STEVE CISLER BIOGRAPHY

    Steve Cisler is a librarian and telecommunications consultant who has been involved with community networks since 1986. In the 1990's while at Apple Computer, Inc, he made grants to libraries and communities that were building Free Nets and other community networks. He convened two community networking conferences, Ties That Bind, in 1994 and 1995, that brought together networkers from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, and Germany. He headed a project to free up unlicensed wireless spectrum (5 GHz band) for public use. In 1996 he helped found what is now the Association For Community Networking, and since then has been active in the rural United States and in Latin America to help grow community-based ICT projects. He has been working on public access projects in Guatemala, Ecuador, and Uganda and has worked to link up librarians with other group working on similar projects.