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James McKinney is Open North's technical lead. Prior to assuming leadership of Open North, he was an early contributor to Montréal Ouvert – a citizen initiative to promote open access to civic information. He is an active voice in the Canadian open government and open data communities.
James uses technology to promote open government, online citizenship and participatory democracy. He is a frequent contributor to government and corporate transparency projects, like OpenCorporates, and to open-source projects, like Drupal. He has presented on open government and technical subjects at GO Open Data, Transparency Camp, Drupalcon, Hacks/Hackers and Pecha Kucha.
Stéphane Guidoin is Open North's transportation director, joining our team after 12 years of practicing IT in finance and telecommunications. In 2006, he cofounded the first Canadian open data initiative, CivicAccess. Since 2010, he has focused on transportation and urbanization issues with the development of ZoneCone and the organization of TransportationCamp in Montreal.
Stéphane believes that open data is a major component to improve communities and democratic processes. He hopes to make open data more relevant as a tool for making government open and encouraging fulfilling and sustainable communities.
Ellie Marshall is Open North's communications manager. Ellie is a recent graduate of McGill University where she studied Cultural Studies, Economics & Communications. Although Ellie has a background in media production and development, she is dedicated to civic engagement and the public sector. When not talking about telecommunications policy or advocating for open data, Ellie can be found eating nachos and listening to Fleetwood Mac.
Jonathan Brun is co-founder of Nimonik, an online tool to track environmental, health, and safety laws and to perform audits and verifications on mobile devices. Jonathan co-founded Montréal Ouvert, a citizen's action group that successfully lobbied the city of Montreal for an open data policy and portal.
Jonathan has presented about open data and open government at numerous conferences including Open Government Data Camp 2010 and 2011, TEDx, Pecha Kucha, as well as at the Québec National Assembly. Jonathan is passionate about open data and believes it supports an efficient and open government.
A public policy entrepreneur and negotiation expert, David has become internationally recognized for his work and advocacy on open government. In 2008, David advised the Mayor of Vancouver on open government and open data and helped draft the Open Motion - the world's first municipal motion on open government. Since then he has advised several municipalities and international organizations on their open data and open innovation strategies.
In addition to engaging and pressuring governments, David works with programmers and citizens at the local and national levels to make use of, and advocate for, more open and transparent government. He helped launch the International Open Data Day, which sees thousands of developers in over 60 cities worldwide create applications and analysis from open data, served as a sponsor of the BC government's Apps for Climate Action competition, helps run Recollect.net - a low cost garbage information management system for local government - and worked with a developer team to create the pollution monitoring website Emitter.ca.
Kent Mewhort is a staff lawyer at CIPPIC, a public interest technology law clinic at the University of Ottawa where he focuses on client work and policy advocacy for open data, open source software, and open government. He's also the legal project lead for Creative Commons Canada.
In addition to his law and advocacy activities, Kent's an avid software developer and always has his hands on an open source software project or two – usually with the aim of putting pressure points on social change. He developed Canada's first open legal search engine, Nomus, which was the forerunner to several now-commonplace legal search technologies. He also created DéchetsMontreal, a demonstration of how citizens can add value to government data.
Bernard Rudny believes that non-profits do good, and he helps them do it better. He is part of the Pembina Institute's communications team and previously managed elections campaigns and research initiatives for Apathy is Boring. He is an advocate for open data and open government as a way to improve policy, politics and journalism.
Bernard's background in journalism and research makes him passionate about open data. He got his start writing for the McGill Daily and McGill Tribune, and has been principal investigator for a number of research projects, including field studies for Elections Canada and randomized get-out-the-vote experiments.