Norman Cohn, co-founder IsumaTV

Norman Cohn is Producer and Creative Lead at IsumaTV, an independent interactive network of Inuit and Indigenous multimedia. IsumaTV was launched in January 2008 by Igloolik Isuma Productions to use new networking technology to build a new era of communication and exchange among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and communities around the globe. Norman is producer and Director of Photography of the films Atanarjuat The Fast Runner and Nunavut (Our Land). Before going to Igloolik, he had a solo exhibit in 1982 at the National Galerie of Canada and other canadian museums entitled, Norman Cohn, Portraits. He won the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1990 and was co-recipient with Kunuk in 1990 of the  Bell Canada Award for Outstanding Achievement in Video Art.

Tim McSorley, editor Media Co-operative

Tim McSorley is an editor with The Dominion and the Media Co-operative, a cross-Canada reader-funded and member-run network of local Media Cooperatives dedicated to providing grassroots, democratic coverage. He has been involved with grass-roots, community media in Montreal for several years, including Siafu Magazine and CKUT radio.

Georgia Popplewell, Managing Director Global Voices

Georgia Popplewell is a media producer, writer, editor and blogger from Trinidad and Tobago. She has worked in independent media in the Caribbean since 1989 and has written extensively on culture, music, flm and sport. In 2005, she started Caribbean Free Radio, the Caribbean’s frst podcast. Popplewell is Managing Director of Global Voices, a Netherlands-based international citizen media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Craig Silverman

Craig Silverman is an award-winning journalist and author. As the managing editor of PBS MediaShift and a columnist for Columbia Journalism Review, he reports on the latest trends in the world of new media and journalism. Craig is also the digital journalism director of OpenFile, a new collaborative local news website for Toronto. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Globe And Mail, The Gazette (Montreal), Toronto Star, and Harvard’s Nieman Reports, among other publications. He is the author of Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech, which won the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism, and the founder of RegretTheError, a website that reports on media errors and accuracy. Craig serves as vice president the Professional Writers Association of Canada.

Jean-Noé Landry, co-founder Montréal Ouvert

Jean-Noé Landry is a consultant who specializes in democratic development, working mainly with civil society actors and political institutions. In between assignments to the Balkans, Russia, Afghanistan, the West Bank, and Kenya, with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and United Nations (UN) he is active as an organizer and trainer in Montreal. As co-founder of Montréal Ouvert, a non-partisan citizen initiative that promotes open access to civic information for the region of Montreal, Jean-Noé is a long-time advocate for citizen engagement and effective governance.

Amanda Garcés, Project Manager Mobile Voices

Amanda Garcés brings an extensive background in organizing day laborers and other immigrant groups in New Jersey and Los Angeles. As an immigrant, she knows of the daily struggles immigrants face and has dedicated herself to achieving social justice for immigrant families. Her commitment to the growth of organizations that support immigrant rights has prompted her to co-develop popular communication projects. She co-created Mobile Voices because she believes that we must become our own media and follow Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA)’s motto of "reading reality to write our own history". Amanda is also the former administrative controller for IDEPSCA and is currently finishing her MA in Education leadership and change at Antioch University Los Angeles.

Jaroslav Valuch, Haiti Project Manager Ushahidi

Jaroslav Valuch helped deploy the Ushahidi Haiti platform at Fletcher School in Boston few hours after the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, where he became the SMS processing lead. In February, he became the Ushahidi Haiti field representative in Port-au-Prince, coordinating the operations with partners on the ground. He focused on incorporation of dataflows into UN cluster systems and Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities platform. In 2009/2010 Jaroslav was a Hubert Humphrey Fellow on the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. He worked for Czech based international relief and development organization called People in Need. In the aftermath of cyclone Nargis he worked in Burma as a relief and capacity building projects coordinator and was also involved in human rights programs on Thai-Burma border. In Europe he participated in videoactivism projects focused on monitoring of extreme right-wing violence.

Priscila Néri, Program Coordinator, Witness

Priscila Néri is a Brazilian journalist, activist, and filmmaker who joined the organization in 2008 to help run Witness' The Hub and support online campaigns. She is currently focused on WITNESS’ campaigns on gender-based violence and forced evictions in the name of development. Prior to WITNESS, Priscila worked at CDI, a network of grassroots ‘Technology & Civic Engagement Schools’ in urban slums and low-income communities throughout Latin America. She also previously worked as a reporter for Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo and media outlets including Reuters  and Carta Capital. In 2005, Priscila traveled to the Sertão Nordestino - poorest region in Brazil - to shoot an independent documentary about lives of seven women. Priscila is an MFA candidate at the Integrated Media Arts Program at Hunter College in NY.

Shubhranshu Choudhary, Knight International Journalism Fellow, CGNet Swara

Shubhranshu Choudhary is a Knight International Journalism Fellow working on developing a radio on mobile phone called CGnet Swara which he is testing in central Tribal region in India. Shubhranshu has worked as South Asia Producer for BBC for more than a decade before becoming freelance. He also works as journalism trainer for Indian universities and BBC. Shubhranshu also works as South Asia representative for Reporters Without Borders.

Martin Lessard

Martin Lessard is a blogger (Zéro Seconde) who has a monthly report on the  Citoyen numérique radio show on CIBL 101.5. He is a member of the board of Protéger-vous and of Yulbiz. He is the host of Montréal's WebCamp during  the WebCom-Montréal. He has given courses in information and network architecture  (television and interactive media) in 2007-2008 at l'UQÀM. He published a book entitled, "Pourquoi bloguer?" on business blogs in collaboration with 9 other industry-recognized experts. He also wrote the guide Meilleures pratiques de projet web (best web project practices) for the Alliance Numérique, which is distributed for free by the alliance. Over the past few years, many of his projects have won prizes (Cassies, Boomerangs, Publicité-club, Digital Marketing and  Communication Marketing.

Patricia Bergeron

Patricia has given workshops at l'Institut national de l'image et du son (INIS) and has been a jury member for multiple film festivals. Patricia is now an independent producer and blogger, working primarily on documentary film narratives for crossover platforms and the big screen.

Frédéric Dubois

Alain Ambrosi