Ethos brings together many of the smartest minds in the field of wireless and community networking. Ethos offers comprehensive network consulting services to interested municipalities, companies, non-profits, and community organizations. Drawing in experts from across the country, the people of Ethos have over one hundred years of experience to back up our work.

The Ethos Group is a new telecommunications consulting firm focusing on the community benefits of wireless technology. We follow three core principles:

Accessibility. Accountability. Affordability.

We prioritize the needs of the community in our assessments and work directly with municipal representatives as well as local residents to deliver proposals and networking options tailored to each community's particular needs.

OUR TEAM

PRINCIPALS

Joshua Breitbart is a writer and community organizer who has developed media outlets around the world. In addition to being a principal and founder of The Ethos Group, he is also Policy Director for People's Production House in New York City, which teaches media literacy and production to middle and high school students. He produces the Allied Media Conference, the premier national gathering of community media hosted in Detroit, Michigan. From 2000-2005, Josh helped organize the global Indymedia network, nurturing Independent Media Centers throughout the United States, in South America, and in Africa. He is a regular contributor to GovTech’s Digital Communities and writes regularly on media and technology at his blog, A Civil Defense.

Dharma Dailey has over a decade of experience as a community media activist and researcher. Her research on the purported risks to public safety of Low Power FM (LPFM) broadcasting, as claimed by large commercial broadcasters, played a timely role in the FCC's decision to begin re-issuing LPFM licenses. Dharma was the principal author of Prometheus Radio Project's official reply comments to the FCC on the 12 Media Ownership Studies that were meant to launch another wave of media ownership consolidation. These comments gave Prometheus the legal standing to become the lead plaintiff in a successful lawsuit against the FCC that stopped further radio consolidation. For the last three years, Dharma's work has focused on the task of taking the issues of Spectrum Reform beyond the beltway. From Hackers on Planet Earth to the Ford Foundation, she provides expert testimony on many topics, including smart radios, FCC licensing regimes, appropriate technology, and community media to audiences across North America. She is regularly sought out for input by a variety of media reform groups and researchers and is a member of the New America Foundation's Wireless Futures Advisory Board.

Sascha Meinrath is a well-known expert on Community Wireless Networks (CWNs), Municipal Broadband, and Community Internet. Sascha is the co-founder and Project Coordinator of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN), one of the world's leading open-source, ad-hoc mesh wireless projects. In 2005, Sascha was elected to the Board of Directors of CTCNet, a US-based network of more than 1000 organizations united in their commitment to improve the educational, economic, cultural and political life of their communities through technology. Sascha is a policy analyst for Free Press, a Washington, DC-based think-tank, and regularly briefs Federal Communications Commission and Congressional staff on issues related to CWNs. Leading news sources, including The Economist, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and National Public Radio, often cite Sascha's work in covering issues related to CWNs and he is an editor of MuniWireless.com. In 2004, Sascha organized the First National Summit for Community Wireless Networks, helping to launch what has now become known as the Community/Municipal Wireless Networking Movement.

ASSOCIATES

Bill Comisky is a consultant with 15 years of experience in the fields of RF/Antenna design and engineering software development. Recently he has been involved with wireless network deployments, working on the Wireless Community Network in Chicago's Lawndale and Pilsen communities. Some of his other interests include parallel computing, genetic algorithms, and free/open source software development. Bill holds a B.S. in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Peter I. Collins is the Information Technologies Manager for the City of Geneva, Illinois and President of the Illinois Municipal Broadband Communications Association. He resides in Batavia, Illinois with his wife Annie (Chairman, Fiber For Our Future) and their sons. He currently oversees all networking services provided via Geneva's internal (data & phone) and municipal fiber optic networks, and advises Geneva's staff & elected officials regarding telecommunications policy. He has been involved in the Information Technology field for over 18 years, has written for the NATOA Journal of Municipal Telecommunications Policy, and has been a speaker at the Broadband Properties Summit 2004, Supercomm 2005, MuniWireless 2006 Atlanta, the National Summit for Community Wireless Networks 2006, and will be speaking at the APPA Community Broadband Conference (St. Louis) in October 2006. He is a vocal proponent of the rights of municipalities to set their own telecommunications destinies.

Becca Vargo Daggett is the Director of the Municipal Telecommunications Project at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a 32-year old nonprofit that provides information and technical assistance to local and state governments. The National Academy of Public Administration, the Minnesota legislature, and local governments of all sizes have used her financial and policy analyses of municipal broadband. She is an advisor to several consortiums of Minnesota cities that are currently planning municipal broadband projects, and led a campaign in support of a municipally owned network in Minneapolis. Prior to joining ILSR, Becca worked as network administrator in the private sector. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology and an M.S. in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Minnesota.

Richard MacKinnon is the President of Austin Wireless, a Texas non-profit organization with the dual roles of public education and community-network operation. Austin Wireless is perhaps best known for its Austin Wireless City Project, an ad hoc volunteer organization with the mission of improving the quality and availability of public free WiFi in Austin. Operating for almost 3 years, the community-owned network includes 100 hotspots and over 30,000 registered users who combine for over 80,000 monthly connections. Network usage doubled over last year. There are also hotspots in 38 other cities and 5 countries that have joined the network, now accounting for nearly a third of the traffic.

Michael Maranda, President of the Association for Community Networking, is actively organizing regionally, and locally in the Midwest, Illinois, and Chicago. Michael is coordinating this work with attention to national issues and regional cooperation. While working as a Development Officer at a community based organization serving immigrant population, he was given the latitude to pursue funding for technology programs, and to launch them. This was his formal entree to this field. Since that time, and with subsequent expansion of programs he has shifted towards being an activist and organizer.

Victor Pickard spent the summer of 2005 working on media policy in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Telecommunications Policy Fellow for Congresswoman Diane Watson. His research on Indymedia, Internet governance, and political communication has been published in a number of leading academic journals, including the Journal of Communication, Global Media and Communication, Media, Culture & Society and Critical Studies in Media Communication. He is currently finishing his PhD dissertation on mid 1940s communication policy and normative theories of media democracy at the Institute for Communications Research.

Glenn Strachan served as Project Director overseeing the Macedonia Connects Project which provided nationwide broadband wireless connectivity to 460 primary and secondary schools as well as select universities and NGOs. This work has been highlighted in such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Christian Science Monitor and the BBC show "Click Online." Prior to this project, Glenn worked on wireless connectivity solutions in Romania and Uganda. The work in Romania demonstrated various connectivity solutions which could be implemented to provide Internet connectivity to the most remote and impoverished regions in eastern Romania. The work in Uganda established the first wireless networking solution in the country to provide Internet connectivity to nine primary teacher colleges. For 10 of his 13 years of service at the Academy for Educational Development (AED), Glenn served as Chief Information Officer and Vice President. Prior to AED, he worked for Realcom/WorldCom where he designed, configured and managed a 26 city Wide Area Network in the United States. Glenn brings with him 30 years of computer and networking expertise and holds a Masters degree from Humboldt State University and Bachelor degrees from San Jose State University.

ADVISORS

Robin Chase is the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Zipcar. She lectures widely and has been frequently featured in the major media including the Today Show, The New York Times, National Public Radio, Fast Company, Wired, and Time Magazine, as well as several books on entrepreneurship. She has received many awards, including the Massachusetts Governor's Award for Entrepreneurial Spirit, InfoWorld’s Top 100 Innovators of 2001, and was cited as a Trendsetter by Fast Company in its 2002 Champions of Innovation award. Robin founded and is the CEO of Meadow Networks, a consulting group that applies wireless technologies to the transportation sector, reducing dependency on fossil fuel, minimizing CO2 emissions, and creating more adaptable, resilient, and cost-efficient economies. Robin graduated from Wellesley College and MIT's Sloan School of Management, and was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.

Mark Cooper holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and is a former Yale University and Fulbright Fellow. He is Director of Research at the Consumer Federation of America where he has responsibility for analysis and advocacy in the areas of telecommunications, media, digital rights, economic and energy policy. He has provided expert testimony in over 250 cases for public interest clients including Attorneys General, People’s Counsels, and citizen interveners before state and federal agencies, courts and legislators in almost four dozen jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada. He is the author of Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age (Center for Internet & Society, Stanford University, 2003), Cable Mergers and Monopolies (Electronic download) (Economic Policy institute, 2002, paper), The Transformation of Egypt (Johns Hopkins, 1982), and Equity and Energy (Westview, 1983).

Gene Crick is Executive Director of the TeleCommunity Resource Center (TCRC) a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working to develop community Internet tools and networks, especially in underserved areas. TCRC's national program includes resources and outreach to support local community network builders. Described as one of the country's leading experts in community uses of Internet technology, he is advisor to the state's strategic plan for information technology, as well as an architect of Texas Community Network grant programs. Gene is also Executive Director of the Texas Internet Service Providers Association (TISPA), the country's largest regional ISP association, as well as Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network (MAIN), one of the country's oldest and most successful online community networks. Gene works with, and serves on several federal and international boards and commissions, and has won numerous awards for leadership in community networks, including a Presidential Medal in 2001 for Service in the Field of Telecommunications, the Susan B. Hadden Award for Public Service in Telecom, and was named by Texas Monthly as one of Texas's 25 most influential technology leaders. Gene currently serves as the President of the Association for Community Networking and as a member on the CTCNet Advisory Council, Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) Program Committee, and Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI) Rural Telecommunications Panel.

Harold Feld is Senior Vice President of the Media Access Project. He is the primary author of many of the current public interest filings on spectrum proceedings at the FCC. He joined MAP in August 1999 after practicing communications, Internet, and energy law at Covington & Burling. In 2002-2003, he served on the ICANN Names Council as representative of the Noncommercial Constituency, and currently serves as the Noncommercial Constituency representative to the Advisory Committee of the Public Interest Registry (which administers .org). Mr. Feld has written numerous articles on Internet law and communications policy for trade publications and legal journals. Media Access Project is a nonprofit public interest law firm working to ensure a public voice in telecommunications policy.

Adina Levin has over 13 years of experience in strategic marketing and product planning in a variety of emerging high-tech markets. She is currently VP of Products and co-founder at Socialtext, the leading provider of enterprise social software. Adina served as Senior Director at Corporate Strategy for Vignette Corporation, a role that included product strategy and planning, marketing strategy and operations, and management consulting in the areas of mergers, acquisitions, and distribution. Prior to Vignette, Adina was co-founder and partner in Fastwater LLP, a research and consulting firm focusing on ebusiness marketing and business metrics. Adina is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Austin.

Ben Scott is Policy Director in the Washington office of Free Press. Previously, he served as a Legislative Fellow in the House of Representatives, handling telecommunications policy in the office of Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT). He is also currently completing his doctoral work at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has written several articles on the history of American journalism and media policy making. Most recently, he is the editor, with Robert W. McChesney, of Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism (2004).

Paul Smith is Technology Director for the Center for Neighborhood Technologies, a Chicago non-profit devoted to making cities more livable. He is also the technical lead on the Wireless Community Network project and received national acclaim for his post-Hurricane Katrina disaster response work. He's been with the Center for Neighborhood Technologies since 1999.

Esme Vos is the founder of Muniwireless.com, the portal for news and information about municipal wireless broadband projects. Since its launch in June 2003, Muniwireless.com has become the primary resource for cities, counties, consultants, systems integrators, vendors, and service providers in this space. Muniwireless organizes conferences and roundtables, and publishes a quarterly magazine. Vos is an intellectual property lawyer and runs her own company, Lemon Cloud BV, based in Amsterdam. She has served as Chief Legal Officer of Spray Network, a pan-European portal and Director Legal Affairs for Baan Business Systems worldwide.