I am a Co-Captain of Code for Maine, the Code for America Brigade in Maine. I am also the founder of CarFree Maine, and organization dedicated to finding alternatives to auto-dependency in rural regions/small cities. My background is not in technology, but rather in archival recording, ethnographic fieldwork and oral history documentary. This background helped me appreciate the importance of qualitative over quantitative data in rural regions and other communities where place and culture plays a significant role. I became interested in open source technology, and open hardware in particular, as having great potential to leverage place-based assets instead of erasing them.
My poltics could be considered "Libertarian Socialist" and while my ancestors are firmly grounded in the New York/Lower East Side Jewish Leftist tradition, I myself was raised in the appropriately named, Freedom, New Hampshire. For which, "Don't Tread on Me" remains the motto.
I was lucky to have the opportunity to study with the great social theorist, Murray Bookchin while studying for my Bachelors Degree in Vermont.
I studied cultural field work and digital archival curation at Columbia University.
