Bio: Art McGee

Art McGee is a communications, media, and technology consultant with over 15 years of experience in the corporate and non-profit arenas. He has worked with organizations such as Project Change (AntiRacismNet), Media Alliance (San Francisco), TAO Communications (now known as the Organization for Autonomous Communications), the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO), the Black Radical Congress (BRC), and the Institute for Global Communications (The World's First Non-Profit Internet Service Provider), among many others.

He is widely regarded as a legend of grassroots technology activism and advocacy (at various times referred to as "Johnny Appleseed," "Moses," and "The Father of Pan-African Cyberspace"), and was the first person to explicitly research and document African and African-descendent sociocultural production and usage in virtual environments. Out of this work came the first Pan-African guide to online resources (a Yahoo and Google equivalent for it's time), which subsequently inspired a growth in online activity by African-descendents which is still being felt to this day. His reputation is also due in no small part to the fact that he was instrumental in the formation of some of the first ethnically and culturally oriented virtual communities for African-Americans, going back to the early days of dialup bulletin board systems, proprietary commercial networks, and other precursors to today's Internet.

He is currently the principal consultant with Virtual Identity, a not-for-profit consultancy he founded, and a member and co-founder of the emerging Media Justice Network, a national coalition of grassroots activists and policy advocates who are putting a race, gender, and class analysis at the center of the movement to create a truly democratic media landscape. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Online Policy Group, a research, policy, and advocacy organization focused on equality in and equal access to cyberspace; the National Advisory Board of the Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCnet), an international association of public-access computer and media technology training centers; and is a member of the New Media Working Group of Amnesty International, the world's premier human rights organization.

In 2000, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Marketing Opportunities in Business and Entertainment (MOBE) for his pioneering work as an "Influencer & Innovator of the Internet and Technology." In 2001, he was named an international "New Media Hero" by the Independent Media Institute (AlterNet).

He is currently in the planning stage for a book and film project that will explore African and African-descendent people's relation to and engagement with technology from an historical, contemporary, and futuristic perspective.

While the scope and influence of his work is international, he physically resides in the Bay Area of California in the United States of America.

You can send email to Art McGee at amcgee@onlinepolicy.org

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