Fen Labalme

While studying at MIT in the late 70's, Fen's seminal thesis on knowledge-based, open-access news and information systems (dubbed “NewsPeek”) was the launch pad for personalized media. This sparked his later work in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement, paving the way for numerous digital privacy and identity initiatives.

Crafting simple yet elegant tools comes easily to Fen, all the more so when he’s passionate about the work. Working on the CiviMail component of CiviCRM, Fen created a facile interface for managing the back channels of these opt-in mailings, a tool which has been used in hundreds of deployments around the world including those on behalf of Amnesty International the Women’s Funding Network and numerous others. Fen recently re-vamped CivicActions Quality Assurance methodology while working on a large scale new platform for the Smithsonian.

An activist of long standing, Fen firmly believes that it’s the grass roots who will change the world. If Al Gore invented the Internet, it can be said Fen Labalme invented the Media Lab, since it was his thesis at MIT that generated the seed funding for the sandbox of the digerati. He is a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) and also helped start the California Peace Action Network, an early proponent of Stop First-Strike initiatives.