Roland Alton-Scheidl was born in Zurich and has studied computer science (focus on Computer Supported Co-operative Work) and Media Art in Vienna. He is managing Europe's first open source co-op ( www.pvl.coop) and he is teaching at the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences ( www.fhv.at).
He spent time at the Austrian Academy of Sciences as a research fellow for socio-economics and served in the the IT industry as consultant. He had designed and developed PUBLIC VOICE Lab’s Audiotex and Web4Groups service and co-edited books such as the highly successful Internet Guide Österreich Online, a book on "Rating/Voting/Annotations" (Web 2.0 in the 90s) the book "Senior Online" or a documentation of the "Open Source Initiative Vorarlberg". He was engaged in eight EC funded projects as a project, technical or quality manager.
He is strongly committed to the Free Software movement, supported the transfer of Creative Commons licenses into Austrian law and is the project lead for RegisteredCommons.org. He holds a managing position at Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences ( www.fhv.at), where he developed a bachelor's course and the competence network for media design ( www.media.coop). Roland is now living with is family in the Alps, in the city of Dornbirn, near the Swiss border. Read publications or his blog at roland.alton.at.
independent policy strategist, journalist, co-founder, Public Knowledge, Fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute & author of "Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth," Amherst, MA