as an open global collaboration of tech-savvy, innovation libraries.

He is founder and principal of Digital Village Associates, a Sausalito, CA based consultancy started in 1994 specializing in community technology policy and strategic planning for clients, large and small, public and private.

He was founding chairman of the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition, founded in 2009, as a DC-based advocacy organization promoting government policies and programs to assure gigabit fiber to libraries and other community anchor institutions(CAI’s).

Means chairs the Partnership for Public Access, p4pa.net an ad hoc consortium including IEEE, IFLA, ISOC, and others collaborating under the UN’s Internet Governance Forum effort to Connect and Enable the Next Billions.

In 2007, he initiated the “Fiber to the Library” campaign to assure gigabit fiber connections to all US libraries as the most economical and equitable way to extend fiber infrastructure into every community while serving library facilities as priority end points.

In 1998, he created the Community TeleStructure Initiative, a national consortium advocating local community leadership responsibility for telecom/ broadband infrastructure planning.

In 1995, he co-founded the software venture, TriWorks, in Japan and as an ebook authoring and publishing service for schools and libraries in China; both still in operation.

In 1992-93, as a member of the Atrium Group, Means served as an advisor to the Librarian of Congress on digitization strategy.

He holds a BBA degree in finance from Southern Methodist University and later studied architecture and environmental design at the University of Texas, Arlington and international business relations at the University of Graz, Austria.