State of Play VI: Speakers' Bios

Profile

Rik has a BA in Communications and Sociology from UCLA and a Masters in Politics from NYU.  He has a long history using technology to facilitate civic action -- from Usenet, BBSs and Gopher in the 1990s to virtual worlds and machinima today.  Most recently, he was the coordinator of an innovative program at the Social Science Research Council that connected media activists and media academics with funding and project support.  Rik coordinated NGO participation at the UN World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia in 2005 and managed a human rights internship program for the European Commission in Geneva in 2003.  He is proficient in Spanish and French.