Mike O'Connor

I'm a middling-generation Internet type person, getting involved when I was the Controller and Administrative CIO for the University of Minnesota in the late '80's. My next stop after being introduced to the Internet was to found a high-speed ISP (ISDN and faster) in the mid-90's. My other interest was generic domain names, which reminded me of call-letters from the community stations I founded in the early 70's (WORT-FMin Madison was the one that I did all on my own, but I helped with KUSPin Santa Cruz, KDNA in St Louis, KFAI in Minneapolis, WEFT in Chambana and was a co-founder of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters).

So i'm a long-time community type guy and when domain names came to my attention, I got a gaggle of them that I thought would be good to build online communities around -- haven.com, bar.com, pub.com, grill.com, television.com, shelter.com, cafes.com, corp.com and place.com. Who know that the web would arrive, and that it would so transform the world.

I've attended ICANN-Wellington, ICANN-LA, ICANN-Paris and ICANN-Cairo and am a member of the Business Constituency. I've served on various IRTP working groups, the Fast Flux working group and various GNSO-reform working groups.

My other huge volunteer "job" is serving as the Governor-appointed representative of urban Internet users on the statewide Ultra High Speed Broadband task force here in Minnesota (USA). I maintain a blog (www.UrbanUsers.com) that I use to stay in touch with constituents interested in that project.

Other web pages describing things that I'm interested in:

www.haven2.com - my personal home page

www.APrairieHaven.com - describes our farm, a native-habitat restoration project

www.kz0c.com my amateur radio home page

www.GeezerCast.com - podcasts to my unborn grandchildren

my LinkedIn profile

[edit] Contact

Phone - 651 647 6109

Use the following info for electronical mailings -- the first part is Mike, then there's that "at" thingy, then there's a domain -- Haven2 -- then there's a dot, then there's "com" (any robot that can figure that out deserves to send me spam)