Mark Surman

Working with everything from television to print to the Internet, Mark Surman has been using media to support collaboration and build community for over 15 years. Mark’s current role is as the president of Commons Group – a research and strategy firm focused on collaboration, community building and social technology. He also served as the Director of Content and Community at Web Networks and as a program consultant for the Government of Ontario’s Volunteer @ction Online grants program.

Whether helping develop a business plan for a social enterprise or developing a strategy for a collaborative technology project, Mark is committed to using a participatory, community-driven approach. He has extensive experience with a variety of facilitation methods, including the transformational facilitation and popular education techniques developed by the Zhaba facilitator's collective. He also has a long track record working with virtual communities, doing everything from running online consultations to starting an open source software initiative that now has participants from over a dozen countries.

Since starting Commons in 1998, Mark has managed or evaluated over 150 online collaboration and communications projects for clients like the Canadian Child Care Federation, Community Information Toronto, the Association for Progressive Communications, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission. He serves on the boards of Rabble.ca and WildCanada.net. Mark has written widely on social technology issues, with publications including both 'Appropriating Technology for Social Change' (SSRC) and 'Commonspace: Beyond Virtual Community' (Financial Times Press).

For a full CV, see http://www.commons.ca/people/mark/ 

To contact Mark Surman personally, send a message to: msurman@rogers.com