We are delighted to announce that the technical program will be complemented by two keynote speeches delivered by Javier Cardona and Michail Bletsas.

Implementing 802.11s: notes from the trenches

Javier Cardona
CEO and Founder
cozybit Inc.
cozybit.com

Abstract. Javier Cardona will present some of the challenges that his company, Cozybit, faced when implementing the pre-802.11s mesh stack embedded in the first One Laptop Per Child, and the open source 802.11s stack in the Linux kernel (open80211s).  The talk will cover technical issues like appropriate metric selection and mesh portal discovery. It will also cover not-so-technical topics like how to achieve harmonious coexistence of open and proprietary software licenses (you can't), and what to do about misbehaving legacy 802.11 equipment deployed by major players (don't mess with it). The talk will end with a summary of the the major issues that wireless research needs to address before fulfilling its promise of world domination.

Javier Cardona is CEO and Founder of cozybit. He started dissecting and disassembling electronic devices while still a child in his home town of Barcelona, Spain. Hoping to learn how to put them together again, he acquired a Telecommunications Engineering degree from UPC, Spain, and a Master of Engineering degree from Alari, Switzerland. He has since developed embedded software in France, the US, UK and Switzerland.  Javier also completed an Executive Program for Entrepreneurship at Babson College and the Executive Program for Growing Companies at Stanford University. It was while working as a research fellow at the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley that he became aware of the impact open source could have on the embedded software market. He began to envision a software engineering company that would help electronic equipment manufacturers take advantage of open source in their designs – thus, cozybit was born.

Developing, evolving and using a mesh network stack: the XO-files

Michail Bletsas
Research Scientist
Director of Computing at MIT's Media Lab.
web.media.mit.edu

Abstract. OLPC's XO laptop was the first laptop to ship with a fully functional mesh stack developed specifically for it. This talk goes over the motivation, the design constraints as well as the consequent engineering choices behind OLPC's mesh stack. It describes the incremental improvements that were made over the course of its development, its shortcomings and the lessons learned. After a brief description of OLPC's application stack, we present usage scenarios and experiences from the field.

Michail Bletsas is a Research Scientist and the Director of Computing at MIT's Media Lab where he has been working since 1996. He was one of the founding members of the “One Laptop Per Child” initiative where he made significant contributions to the design and implementation of OLPC's pioneering "XO" laptop as well as its Internet connectivity. He co-founded Velti S.A., a very successful mobile advertising and marketing company and has consulted for many companies in many different capacities. Over the years, he has implemented broadband access networks using cutting-edge technologies including one of the earliest ADSL testbeds and various wireless technologies. Mr. Bletsas has been a frequent keynote speaker in international conferences and has been engaged in many civic activities. He holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an MSc degree in Computer Engineering from Boston University.