Meet a space tourist

Update: Time and Place: Wednesday 28th February 14:00-15:00, CERN Council Chamber

The CERN is organizing a conference with a fascinating speaker: Mark Shuttleworth. The guy’s bio feels like a Scorcese movie:

• started as a developer on Debian (an operating system).

• founded Thawte in 1995 (a company specialised in digital certificates and Internet security), sold it to Verisign for $575 million.

• turned to business incubation and venture capitalism.

• he then formed a non-profit organization dedicated to social innovation.

• on April 2002, he became the second civilian cosmonaut.

• in 2004, he returned to the Linux world by funding the development of a user-friendly distribution of Linux, Ubuntu.

And in 2007, he will give a speech at the CERN about “Open Source Software: The Challenge Ahead”. Worth the trip probably!