Donald B. Means, Founder and Principal

With over 25 years experience in the IT industry, Means is co-founder and principal of Digital Village Associates, a consulting enterprise founded in 1994 that focuses on information/communications technologies as transformational tools and subject for local communities.

In 2013, Means launched the Gigabit Libraries Network(GLN) as an open collaboration of innovative libraries cooperating as a distributed testbed and showcase environment for high performance applications and equipment in the service of educational, civic and cultural objectives.

GLN created the Libraries Whitespace Project in 2015 to explore how integrating unlicensed open wireless communication technologies can benefit library users by combining the near universal compatibility of wifi with the range and penetrating capabilities of WhiteSpace devices.

In 2018 GLN initiated the national Community SecondNets campaign an alternative network infrastructure which utilizes wide area TV Whitespace spectrum, are deployed to create Wi-Fi MESH intranets independent of the public infrastructure providing direct links between libraries schools clinics and other second responders.

Since 2018, Means has chaired the Partnership for Public Access, a consortium of international organizations advocating for universal internet access as a comprehensive 3-prong strategy (Public Access Centers / Libraries, Community Networks and Offline Internet ) providing solutions to reach the billions of people not yet connected.

Created in 2009, Means has served as founding chairman of the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition, a DC-based advocacy enterprise that supports open, affordable, high-capacity broadband connections for anchor institutions and their surrounding communities.

In 2007, as an extension of the "Community TeleStructure Initiative", Means launched the "Fiber to the Library" campaign to assure next generation broadband connectivity for the 16,500 U.S. public libraries, as a national goal and as a spearhead project to lead broadband infrastructure build out.

In 2007, as a partial antidote to a nearly dysfunctional U.S. presidential primary system, Means established the "National Presidential Caucus" to encourage wider and more meaningful civic participation through web-enabled, local self-organizing citizen groups across the country.

In 2005, Means and Digital Village launched the "Community TeleStructure Initiative", as a national consortium advocating local responsibility for telecom/broadband infrastructure planning and community level market development.

In 2003-04, Means was Senior Political Advisor to Meetup.com, a community-building Web service with millions of members that provides an organizing tool for like-interested people, enabling them to gather off-line in localities anywhere in the world.

Means has served as an appointed member of the Information Technology Commission of California; as chair of the Information Technology Association of America’s education outreach program; and as a member of TechNet, a public policy organization of over 200 technology CEO's where he has worked on normalizing trade relations with China, education restructuring in California, and national broadband policy.

In 1995, Means co-founded TriWorks Corp. Today, a software and services venture with offices in Tokyo & Shanghai with over 200 employees specializing in "Digital Image Communications", a range of consumer and commercial products, services and system solutions.

In 1992/93, Means served as a member of the Atrium Group, an technology industry advisory group to the Librarian of Congress on digitization strategy.

In 1985, Means founded the National Space Sciences Educational Foundation, a nonprofit educational services corporation. NSSEF designed and implemented an experimental learning environment located at Stanford University for high school age students from the United States and Europe called the Space Sciences Academy™.

From 1982 -1990, Means served as head of marketing and business development for Project Data Systems, a commercial real estate software application company he co-founded.

Holding a finance degree from Southern Methodist University, Means has also studied architecture and environmental design at the University of Texas and international business relations at the University of Graz, Austria.

Reared in Ft. Worth, Texas, Means lives in Sausalito, California with his wife, Dominique Caron, a professional artist, originally from France.