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Conference Bios by Adam Shand

2023 Taupō NVC IIT Introduction 

A little about me ...

In the early nineties, I founded one of NZ's first dialup internet providers. From there I moved to Alaska and Oregon and spent three years living the hilarity and horror of the .com boom and bust. Back home in the early 2000s I spent years (on and off) working in the film industry and got to work on Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Tintin, The Hobbit, and both Avatar movies.

In 2010 exhausted, divorced, and disillusioned, I bought a one way ticket to Bali and on a whim gave myself the challenge of making it to India without getting on a plane. I never made it. Instead, I ended up living in a yoga community in Thailand for a year and then had my brain exploded by the accidental discovery of permaculture. In a fury of excitement, I spent the next two years living and working on farms and communities in Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand.

In Australia, a friend played me videos of Marshall Rosenberg teaching an NVC workshop. My brain exploded … AGAIN! It felt like he’d just explained in a few hours what I’d spent the last decade trying to figure out. Over the last ten years, my wife and I have continued to explore and practice NVC with the help of Anna Groves.

I now live on 5 hectares in the Kāpiti Coast and work as a freelancer doing tech work for small companies and training/coaching managers. NVC and permaculture continue to be a consistent part of my daily life.

Current fascinations (you notice a pattern?) are Syntropic Agroforestry, software development with Javascript & SvelteKit, our first crop of peaches in the food forest (OMG … so good!), and experimenting with (and being concerned about) artificial intelligence.

Sacred Scraps

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 traveling and is currently pursuing a new interest in permaculture and living sustainably.

Milkwood

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 traveling 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".

NetApp Tour

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 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.

Copyrighters

I live in Wellington and work for Weta Digital as the manager of the infrastructure team. In general I've 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).

IBM Developer Works

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 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.

TUANZ

In 1993 Adam started the first ISP in his home town of Dunedin. In 1997 he moved to America and spent six years working as a Unix system administrator and team lead for 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.

Unlimited Potential

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.

NetApp Corporate

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.

Constant State of Flux

I am one of those sad yuppies who once believed in the purity of truly fucking things up but is slowly decending 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.

Linux Conference Australia

In 1993 Adam started the first ISP in his home town 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.

Defcon X

Adam started PersonalTelco 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: http://www.defcon.org/

O'Reilly Emerging Technology

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: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/

Defcon 9

In 1993 Adam started the first ISP in his home town 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 neighborhood communities.

Source: http://www.defcon.org/

meta posted on 9 Aug 2023 in #teaching & #working

Copyheart 1994–2024 Adam Shand. Sharing is an act of love.