Ejovi Nuwere

I rarely make a human connection with the “cool” or “successful” people I’ve come to know. Its most natural to enjoy being around people who are similar to you and I’m rarely around people similar to me. Juantomas Garcia, FON’s CTO is similar to me I’d like to think.

If anything I can thank FON for introducing me to him. Juantomas is an amazing technologist. The head of the very huge Spanish linux movement. But more then being a technologist he is human, down to earth and altruistic. Truely altruistic. Juantomas was largely responsible for bringing over 1 million computers into the school system in Spain. All running Linux! Spain now averages 1 computer to every two children and there is a computer in every classroom. He convinced politicians that Linux would make it easier and cheaper to get computers into schools. And after Juantomas accomplished all of this, he didn’t run for political office.

Juantomas is not a politician, he isn’t super wealthy but he cares, in this way I’d like to think we are similar. He figured out a way to use technology to help people. He dedicated years of his personal time, money and expertise to make it happen. I haven’t been able to accomplish anything close to what he has but I’m trying. Knowing Juantomas reminds me of what can be done.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 7:39 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.