Periodically I'm asked to provide a bio for something or other. It's a lot easier to whip some up something relevant if I keep all of the previous ones handy.

Adam has been working in a mixture of technology, management and business since the early 90s. He co-founded one of the early internet providers in New Zealand and spent years working for US startups during the dotcom bubble. When the bubble crumbled he co-founded a volunteer-based nonprofit which worked with local businesses to provide free wireless internet for their neighbourhoods. Returning home he worked as a system administrator and manager on “Lord of the Rings” and “Avatar”. He has been working as an independent consultant in Kāpiti and Wellington since 2012. He current passion is regenerative agriculture.

Adam has been working in a mixture of technology, management and business for the last twenty years. He launched one of the first internet providers in New Zealand and during the dotcom years managed the infrastructure team for one of the largest internet providers in America. As the high tech bubble crumbled he was creating a volunteer-driven nonprofit company which worked with local businesses to provide free wireless internet for their neighbourhoods. In 2003 he moved home to work for Weta Digital as a systems administrator on the “Lord of the Rings” and ended up as an IT manager for “King Kong and “Avatar”. He has just returned from two years travelling and is currently pursuing a new interest in permaculture and living sustainably.

I was born in England but grew up moving back and forth between New Zealand and California. Instead of going to University I started one of the first internet companies in New Zealand. Several years later, having only worked for myself, I felt the need to head off and measure myself against the world. I moved to Alaska to work for one of the largest internet companies in the world and ended up managing their infrastructure department. When the dotcom bubble began to collapse a few years later, I decided to move to Oregon where I founded a volunteer-based nonprofit organisation which collaborated with local communities to provide free wireless internet access in public and semi-public spaces such as parks, cafes and bookstores. After six years in America, I was feeling the pull of home and gleefully accepted an opportune job offer to move back to New Zealand and work on the Lord of the Rings movies.

After seven years in the film industry, I was burnt out on office work, ridiculous deadlines and computers in general and decided it was time to take a break and consider alternative careers and lifestyles. I bought a one-way ticket to Indonesia with a deliberately vague plan of meandering my way from there to India. After a couple of months travelling north, I ended up at a yoga school in Thailand where I've been studying for the majority of the last year. In February, I enrolled on a whim to attend a Permaculture Design Certificate course which was being offered nearby. As they say, “the rest is history”.

Adam has been working as a system administrator and team lead since the early nineties when he founded one of the first ISPs in New Zealand. In 1997 he moved to America and spent six years working as a system administrator and team lead for a variety of .com's, including one of the largest ISPs in the world. In 2000 he founded a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing free wireless internet by partnering with local communities. In 2003 he moved back home to New Zealand where he has been running the infrastructure team for Peter Jackson's visual effects company, Weta Digital, utilizing NetApp for “Avatar”, “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong” movies. He has been an enthusiastic NetApp customer since 1998 and has implemented NetApp in both Unix and Windows environments, and for business critical, high performance and development environments.

I live in Wellington and work for Weta Digital as the manager of the infrastructure team. I've primarily made my living doing technical work based around Linux and open source. I've started two companies, Earthlight Communications (an ISP in Dunedin) and The Personal Telco Project (a nonprofit in Portland, Oregon).

Adam has been working as a system administrator and team lead since the early nineties when he founded one of the first ISPs in New Zealand. In 1997 he moved to America and spent six years working as a system administrator and team lead for a variety of .com's, including one of the largest ISPs in the world. In 2000 he founded a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing free wireless internet by partnering with local communities. Most recently he has moved back home to New Zealand where he has been running the infrastructure team for Peter Jackson's visual effects company, Weta Digital.

In 1993 Adam started the first ISP in his hometown of Dunedin. In 1997 he moved to America and spent six years working as a Unix system administrator and team lead for a variety of .com's, including one of the largest ISPs in the world. In 2000 he founded a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing free wireless internet access by working with local communities. Five years ago he moved back home and has been working in the IT department at Weta Digital doing a mixture of technical and management work.

Adam was born in England but grew up moving back and forth between New Zealand and California. In 1993 he started Dunedin's first commercial ISP and then headed off to measure himself against the world. He spent three years in Alaska working for one of the largest ISPs in North America and another three years in Oregon where he built his first Linux cluster for a semiconductor design company. While he was in Oregon he founded Personal Telco, a non-profit which worked with local communities to provide free wireless internet access to the public. Five years ago he moved to Wellington to work for Weta Digital where he's been doing a mixture of management and technical work.

Adam has been an enthusiastic customer of Network Appliance hardware and software since 1998. Most recently he was the Operations Manager at Weta Digital where he utilized Network Appliance gear to provision over 100TB of storage for Peter Jackson's “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong” movies. He has implemented Network Appliance products in both Unix and Windows environments, and for business critical, high performance and development environments.

I am one of those sad yuppies who once believed in the purity of truly fucking things up but is slowly descending towards the banality of middle-age and thoughts of children. On the plus side I have done some work that I'm actually proud of.

In 1993 Adam started the first ISP in his hometown of Dunedin, New Zealand. Since then he has worked as a Unix system administrator and team lead for several ISP's, both large and small. In 2000 he founded the non-profit Personal Telco Project, one of the largest community wireless groups in North America. For the last couple of years, he's been doing research and development for Weta Digital's IT team. He is a long time Linux and Free Software bigot and a recent fan of Macintosh OS X.

Adam started Personal Telco in November 2000 due to a happy series of coincidences. He believes that information wants to be free despite the fact that people want to be paid.

Source: defcon.org

Adam Shand founded the Personal Telco Project back in November 2000. During that time he has been helping build the infrastructure to support a community maintained, metropolitan area wireless network in Portland Oregon. Since it's inception Personal Telco has grown to more than 400 people with over 30 active nodes and has the beginnings of a “wireless cloud”. Many others have helped and to them, he is eternally grateful.

Source: conferences.oreillynet.com

In 1993 Adam started the first ISP in his hometown of Dunedin New Zealand. Since then he has worked for several ISP's, small and large, in various capacities, mostly as a UNIX systems administrator. His current project is Personal Telco which is trying to leverage consumer grade 802.11b gear to build internet accessible neighbourhood communities.

Source: defcon.org