Eric Gundersen
d.o: ericgundersen
Eric is the president and co-founder of Development Seed. Over the past seven years Eric has developed communications strategies and tools for some of the largest international development organizations in the world, in additional to working with U.S. based public health and education organizations. He is especially interested in improving information flows and efficiencies within large organizations, better integrating on the ground operations with those of their home bases, and visualizing information in actionable ways.
These focuses have led to the creation of Open Atrium, an open source intranet in a box that has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since its beta release a year ago, and to Managing News, a data and news aggregator that is powering all kinds of sites, including one visualizing voting irregularities in Afghanistan's 2009 presidential election. He also works directly with clients leading the strategy and development of large data projects where targeted, clean, and powerful visualizations are key to the project's success.
Eric is a recognized expert on online communication technologies and open source software and has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Nightline, NPR, Federal Computer Week, and others. He is frequently invited to speak on topics including open data, web-based mapping tools, knowledge management, and open source business models and has presented at conferences such as SXSW, Web 2.0, Where 2.0, GOSCON, and DrupalCon. Eric was also a winner of the Federal 100 award for his contributions to government technology in 2009.
Eric earned his master's degree in International Development from American University in Washington, DC, and has dual bachelor's degrees in Economics and International Relations. He co-founded Development Seed while researching technology access and microfinance in Peru. Before starting Development Seed, Eric was a journalist in Washington, DC writing on the environment and national security.
