PDF PL-CEE 2014

Paweł Adamowicz (November 2, 1965, Gdansk) - the Mayor of Gdansk, a lawyer by education, he graduated from the University of Gdańsk. In May 1988 he was a co-organizer of a sit-down strike at the University of Gdańsk and became a chairman of students' strike committee. For three years (1990-1993) he held the position of the Vice-Rector for Student Affairs at the University of Gdańsk.

In 1990 he was elected a councilor of Gdańsk. In the subsequent term of office (1994-1998) he chaired the Gdańsk City Council. From 1998 Mr Adamowicz helds the office of the Mayor of Gdańsk (first he was nominated for the post, than on November 2002 he was re-appointed for this position first time in direct elections, both in 2006 and 2010 the residents again entrusted him the mandate of the City Mayor). He represents Polish leading political party - Civic Platform and is an active member of the local Kashubian-Pomeranian Union.

Mr. Adamowicz has been recognized by the Holy Father John Paul II with a top distinction available to a lay person - the Golden Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross. He was awarded by the Polish President, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, the Silver Cross of Merit in 2003.

Mark van Embden Andres is in charge of finding new and effective ways to apply Elva worldwide. Mark joined Elva recently, after working for the Netherlands Embassy in Georgia on development, democratization, conflict transformation and humanitarian relief in the South Caucasus. He is eager to use this experience to maximize Elva's potential.

Elva Community Engagement (www.elva.org) builds innovative web and mobile tools that connect citizens in Africa, Asia and Europe with humanitarian organisations to monitor and resolve local issues of concern. Local communities and international organisations are using our tools to monitor a wide variety of important issues, such as humanitarian assistance, conflict management and election observation. Elva's pioneering work is being recognized and supported by leading international organisations including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Gregory Asmolov is a PhD candidate at the Media and Communication department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His PhD research investigates the role of crowdsourcing platforms in natural disasters. In particular he is interested how similar Internet platforms and applications are used in order address the same crisis situations (e.g. floods, wildfires, missing people) in different countries. (For list of his publications please check: http://lse.academia.edu/Asmolov

). Gregory is a visiting lecturer at Media and Communication department at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow). He conducts trainings and gives lectures about social and political role of new media, and in particular role of crowdsourcing for addressing social issues. He has consulted on information technology, new media, and social media projects for The World Bank and Internews Network, and worked as a research assistant at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. 

Gregory is a co-founder of Help Map, a crowdsourcing platform, which was used to coordinate assistance to victims of wildfires in Russia in 2010 and won a Russian National Internet Award for best project in the "State and Society" category. He also participated in development of crowdsourcing platform for coordination of mutual aid in crisis situations Rynda.org and a number of other projects. Gregory has previously worked as a journalist for major Russian newspapers Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta, and served as news editor and analyst for Israeli TV.

Eric hails from Houston, Texas. In 2005 he moved to Tbilisi to study and found a home. Since then he has worked with a variety of local organizations, including Transparency International Georgia. Since 2011, he has directed JumpStart Georgia with the goal of pushing the boundaries on how civil society can communicate information and data to engage audiences and achieve goals. Using cutting-edge and open-source technologies as well as a design-oriented approach, JumpStart Georgia explores how data-driven visualizations can improve advocacy strategies in Georgia and beyond. A strong advocate for open government and an open data hacktivist, Eric is a self-taught coder and dataist. When he isn't visualizing data, he is spending time with his 2-year-old daughter.

Darko Brkan is founding president of Zašto ne (Why Not), a Sarajevo-based nongovernmental organization that promotes civic activism, government accountability, and the use of digital media and new technologies in deepening democracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is one of BiH's leading organizations in these fields. In addition, he is a founding member of Dosta! (Enough!), one of Bosnia’s most prominent citizens’ movements for social justice and government accountability. Darko Brkan began his career in civic activism more than ten years ago as a coordinator of the Campaign for Conscientious Objection to Military Service in BiH.

He graduated from the Faculty of Electric Engineering in Sarajevo, majoring in Information Technology with the thesis "Use of Information Technologies in Election Processes". He is an MBA candidate at the School of Economics and Business in Sarajevo majoring in Strategic Information Management. Darko did a fellowship as a Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, where he was exploring how information technologies, online tools, and new media can be used to promote democracy and how Open Government Data could be used in the Balkans region.

He has won several awards in the field of innovation and new technology, including the 2011 US Alumni Innovation Award and first place in Innovative Projects Ideas at the Power of One Conference, Cyprus. Apart from that, he is a board member of the US Alumni Association in BiH, a member of the political council of ACIPS, and a board member of "Ekipa", a foundation promoting independent, socially-engaged culture. He is also a 2008 Alumni of the Council of Europe's Academy of Political Excellence, a 2010 Alumni of the Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict, and a 2009 Alumni of the United States Government International Visitors Leadership Program.

Stefan Candea is a freelance journalist and co-founder in 2001 of the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism (CRJI), an investigative non-profit registered in Bucharest, Romania.

He started Sponge (thesponge.eu), an open and collaborative media innovation Lab for Eastern Europe. The Lab created an in-depth magazine, The Black Sea (theblacksea.eu), a lifeboat for journalism in the region.

He teaches investigative journalism at Bucharest University and was the 2011 Carroll Binder Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Between 2012 and mid 2013 Stefan coordinated, on behalf of CRJI, the ICIJ Eastern Europe research and reporting Hub for the Offshore Leaks Project. "Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze" was probably the largest cross-border investigative reporting collaboration in history and has been cited more than 25,000 times by other media organizations around the world.

Since March 2001, he has been a correspondent for Reporters sans Frontieres in Romania.

Candea is a member of International Consortium for Investigative Journalism and has won several awards including the IRE Tom Renner Award, the Overseas Press Club of America Award for online journalism.

He worked for Deutsche Welle, for print, radio, TV and online and he did freelance research and production work for several foreign media outlets, including the BBC, Channel 4, ITN, ZDF, and Canal Plus.

Other investigations by Candea have included the international arms trade, illegal international adoption, an investigation of the separatist region of Trans-Dniester and the diamond business in Romania.

He started as an investigative journalist for the Evenimentul Zilei newspaper in Bucharest, in 1999, where he covered the connections between international organized crime networks and high-ranking politicians and public servants. One article showed the links between La Cosa Nostra and associates of the Romanian president and the foreign secret service director.

Eva Constantaras is a data and investigative journalist and instructor, specializing in cross-border journalism projects to combat corruption and foster transparency. She currently serves as the Data Journalism Advisor for Internews in Kenya. She has trained journalists across Latin America and East Africa on topics ranging from displacement and kidnapping by organized crime networks to election monitoring and health policies. As a Google Data Journalism Scholar in Spain and Fulbright Fellow in Colombia, she has explored the potential of open data and data journalism tools to enrich the quality of media across the globe. Her reporting has appeared in media outlets including the Seattle Times, El Tiempo, El Confidencial and El Mundol.

Marcus lives in Munich and has spent most of his professional life working on “digital openness” topics. He is a co-founder and board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany and a principal consultant for OKF in the UK. Before, he was for roughly three years an IT strategist for the City of Munich where he designed and led Germany’s first Open Government/Open Data project called MOGDy (which won an EPSA best practice award). As a researcher, he worked intensively on software patents and open source software (PhD). Since then, he has been running his own lecture on “digital sustainability” at ETH Zurich. Find more on his slightly neglected blog at www.digisus.info.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, born in 1978, helped build the WikiLeaks platform from late 2007 to September 2010, and acted as its spokesperson under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt. He quit WikiLeaks over disputes about the change in WikiLeaks strategy and conceptual focus. Domscheit-Berg published a book about his experiences "Inside WikiLeaks", that was published in early 2011 and is translated into 23 languages. An IT security guy by trade, he is currently working on various projects at the intercept of society, politics and technology, is engaged in the German pirate party, teaches kids about technology and grows his own vegetables.

Maxim Dubinin, PhD, is a geospatial data specialist from Moscow, Russia. He's the head of NextGIS Ltd, a geospatial solution provider, and a founder and coordinator of GIS-Lab, the biggest open-minded Russian community of GIS and remote sensing specialists.

Dmytro Gnap engaged in investigative journalism for the past five years. Ten years before that worked in television journalism in all positions: from reporter to editor-in-chief. As an investigative journalist he worked on the "Exclamation mark" TV program (TVi-channel). For this program he produced many resonant investigations: “Royal Hunt of Victor Yanokovych”, “Crimean Cedar for President”, “Prosecutros-Rogues” et al. Gnap also was a reporter for the top Ukrainian on-line media “Ukrainska Pravda”. These investigations not only interested the public, but forced the authorities to take appropriate action.

In investigations, Gnap specializes in two subjects: large scale corruption and serious crimes (murder, kidnapping, etc.). He is also one of the activists of the Ukrainian journalist movement “Stop Censorship!” Together with other members of this movement Gnap produces the independent internet broadcast “Hromadske.TV”. He's provided a number of trainings for young investigative journalists through programs with the US Embassy in Ukraine, European Council, MediaNext etc.

Sebastian Grabowski’s research focuses on Open Data, Open API, interactions between users of telecommunications networks and the Internet as well as issues related to Open Government. For the past 12 years he has been involved in the telecommunications industry, currently he works in Orange Poland. He is the Director of Orange Poland RnD Center . He is a co-founder of the Open Middleware 2.0 community – a program bringing together different communities of developers, researchers, technology suppliers and IT companies near the world of Telecommunications and IT.

Karolis Granickas is a Project Leader at Transparency International Lithuanian Chapter. His focus is on people engagement using ICT. He coordinates Chapter’s digital initiatives such as www.manoseimas.lt (parliamentary monitoring tool) and www.parasykjiems.lt (freedom of information tool), among others. He also actively promotes open government data in Lithuania and has overseen a solid growth of open data community in Lithuania. Karolis has LLB degree in International Law from Westminster University, London, and LLM degree in EU Law from Maastricht University, the Netherlands.

Kamil Gregor is a data analyst and political scientist working with KohoVolit.eu, a Czech and Slovak open data and watchdog NGO, and Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. He focuses on visualizing and analyzing parliamentary, electoral and budgetary data.

Co-Founder and Journalist, Hromadske.TV (Public) - an initiative of the Ukrainian journalist to create online public broadcasting system in Ukraine. Former Head, Foreign News Desk, INTER, the biggest Ukrainian TV channel. As an independent Ukrainian international correspondent, has reported on major political and social events from nearly 50 countries. During the last years, has been focused on post-Arab spring developments in the Arab world. Cooperates with a number of Ukrainian and international media, including Esquire Ukraine, Ukrainska Pravda, the Ukrainian Week magazine, 1+1 TV Studio, Ukraina TV, Tand Golos Stolytsi Radio, Open Democracy Russia, RTL-Netherlands. Teaches Global Journalism, Kyiv Mohyla School of Journalism. MA in Global Journalism, Orebro University, Sweden; John Smith Fellow

Jakub builds communities. He formerly did it for British and German startups. Then he started to create community around Sourcefabric, an open source software producer for professional media.

Jakub is also a journalist. As a media consultant, in the past three years he's helped various media outlets in Georgia (tspress.ge, liberali.ge, netgazeti.ge, and seven others), Turkey (taraf.com.tr) and West Africa (wacsi.org). He teaches new media and blogging, and was named one of the most influential bloggers in Poland in 2012.

As Operations Director at ePF, he combines those skills to make ePF and its services trustworthy, transparent and community driven.

He always puts citizens first.

Expert in non-traditional communication methods. A graduate of the University of Gdansk and Poznan University of Economics. As a scholar of the prestigious Joseph Conrad Scholarship program also studied at the London Business School, UK. In 2005-2009 head of communication department in Wirtualna Polska (second biggest portal in Poland). Previously, PR Manager at NIVEA Poland and Young Digital Planet. Currently working with the media house Universal McCann as Chief Inspiration Officer. Originator of award-winning campaigns based on non-traditional communication methods. Member of the jury in the advertising and promotional contests such as Polish Advertising Competition KTR, Media Trendy Competition, YC Eurobest, Blog of the Year, Superbrands. Member of Creative Communication Cluster. Member of the Board of Experts ThinkTank Polska. Columnist at Sukces magazine. In 2013, awarded by Geek Girls Carrots with Srebrna Marchewka (Silver Carrot) for being a role model woman working with new technologies. Author of http://hatalska.com blog about non-traditional advertising considered to be one of the most influential blogs in Poland.

Krzysztof Izdebski is a lawyer providing legal consultations on access to public information and re-use of public sector information, drafting legal opinions and representing the Citizens Network - Watchdog Poland and its clients, in court proceedings. He has been working in one of the Network’s key programmes -The Non-Governmental Centre on Access to Public Information since 2007.

He is also engage in projects concerning legal aspects of civic participation. He has been recently involved in the Stefan Batory Foundation project that aimed to allow citizen legislative initiative be present on the local governmental level. He is also a member of the Civic Legislative Forum, the informal body that act towards the more transparent and participative legislative process on the governmental level. He also deals with anti-corruption issues. He is a local researcher in Poland for European Commission report on corruption in EU.

He is a passionate data collector and gets angry when the access is denied.

Bardhyl Jashari is the director of Metamorphosis Foundation (Macedonia). His professional interests are mainly in the sphere of new technologies, media, civic activism, e-government and participation. Previously he worked as Information Program Coordinator of the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia. In both capacities, he has run national and international-scope projects, involving tight cooperation with other international organizations, governmental bodies, the business and the civic sector. He is a member of the National Council for Information Society of Macedonia and National Expert for Macedonia of the UN World Summit Award. In the past he was a member of the Task Force for National Strategy for Information Society Development and served as a commissioner at the Agency for Electronic Communication (2005-2011). Bardhyl holds a master degree at Paris 12 University-Faculty of Public Administration (France) and an Information System Designer Degree from University of Zagreb (Croatia).

George Jologua is the Head of Media Research at a non-governmental organization Civic Development Institute since 2011. In 2004, he received a bachelor's degree in International Journalism from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. In 2008-2010, he completed the Global Journalism Master Program at Örebro University, Sweden. In 2010, he wrote his master's thesis at the University of Örebro on War and Peace Reporting Trends in Coverage of the Russian-Georgian War in August 2008. In 2008-2010, in parallel to the Master's Program, he completed the master courses at Oslo University College, Helsinki and Tampere Universities.

Since the spring of 2013, George is a member of the National Platform for the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. Since December 2012, he is a member of Public Advisory Council of State Minister on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration.

For the last three years George Jologua has worked on media monitoring projects funded by EU, UNDP, UNICEF and OSGF.

Iwona Kaliszewska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. She has carried out fieldwork in Dagestan and Chechnya which resulted in a book ‘Matrioshka in Hijab’, co-authored by Maciej Falkowski. She specializes in political anthropology and Caucasus area studies.

Gleb Kanunnikau is an interface designer with a background in marketing/CRM and education. He has worked in at Philips Electronics, developed online solutions for the Economist group and other media organizations, and taught seminars and workshops on web technologies for the media and infoactivists in dozens of cities of Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union/Central Asia. Gleb speaks five languages and actively participates in the meetup and hackerspace community by organizing social hackathons for web developers, open source activists, electronic gadget makers, architects and anyone interested in the intersection of online and offline, culture and technologies.

Júlia Keserű is the International Policy Manager at the Sunlight Foundation and oversees its international work. Coming from the Hungarian transparency community, Júlia has been an advocate for open government and an expert on open data issues with a special focus on political finance and corruption. She has spoken internationally on technology and transparency and regularly writes about the challenges and the potential of the global open government movement. Júlia holds a Masters degree from International Studies and studied political sciences, international law, sociology and philosophy at Corvinus University Budapest, Free University Berlin and the College for Social Theories in Budapest.

As a partner at Omidyar Network, Stephen brings exceptional experience in applying media and technology to create positive social impact. Stephen leads the global Government Transparency initiative and a portfolio that includes a broad range of national and global organizations. Many are innovators in the use of technology to help make governments more responsive and aid citizens in holding their governments to account. The portfolio includes: Sunlight Foundation, Global Voices, Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente, mySociety, New Citizen, Janaagraha and Ushahidi, among others.

Prior to Omidyar Network, Stephen served as the chief executive of BBC Media Action, where he led a period of sustained growth that included building programs in more than 40 countries in the developing world. Stephen helped establish the organization’s international reputation as one of the largest and most successful organizations using media and communications to improve the lives of the world’s poor and promote better governance and transparency worldwide. Prior to the BBC, Stephen held executive positions at several non-profit organizations based in the United Kingdom and the developing world.

Stephen is based in London and is a board member of Ushahidi, Global Voices, and mySociety. He holds an MA in Oriental and African studies from the University of London.

Milica Kovacevic is the President of the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT). She has been active in civil society organizations for over a decade, and she joint CDT in 2001. Her expertise includes elections, parliamentary development, institutional capacity development, civic participation, campaigns and communications and message development and public relations for non-profits. As trainer and consultant she worked with many NGOs and civic groups in Western Balkans, Eurasia and Middle East, helping them to develop strategic goals and plans, design civic actions and campaigns, build partnerships and contact internal reforms.

Paweł Kowal is a Polish politician and Member of the European Parliament, historian, journalist, lecturer at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, university lecturer. Former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. One of the founders of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising. Author of numerous publications in the field of international relations. He is currently Chairman of the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee in the European Parliament.

I live and work in Warsaw, where I am a PHD candidate at Institute of Philosophy at Warsaw University. My research is concentrated on new media and human collaboration from perspective of social philosophy. I am also an activist working in formal and informal organisations: Modern Poland Foundation, which struggles for development of free cultural commons, digital user rights, freedom of speech and communication; Mokotów Food Cooperative, which I'm an initiator, and a Cargo Bike Cooperative there I'm a participant. Currently I'm working on Net Research Net – a research organisation focused on digital rights in perspective of critical philosophy and anthropology. Besides my interest in Philosophy I hold a MSc in Computer Science.

Trained as a sociologist. For years, engaged in the activity in the third sector. He is particularly familiar with issues related to local government municipal, especially the transparency of public action and the participation of citizens in public spaces. Involved in promotion and development of participatory budgeting institutions in Poland. He specializes in issues related to the overall civic participation in decision-making, especially related to finance of local governments. He is also interested in issues related to energy democracy. Since December 2013 he has been a member of the Council for the participatory budget of the Mayor of Warsaw. Coordinates the work in civic budget within the action Your Vote Your Choice.

Onnik James Krikorian is a journalist, photojournalist and media consultant from the United Kingdom based in the South Caucasus since 1998. He has been published by the The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, National Geographic, Geographical, The National, New Internationalist, EurasiaNet, Transitions Online, Institute of War and Peace Reporting, UNICEF, and others.

Working in all areas of media production since 1991 for media such as the Bristol Evening Post, The Independent, and The Economist, he has also fixed for the BBC, Al Jazeera English, The Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic. From October 2007 to October 2012 was the Caucasus Regional Editor for Global Voices and has been blogging since 2005.

He is also a trainer in social media and citizen journalism for activists, civil society organizations, and journalists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia as well as the breakaway regions of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno Karabakh. This has recently expanded to include consultancy for Free Press Unlimited, Canal France International, and a new multimedia project to be launched soon in Georgia.

A regular speaker at events on citizen journalism and social media — especially in conflict zones — these have included seminars, workshops and conferences for the U.S. Institute for Peace, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), and Hedayah Center.

Anna Kuliberda is a freedom of information, open-data and democracy innovations enthusiast and educator involved in multiple grass-roots initiatives; member of a Citizens Network - Watchdog Poland and of the Supervisory Board of ePF, for more than 2 years now involved in a tech for transparency in the Balkans program of Techsoup Europe. She has also cooperated with Civis Polonus Foundation and Semper Avanti Association on involving youth in public life and is currently volunteering in Zašto ne (Why Not), a Sarajevo-based nongovernmental organization.

Joanna Kusiak, a sociologist and urban activist. She is getting her doctorate at University of Warsaw and Darmstadt University of Technology (co-tutelle) about transformational chaos in Warsaw, taking into consideration space, ideology and politco-organisational issues. Scholar of Foundation for Polish Science (“START” program) and Polish-American Fulbright Commission. Researcher in Einstein Research Group at Humboldt University in Berlin. She is the co-author of book “Chasing Warsaw. Socio-Material Dynamics of Urban Change after 1990” (written with Monika Grubbauer).

Anna Ladoshkina is a web designer, developer and developers' team lead in Teplitsa of Social Technology. She is working primarily in the non-profit sector helping organizations and individuals to be more effective in their work through having beautiful and usable websites and web apps. She is a great fan of social and open technologies and shares her experience on the web actively in articles and blogposts.

Solana is a Danish-Puerto Rican journalist and activist, currently living in both New York and Berlin. She's the Managing Editor of Global Voices. Previously she worked with openDemocracy.net. On Twitter, she is @solanasaurus, and once upon a time she blogged at Solanasaurus.com.

Sandor Lederer is the co-founder and CEO of K-Monitor, a watchdog NGO for public funds in Hungary. Sandor holds an MA in International Studies from Corvinus University, Budapest. K Monitor was founded with the aim of raising awareness about the issues of corruption and to bring a new level of transparency in the field of governance for the purpose of fostering democracy and the rule of law in Hungary. K-Monitor operates open data websites, conducts research and advocates for legal reform. In 2012 K-Monitor developed a website called the Network, a database and an interactive map on political and economic elite networks, public procurements, farm subsidies and EU funding.

Pawel Lickiewicz is an editor, blogger and activists. At his work in Common Europe Foundation, he is striving to create independent media in practice. A co-founder of open platform, gathering more than 150 authors form Europe and beyond, debating the present and future of democracy-less Eastern Europe - Eastbook.eu. Developed it into one of the most important Polish media on Eastern Europe. Graduated form Warsaw University - European Studies. Studied in beautifully sounding Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem in Budapest. Eastern Europe enthusiast. Doesn't like operating with absolutes.

Jarosław Lipszyc is President of the Modern Poland Foundation, board presidium for the Open Education Coalition, committee member of the Citizens of Culture, co-founder of the Stanislaw Brzozowski Association, and audit committee member of the Internet Society of Poland. Before he started working for the Modern Poland Foundation he worked for many years as a journalist, poet and musician, and currently still is an active booster of modern education and open culture. He's the conceptual author of the portal "Włącz Polskę" (eng: Turn Poland On) published by the Polish Ministry of Education. He's an active substantive participant in all projects of the Modern Poland Foundation, a trainer in workshops for teachers, and a lecturer on subjects related to new technology, education and Internet law. Jarosław has participated in social action towards organizing consultations on the implementation of the Register of Banned Websites and Services, was a participant of the debate "Ask the Prime Minister", and debates ACTA and the future of the copyright. He promotes dialogue and cooperation between the NGOs and public administration.

Paweł Luty is a journalist covering tech startups and media. Currently at "Brief" magazine - leading polish magazine for small and medium businesses. He is also a contributor of "iMagazine", first polish e-magazine for iUsers. A bit of a geek. Occasional blogger writing about one of love of his life - books. Husband and father.

Dr. Igor Lyubashenko is a political consultant, academic teacher, new media enthusiast and international relations analyst. He has a PhD in Political Science from the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin (2010).

From 2007 to 2011 he was a project specialist at the PAUCI Foundation. From 2011 to 2013 he was an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Currently he is a lecturer at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS) and Vistula University in Warsaw. He's also Contributing Editor at the "New Eastern Europe" quarterly. Since February 2014 he's been an assistant to MEP Paweł Zalewski, focusing on the situation in Ukraine.

Michał Mach is an entrepreneur, trainer, consultant, project manager, software designer and just a regular participant in many nonprofit sector technology projects over the past 18 years. He's passionate about pragmatic approaches to using the Internet and IT for social good, and fiercely believes in openness, transparency, knowledge sharing and all things free (as in freedom, not free beer). He's a Co-founder of the CiviCRM project, an open source constituent relationship management (CRM) software for non-profits. He's also a founding member of a few organisations, among them Association 61 and the Warsaw Hackerspace Association, as well as a regular member and adviser to many others. He's a frequent co-organiser and facilitator of good old- (or new?) fashioned face-to-face participatory events like hackathons, code sprints, book sprints, etc.

Krzysztof Madejski is fulfilling his activist passions working at Foundation ePaństwo and being a board member of Stowarzyszenie Miasto Moje A W Nim.

After graduating from Warsaw University of Technology’s “Elka” Faculty he worked as a developer on a number of topics including medical data visualizations, GIS systems, SOA integration and web-based startups. He has co-built logistics platform standing behind the scenes of the Nowe Horyzonty Edukacji Filmowej film education project reaching school pupils in sixty polish cities.

At ePaństwo Krzysztof is responsible for developers gathered in Koduj Dla Polski community (Code For Poland).

Katarzyna Mikołajczyk, has been working for the city of Lodz for the last 10 years - now in Fundacja "Normalne Miasto-Fenomen", earlier in unformal group "Grupa Pewnych Osób. Last year Katarzyna was responsible for education and information campaign about civic budget implementation. Co-organizer of citizens engaging actions in Łódź. In her opinion planning for people demands planning with people.

Veljko Milicevic is the Finance and Administration Manager at the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA). Within CRTA he is responsible for financial management and reporting, administrative management, development of institutional budgets for the organization, and harmonization of donor rules and procedures with the legislative framework of the Republic of Serbia. Veljko worked for several international NGOs in Serbia and Montenegro. He has a broad knowledge of and experience in financial management and implementation of donor rules and procedures (USAID, EU, embassies and foundations). Veljko graduated at the Faculty of Economics and is currently enrolled in Master studies.

Emin Milli is a writer and dissident from Azerbaijan, Milli was imprisoned in 2009 for two and a half years for his critical views about the government. He was conditionally released in November 2010, after serving 16 months of his sentence, in part due to strong international pressure on the government of Azerbaijan.

From 2002-2004, Milli was director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and also advised the Council of Europe on more than 40 cases of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, many of whom were released following pressure from the Council. Prior to that, he was a coordinator for the International Republican Institute in Azerbaijan. He studied at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he wrote his dissertation on new media and Arab revolutions.

Sergejus is the Executive Director of Transparency International Lithuania and a member of Transparency International's Board of Directors. Over the past few years, along with his TI colleagues from across the globe, he's worked on finding new ways to effectively engage the public – and especially youth – in anti-corruption and transparency initiatives.

Sergejus is keenly interested in online transparency and citizen engagement tools that enable non-governmental organizations to reach out to and engage with the public. His organization has hosted a number of local and international Open Data events and has been on the forefront of testing new people engagement platforms in Lithuania and across the Transparency International movement. Over the past few years TI Lithuania has launched an online corruption mapping tool service @ www.skaidrumolinija.lt (transparencyline), an online parliamentary monitoring website @ www.manoseimas.lt (myparliament) and a FOIA website www.parasykjiems.lt (a writetothem clone).

Sergejus also initiated and oversaw the development of the Vilnius, Lithuania Transparency International Summer School on Integrity @ www.transparencyschool.org, which hosted some one hundred students from thirty-eight countries in 2012.

Sergejus is a member of the Selection Commission of Candidates to Judicial Office and a board member of the Lithuanian business transparency initiative Clear Wave. He holds degrees with distinction from Leiden and Utrecht Universities in the Netherlands and Vilnius University, Lithuania.

Co-founder nad member of the Board, Stanczyk Foundation
Jan Niedośpiał is a political scientist. He passionately runs a Transparent Krakow programme, which watch over local administration of the City. His goal is to create conditions, in which everyone - no matter how little time they have - will be able to be a watchdog. And provide them with examples of how to do that. To achieve that he experiments with introducing new technologies to classic watchdog activities.
He's Co-founder and member od the Board of Stanczyk Foundation. It's mission is to work for transparency, openness, citizens' control over public bodies and for development of the potential of NGO's.

Born in 1977 in Bydgoszcz. Graduated from Faculty of Journalism and Political Science University of Warsaw. Since October 2011, Deputy Mayor of Warsaw, before Director of European Funds Department. As a Deputy Mayor he is responsible for development strategy of Warsaw. He also supervises European funds, economic development, housing and geodesy.

Zuzana Papazoski has managed NDI's Western Balkans regional parliamentary initiative since 2007. The initiative provides MPs and parliamentary staff from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia with opportunities to exchange best practices related to oversight of the state budget process, parliamentary budgeting, staff development, development of parliamentary expert services and new administrative structures, effective committee operations, and e-parliament technology applications; with the ultimate goal of improving lawmaking and increasing transparency. Ms. Papazoski previously oversaw the Institute's parliamentary program in Montenegro, where she worked extensively with the Montenegrin parliament to develop new rules of procedure and structures that emphasized transparency and accountability in national policymaking. She originally joined the Institute in 2000, managing NDIs parliamentary program in her native Slovakia. Ms. Papazoski has demonstrated regional expertise through her work as a trainer and consultant in Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and Kyrgyzstan, as well as in efforts undertaken with UNDP, OSCE/ODIHR, UNMIK and Freedom House. She possesses extensive experience providing strategic guidance to political parties, and has helped design several local and regional political campaigns. Ms. Papazoski was a co-founder, legal advisor and board member of Civic Eye/Obcianske Oko, a Bratislava-based domestic election monitoring and civic advocacy organization. Earlier, she was the project manager of youth election programs for the Association in Support of Local Democracy. Ms. Papazoski earned her Master's in Law from Comenius University in Bratislava. She is fluent in Slovak, Czech, and English with a working knowledge of Polish and Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin.

The Freedom of Information Foundation is the first Russian NGO focused directly on the Freedom of Information and governmental transparency and accountability. The FIF have created a special ICT tool called Infometr - unique open code software able to motivate government bodies to align their official web sites in compliance with the current FOI legislation, international standards and experts’ opinion. Also the FIF has strategic and tactic litigation programs and FOI educational projects.

Wojciech Pelc is responsible for the official city portal of Poznań, fourth largest city in Poland - poznan.pl. He manages related portals of e-services and is responsible for distribution of public information and internal services for city administration employees. First, an assistant in the Institute of Romanesque Philology of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, then a translator and coordinator in Franco-Polish Higher School of New Informational - Communication Techniques. Since 1996 he has been working at the Municipal of Poznan. He is an official french translator. An alumnus of graduate studies in management of public administration and projects in Banking School in Poznan. Lecturer and an author of many papers and articles about the information society.

Journalist, associate of the foreign department of the newspaper "Rzeczpospolita", editor of the portal Eastbook.eu. Trained as an ethnologist and anthropologist. His research led to the Ukraine, where he worked on policy issues (the distance between the authorities and the citizens) and historical issues (UPA Great Patriotic War, the Great Famine). He has worked with the services "dziennikarze.info", "gildia.pl", "psz.pl", "Gazeta Student", TVP1 and opinion department of "Super Express". During the Revolution in Ukraine his relations were published in "Rzeczpospolita" and "Dziennik Gazeta Prawna".

Marko Rakar (1972) is president of a small Croatian NGO called Windmill. Marko has a lifelong experience in working/writing for media as well as dealing with the media. He combines his media knowledge with new technologies and was one of the earliest internet adopters in Croatia. He is a recognized lecturer and consultant on the subjects of organizing, the internet, new media as well as politics. He has run a number of successful campaigns and races for organizations, parties and independent candidates on presidential, parliament and municipal elections in Croatia, Europe, Asia and the US. His speciality is new and social media, as well as data transparency and open governance. Marko studied Philosophy and Information sciences at the University of Zagreb, speaks English fluently and is regular columnist and author to a number of blogs, web sites, newspapers and magazines in Croatia and internationally.

He was recognized in 2009. by World eGovernment forum as one of the "Top 10 who are changing the world of politics on the internet," recognition which he received for exposing voter list manipulation in Croatia. In 2010 he was arrested, held for questioning and accused of leaking a top secret list of war veterans which includes more then 200.000 people who never participated in the war effort and who draw more then $1.2 billion per year in benefits from Croatian government. In late 2011, Windmill published a list of more then 60.000 Croatian public procurement contracts worth more then $15 billion combined with financial data of suppliers and a number of other information which helped prove and explain how Croatian public procurement process is inefficient, riddled with crime and corruption and in general harmful for Croatian citizen interests. Windmill and Marko are currently working on analysis of the Croatian pension system trying to prove how the private pension funds were used to bail out bad bank loans, as well as a number of other anti-corruption and data transparency projects.

Marko is a member of the board of EAPC (Europan association of political consultants), member of the board of IAPC (International association of political consultants), "School of politics" alumni (by Council of Europe).

Andrew Rasiej is a civic and social entrepreneur, technology strategist, and the founder of Personal Democracy Media focusing on the intersection of technology, politics, and government. In addition to co-founding Civic Hall earlier this year, he is the Chairman of the NY Tech Meetup, a 40,000+-member organization of technologists, venture funders, marketers, representing start up and more mature companies using technology to transform themselves, New York City, and the world. He is the founder of MOUSE.org which focuses on 21st century public education and senior advisor to the Sunlight Foundation a Washington DC organization using technology to make government more transparent. Andrew lives and works in New York City.

Eila Ratasvuori is Executive Advisor at the Department of Urban Facts of City of Helsinki. She has also worked as Head of Department at the Administration Centre of Helsinki and as Head of division at the Helsinki City Office, Legal Services Division. Overall she has worked in different roles and legal positions at the City of Helsinki for more than 30 years. She is Licentiate in Laws at the University of Helsinki. During her career she has focused specifically on transparency in administration, public procurement, state subsidies, administration appeals and assisting the audit function with legal issues. Ratasvuori has also acted as a chairman and a member in numerous committees and working groups addressing administration publicity, privacy protection of personal information, public procurement, competitive tendering and office automation. She is also the chairman of the executive group of the project addressing the electronification of the case processing and the meeting procedures at the City of Helsinki and the group producing the electronical archive.

Dmitry Savelau is a Senior Campaigner for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at Change.org - the world's largest petition platform, empowering over 50 million people to create change they want to see. Born in Minsk, Belarus he is currently based out of Amsterdam. Dmitry is also a coordinator at the International Education and Resource Network, and the Adobe Youth Voices Program in Belarus.

Kamila is a social entrepreneur, Co-founder and CEO of international community for women in ICT Geek Girls Carrots (http://geekgirlscarrots.pl/). She supports social initiatives such as "Link do Przyszlosci" /Link to the Future/ (http://linkdoprzyszlosci.pl/) designed to encourage youth to pursue careers in IT. Kamila is an investor in a technology startup – Motivapps (http://www.motivapps.com/). In 2011, during her work at UBIK Business Consulting and hardGAMMA Ventures she co-organized the first Startup Weekend in Poland and managed the GammaRebels an accelerator program for technology startups. Kamila is a co-founder of public speaking club - Speaking Elephants Toastmasters Club (http://speakingelephants.pl/). She gained several years of experience in marketing and advertising, while working at Bank Pekao SA. Kamila graduated from the Warsaw School of Economics (Management and Marketing, 2009). She loves traveling, running and good books.

Dr. Alexey Sidorenko is an expert on the Russian internet and an experienced web developer. His knowledge of Russian new media and politics encompasses web development, data analysis, regional political analysis, freedom of online speech issues, reporting, and editing.

Starting February 2012, Dr. Sidorenko is the head of the Moscow-based project “Teplitsa of Social Technologies” (te-st.ru), an innovation incubator dedicated to creating citizen web applications and enhancing NGO ICT skills.

From 2009-2012, Dr. Sidorenko was a reporter and an editor of the “RuNet Echo” project at Global Voices Online, where he researched and analyzed developments in the Russian internet sphere. This included the role of the internet in civil society and politics, the changing media landscape, the role of the internet in breaking news coverage, internet policy in Russia and its effect on the digital divide and freedom of speech, and information security and cyber warfare.

He has also contributed reporting for Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders on internet and freedom of speech issues in Russia. In 2010, he served as the web developer behind the “Help Map” project, an award-winning crowdsourcing initiative to help the victims of the summer wildfires.

He is a native speaker of Russian and is also fluent in English and Polish.

Micah L. Sifry is a writer, editor and democracy activist. Since 2004, he has been the co-founder and editorial director of Personal Democracy Media. In addition to co-founding Civic Hall last year, he is also a senior adviser to the Sunlight Foundation and serves on the boards of Consumer Reports and the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. He is the author or editor of eight books, most recently A Lever and a Place to Stand: How Civic Tech Can Move the World (Personal Democracy Media, 2015) and The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Changed Politics (Yet) (OR Books, 2014), and in the spring of 2012 taught “The Politics of the Internet” at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He lives with his family in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.

With a unique background in business, technology, science and media, Gavin has broad and deep knowledge of how data can change the world.

He began developing internet-based research tools in 1993, and joined Branson’s award-winning Virgin Net (now Virgin Media) in 1995 as its fifth team member.

In 2006 he created AMEE, raising over $10m from world-class venture investors including O’Reilly, USV, and Amadeus (organising the world’s environmental data, standards, and calculations into a simple web-service). In 2011 he joined the UK Government’s “Energy Sector Board” as part of their Midata open-data initiative.

Having helped to kick-start the streaming media industry in Europe in the late 90’s, Gavin created award-winning media-technology service, Tornado, selling it to a larger media group in 2003. He then helped create the digital media supply-chain, as founding CEO of world-leading digital distributor, CI. CI was the first company to deliver digital products to iTunes, and delivered Amazon US ~25% of its download store at launch.

At the UK’s Jodrell Bank Radio Observatory he worked on systems designed to map and interpret the universe. He created courses and lectured in Engineering and Music at Glasgow University, and has degrees in Astronomy (B.Sc.), and Electronic Music (M.Mus.). He co-created a co-operative harbour on the Thames where he now lives, as a musician has released his own album, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Małgorzata Steiner is the head of the Department for Analysis and Public Communication in the Ministry of Administration and Digitization in Poland. Prior to this, she had worked in the Prime Minister's Office in Poland on issues like administration reform and innovation. She also managed international projects for German Development Cooperation Agency GIZ in Berlin and was a leadership trainer and consultant in the USA. She's a graduate of Humboldt University, Berlin, where she studied law, and Harvard University, where she studied public policy.

Caroline Sutcliffe is Deputy Director of Meydan TV, a new media startup that seeks to improve adherence to basic human rights and strengthen civil society in Azerbaijan. She was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Baku and enthusiastically joined Meydan TV after finishing her Masters at the London School of Economics. She has previously worked with the ICRC, U.S. State Department and United Nations and is passionate about encouraging innovation, entrepreneurship and citizen engagement in authoritarian states. Meydan TV is an independent, non-partisan startup platform that contributes to democracy-building in the struggling post-soviet republic. The young initiative draws upon the talent of citizen journalists, bloggers, dissidents and civil society to encourage a more pluralistic media climate in the region.

Director of the Department of Information at the City Hall in Gdansk. She focuses on the work towards changing the role of IT in the organization as a service provider in Municipalities based on the Shared Services Centre and has been working in public administration for 5 years. Prior experience in large manufacturing companies ( unit production and serial production) . She has many years of experience in IT management. In Gdynia Shipyard SA she was responsible for the development and implementation of IT strategy , organization and coordination of projects for the improvement and integration of processes supported by IT solutions . Parallel - 2 years Management Representative in terms of overhaul - organization restructuring project based on the Balanced Scorecard . In-depth management experience through participation in Supervisory Boards . Over two years working with a consulting company in the field of Business Intelligence solutions , ERP and BSC mainly in the field of heat and energy . Member of the Polish Information Processing Society , and the Chamber of Appraisers - participation in the development of strategies PTI . Certified auditor 's leading information security standard ISO 27001 .

Katarzyna Szymielewicz is a lawyer and activist. She's a graduate of the University of Warsaw's Law & Administration Department, and the University of London's Development Studies program in the School of Oriental and African Studies.

She's Co-founder and President of the Panoptykon Foundation, that deals with human rights protection in the context of new technology development. She's also Vice-President of European Digital Rights, a coalition of over 30 organisations.

Katarzyna serves as an advisor to the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative and to the Minister for Administration and Digitalisation in Poland. She is also a member of the International Commission of Jurists (Polish section) and the Internet Society.

Adam works with innovations in journalism, particularly on open newsrooms, media development and technology projects. He is Chief of Product at Storyful, the first newswire of the social media age. His work with news organisations was honoured with an African News Innovation Challenge prize in 2012, and he has played a pivotal role in teams that have won a Guardian Digital Innovation Award for Social Change and a Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism.

Tatyana Tolsteneva has worked for the Freedom of Information Foundation since 2009, and currently is FIF's Development Manager, responsible for communication with partners and government bodies as well as for Open Government issues. In 2011, she graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod State University with a Masters degree in law.

The Freedom of Information Foundation is the first Russian NGO focused directly on the Freedom of Information and governmental transparency and accountability. The FIF have created a special ICT tool called Infometr - unique open code software able to motivate government bodies to align their official web sites in compliance with the current FOI legislation, international standards and experts’ opinion. Also the FIF has strategic and tactic litigation programs and FOI educational projects.

Thanks to involvement in the a wide range of FIF's Initiatives from government web-site monitoring to outreach public events, Tatyana have faced with different types of challenges, typical for transparency-oriented NGO in countries with limited traditions of openness.

Marek Tuszynski is a restless producer of various creative and social interventions spanning various media: radio, television and internet, as well as analogue formats such as workshops, book sprints and endless conversations. Activism, innovation and creativity are major driving forces in his work, as much as the importance of marginalised voices, opinions and world views. He has co-founded a number of initiatives and organisations, such as The Second Hand Bank, International Contemporary Art Network, Tactical Tech and recently Tactical Studios. Marek is currently focusing on using visual formats in representing evidence to influence the course of social and political issues, while also working on the next documentary film for Tactical Tech, along with other animations. In his spare time he produces a radio program titled Love & Chaos on Reboot FM.

Roman Udot is a co-chairman of Golos movement, electoral observer and data analyst, blogger and activist. Golos movement was formed by core specialists and experts of the famous Association GOLOS, which activities were suspended by the authorities after a heavy-handed crackdown. The movement continues the association’s long-standing traditions in the field of civic election observation.

From Moscow’s anti-putsch human shield of 1991 to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004 to the pro-democratic mass protests of 2012-13 in Russia, Roman Udot, an activist, blogger and electoral expert, tried to make his modest contribution to a peaceful transition of ex-soviet states to democracy.

At GOLOS, Roman Udot has been in charge of data collection services since 2011 and has helped to reform them on principles of crowdsourcing and full automation. Later, as the coordinator of the electoral observation projects, his task was to streamline and interconnect the information flows from observers and voters to specialized GOLOS services and finally, to social and mass media at large.

He has had an honour to share his experience and findings with colleagues at ENEMO, EPDE, Norwegian Helsinki committee, OSCE, Community of Democracies, Belarus Watch et al.

Vitaly Vlasov is a founder and chairman of Open City Foundation (ex Open and Future Web Foundation) which is a St.Petersburg-based non-profit citizen organization. Our mission is to bring openness and transparency of government data in Russia by involving citizen society, developers, activists and building local community. Vitaly is a PhD candidate at National Research University of information technologies, mechanics and optics, web developer, expert in social media, technology entrepreneur and opinion leader in Open Data and Open Government in Russia. Founder of Open Data Hackathon in St.Petersburg since 2012, local representative of CityCamp movement, co-founder of geolocation game platform Playcer.

His mission is to connect modern technologies, citizen society, government to update our cities and change the way how they can communicate. Vitaly is also an evangelist, public speaker and totally interested in wikinomics, social networks, internet of things, smart cities and how technologies can change the world. You can see him on Twitter regularly.

Bartosz T. Wieliński (b. 1978) - a journalist of the foreign department of Gazeta Wyborcza, specializing in foreign affairs, especially Germany. A graduate of journalism at the University of Silesia and the International School of Political Sciences in Katowice. He has been working at Gazeta Wyborcza since 1998, during the years 2005-2009 he was a correspondent in Berlin. In 2013 he won the Grand Press for press reportage.

Svitlana Zalishchuk is a journalist, activist and initiator of number of influential civic campaigns in Ukraine, including the CHESNO movement, the New Citizen civic platform, and the journalist movement Stop Censorship! She is working as a founding director of Centre UA, a Kiev-based nongovernmental organization. Previously Svitlana was an anchor of the live political TV show “From the Other Side” and an international reporter at the 5th TV Channel – the only media that broadcasted Orange Revolution in 2004. Also she has an experience working at high positions in the Government and in the Administration of the President from 2005 to 2006.

Agnieszka Ziółkowska is a journalist and publicist. She graduated in Italian and Spanish studies from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and in European Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of Europe in Natolin. She has analyzed new social movements focusing on the Spanish "Outraged", and in her master's thesis at the College of Europe she analyzed the mechanisms of civil budget as a tool of democratization and empowerment of residents, using the example of Polish cities. She's one of the initiators and organizers of the First Congress of Urban Movements and member of the Krytyka Polityczna team.