Advisory Group

Asia Source is guided by an advisory group of individuals made up of leading NGO, technology and free and open source professionals from across South and South East Asia. The advisory group has been selected to help guide the form and content of the event. The members of the advisory group assist in the participant selection process as well as help the organisers and facilitators to shape the agenda of Asia Source.

The advisory group consists of:

San Ng

San Ng (Ms.) is the Program Officer for ICT for Governance, Law and Civil Society at The Asia Foundation. The Asia Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental organization committed to the development of a peaceful, prosperous, and open Asia-Pacific region. San leads the ICT Program which aims to provide new ways to address longstanding problems by increasing efficiency and productivity in the private sector, expanding the scale and influence of civil society, and increasing transparency and accountability in the public sector. Currently, San oversees more than 30 ICT programs in nine countries.

San has more than 10 years of experience in international development and ICT. Before joining the Asia Foundation, San was the Director of Strategy and Programs at the International Medical Corps, a global humanitarian nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through relief programs. Among other tasks that aim to solidify IMC's strategic position and ensure best practices, she facilitated an organization wide technology planning process that resulted in IMC's technology plan, based on a new organizational attitude toward technology. San previously worked for CARE International in Thailand, China and Seattle. Born and bred in Singapore, San practiced as a court attorney in the early part of her career before becoming extensively involved in international relief and development.

She is the holder of a Bachelors of Laws (LL.B) from the National University of Singapore, as well as a Masters of Laws (LL.M) and a Masters of Public Administration (M.P.A) from the University of Washington.

Frederick Noronha

Frederick is a freelance journalist based in Goa, India interested in developmental issues for many years. Together with Partha Pratim Sarker of Bangladesh, he founded BytesForAll, a widely respected information portal dedicated to studying how ITC can be used to help the poor and the common(wo)man. Frederick is recipient of the Panos Fellow in 2001 (reproductive health and gender issues) and the Sarai Print Media Fellowship 2001 (studying the contribution of South Asia to GNU/LINUX). He is also a founding member of India-Linux Users Group (Goa), and has been one of the few journalists closely following the growth of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in India and Asia. Frederick is a widely published journalist, known for his writings on technology in the Third World. He is also active in cyberspace, where he is involved in a number of initiatives, including Goanet (www.goanet.org), IndiaLists (wikiwikiweb.de/IndiaLists), soc.culture.indian.goa and a few dozen of other mailing lists. Frederick holds an Master's degree in English Literature, a Bachelor's in Commerce and Economics (from the University of Bombay), and an Advanced Diploma in Journalism from IIJ-Berlin. He has also undergone training in environmental journalism in Fojo-Sweden.

Onno Purbo

Onno Purbo has dedicated his life to promoting the dissemination of knowledge through ICTs in Indonesia. A technophile from an early age, he started working as an electrical engineer and ham (amateur) radio operator until he became a professor at Bandung University. An equally early believer in the Internet, he spent years trying to convince the government of the validity of his radical vision, later on also as professor at the Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB). Onno Purbo is the author of nearly 1000 articles and 40 books which are available free of charge on his website. Inexpensive technology and the creative and innovative use of it is one of his key teaching subjects. He is well known for his expertise and progressive approach to spreading the use of wireless community networking. Purbo was a Research Fellow with the ICTs for Development (ICT4D) program area of the International Development Research Center (IDRC). Purbo is an Eisenhower Fellow.

Javier Solá

Javier Solá is the coordinator of the Khmer OS Initiative, a NGO-based project aimed at producing free software in Khmer language. He is also directing a project to develop an "Open Source Localization Toolkit" addressed to small economies that wish to start localization projects. He participates in some specific Open Source projects that attempt to facilitate localization processes. His interest on Open Source derives from the believe that it can be used to reduce the digital divide through localization. He is interested on finding working strategies for wide distribution of Open Source software in poor countries. Javier was formerly Director of the Spanish Internet Users Association, where - for seven years - he pushed the development of Internet in Spain through participation on Internet related legislation and coordination of competing telecommunication companies to improve service to users. During that time he participated very activelly in the creation of ICANN (the Internet's central managment Association), where he was chairman of the working group that decided the creation of new Internet top level domains (.info, .biz, etc.). Javier has a background in Artificial Intelligence as well as in software development, working for companies in France and Spain. He has also taught at several different universities in France, Spain, the United Sates and Cambodia. Javier holds a BSc degree from Duke University and a Masters Degree in Computer and Information Sciences from Ohio State University (both in USA).

Pi Villanueva

Pi Villanueva is a member of the Association for Progressive Communications-Women's Networking Support Programme, a global network of women who support women networking for social change and women's empowerment, through the use of Information and Communication Technologies. She is also a founding member and current technical director of WomensHub (Philippines), a collective of women ICT practitioners working with communities struggling to assert their autonomy and empowerment through the use of ICTs. Pi recently finished a five-year tour of duty as head trainer of the Women's Electronic Network Training Workshop, an annual intensive ICT training workshop for women activists and gender advocates in Asia and the Pacific. Before "metamorphosing" into a technician, Pi worked as editor and writer for various progressive political magazines, and trainer specialising in agrarian reform and community leadership formation. Pi lives in Quezon City, Philippines with her husband, 2.0 kids, 4.5 cats, and zero picket fence.

Sanjiva Weerawarana

Sanjiva Weerawarana is co-funder, chairman and executive director of the Lanka Software Foundation, an NGO based in Sri Lanka which strives to support local open source software developers through promotion, networking, information and training. The Lanka Foundation also works to connect local developers to international projects. On 23rd of January, 2004, the foundation held Sri Lanka's first Open Source Conference, a successful and well attended event with 175 participants. Since 1999, Sanjiva also works for IBM's Watson Research Center in NY, USA and manages there the Components System Group. He has been involved with Open Source software both for IBM and Apache for years and was elected member of the Apache Software foundation in 2003. There he is active in the Web services project as a lead architect and implementer of several Apache Web service products. Now resident in Sri Lanka, Sanjiva is also chairman of the International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC 2004) this year, to be held in November in New York. He teaches part-time at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Sanjiva holds a Ph.D in Computer Scienece from Purdue University, West Lafayette.