The IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (ISTO) recently added two new resources, Maria Palombini and Joshua Gay, with vast expertise in blockchain and open source technologies respectively.

Maria joined with a directive to build communities and advance initiatives to develop standards for enterprise adoption of emerging technologies. Her work includes building communities of technologists, industry executives, academic researchers and industry stakeholders to educate on the benefits and challenges of technologies such as blockchain/distributed ledger technologies, while building consensus on recommendations for frameworks on technical standards and recommended guidelines for protocol and policies to enhance the outcomes of technology implementation.

Her primary areas of focus for blockchain adoption include the pharma, health, supply chain, energy and agriculture sectors. In parallel to her work in blockchain standards, she is the project lead for a new initiative, Digital Inclusion through Trust and Agency, a critical program focused on providing a solution and guidelines that gives the right to all members of the global community to be digitally included with equal right to manage and protect their digital citizenship and to be forgotten online and offline, and restore dignity to digital transactions between the individual and the entity.

Josh has 10+ years experience organizing open source software communities online and through conferences, workshops, and events, 10+ years experience engaging the public, government, and press on matters of technology, policy, and law; 10+ years experience managing open source communications platforms, including: CMS/CRM systems, wikis, blogs, bug trackers, and mailing lists, as well as 15+ years experience using GNU/Linux.

Most recently he was the Communications Director for the Tor Project, and before that he had various management roles (including Licensing Manager) at the Free Software Foundation. He has also been a contractor for the Mozilla Foundation.

If your member program or alliance is thinking of exploring these new technologies, Maria and Josh can be valuable assets to your initiative. Contact us today to learn more.