Lars Hedberg is the Secretary General, Founder, and former Chairman of the Swedish Urban Network Association, a leading non-profit trade organization consisting of 300 companies, municipalities and organization members working together with an open network for municipal broadband deployment. Members are local authorities and companies which own or operate communications networks accessible by everyone, as well as operators and suppliers in the telecommunications and data communications sector.
Company director and business consultant, former Mayor of Wellington, Cabinet Minister and CEO of Trade New Zealand.
Frana Cardno has been Mayor of the Southland District since 1992.
She has a passionate commitment to empowering communities to set their own direction, and is a strong advocate for rural New Zealand. Mrs Cardno was a founding member of the Mayoral Taskforce for Jobs initiative and takes a particular interest in youth issues.
Keith Davidson is Executive Director of InternetNZ, and a former owner / manager of a regional ISP. InternetNZ is a not for profit organisation which holds the delegation for the .nz domain name space. InternetNZ's vision is "an open and uncaptureable Internet for New Zealand". Much of our work relates to the evolution of Internet policy and we are committed to consensus decision making in an open and transparent environment.
Alan Dempster is Director of IT Services at Victoria University of Wellington. In 1995 as Head of Payment and Transaction Services for Trustbank New Zealand he became aware of the InfoCity programme in Wellington. Through his sponsorship, Trustbank became one of the founding shareholders and Alan was elected to the board. That board elected him Chairman, a post which he still holds today.
Garry trained as an accountant and has worked in both the public and private sector. He is married to Pam Sharpe and has four children. In the 1980s he worked for a number of employment programmes and was part of the founding group that formed Whalewatch Ltd, Kaikoura. He has had 15 years involvement in local body politics starting in 1989 when he was elected as a member of the Area Health Board. He then served two terms as a Councillor for Christchurch City Council and was elected Mayor of Christchurch in 1998. He was founder Chair of the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs, and is Chair of Prosperous Christchurch and Safer Christchurch.