Thomas Gideon was the technology director for the Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation. As technical director, he was responsible for managing and supporting technological and data driven policy interventions, including the Commotion mesh wireless networking project, which focuses on connecting communities that are under served and at risk, and Measurement Lab, a network measurement research platform that has produced the largest cache of open broadband performance data on the planet. He also provided technical expertise to collaborate on issues around privacy, security, copyright, digital media and DRM.
Previously, Mr. Gideon has provided technical leadership and management for several D.C. area startups in many areas including advanced R&D, online education, and large scale web and database application development. Most recently he was a development team lead at Learning Objects, Inc.
He coordinated the D.C. area CopyNight for several years, is a council member-at-large for the ACM's U.S. public policy committee, and has spoken at numerous events as an advocate for free software and free culture.