Don Means

Founder and Principal
Digital Village Associates

With over 20 years experience in the IT industry, Means is co-founder and principal of Digital Village Associates, a 13-year old consulting enterprise that focuses on information /communications technology as both tool and subject for building local communities everywhere. In June of 2007, Means authored the "Fiber to the Library" (FTTL) proposal to make connecting every library in the US with 100+Mbps level connectivity by 2010 a national goal.

Beginning with the post election transition period and since, Means has briefed both key policy makers at local, state and national levels including congressional leaders and FCC commissioners on the desirability of adopting FTTL as a spearhead project under ARRA for a new national broadband policy that both extends the physical network infrastructure as well as providing ubiquitous, accessible sites for patrons to experience high speed network applications like tele-work/medicine/education.

In July of 2007, Means announced Digital Village would coordinate the formation of an open consortium to stage the National Presidential Caucus on Dec. 7, 2007. The NPC's goal is for 1,000's of self-organizing groups to gather in local face to face caucuses to discuss and deliberate on the issues and candidates in advance of the official primary season. In early 2005, Means and Digital Village originated and facilitated implementation of the Community TeleStructure Initiative, a powerful national consortium to advocate for a new local responsibility for telecom/broadband infrastructure planning and development in a similar fashion as with other local infrastructure elements like power, transportation, water, etc.

In 2003/2004, Means formally held the position of Senior Political Advisor to Meetup.com, a community-building Web service with millions of members that provides an organizing tool for like-interested people, enabling them to gather off-line in localities anywhere in the world.

Means has served as an appointed member of the Information Technology Commission of California; as chair of the Information Technology Association of America’s education outreach program; and as a member of TechNet, a public policy organization of over 200 technology CEO's where he has worked on normalizing trade relations with China, education restructuring in California, and national broadband policy.

Means is co-founder and board member of TriWorks Corp. of Tokyo & Shanghai. TriWorks is a 9 year old software and services company specializing in "Digital Image Communications" for a range of consumer and commercial applications. Its flagship product, DigiBook™, is the market leading photo album software in Japan.

In 1985, Means founded the National Space Sciences Educational Foundation, a nonprofit educational services corporation. NSSEF designed and implemented experimental learning environments located at Stanford University for high school age students from the United States and Europe called the Space Sciences Academy™.

Holding a finance degree from Southern Methodist University, Means has also studied architecture and environmental design at the University of Texas and international business relations at the University of Graz, Austria.

Reared in Ft. Worth, Texas, Means lives in Sausalito, California with his wife, Dominique Caron, a professional artist, originally from France.