Bertola, Vittorio

Torino, Chairman, ICANN At-large Advisory Committee

Vittorio Bertola is an engineer from Turin, Italy, with eight years of experience as a programmer (mainly Perl, PHP, Java), system architect and Linux system administrator on Internet servers, and as technical manager. In 1999, as head of the technical department, he was one of the founders of Vitaminic, one of the most successful dot-coms in Italy, and the leader in digital music distribution in Europe - aiming to create a legal MP3 distribution service that could break the monopoly of the majors. In 2002 he started his own company in the field of third-party cellular phone applications. He believes in the value of small enterprises to break corporate monopolies and bring innovation, competition and freedom of choice in the market. He was first involved in ICANN in 2000, when he received the most votes of any candidate from southern Europe in the At Large elections. He then became involved in ICANN’s At Large efforts, co-founding icannatlarge.com and serving twice as its Chairman. He was then selected as member of the interim ALAC and then elected Chairman. He has been participating in WSIS since the beginning of 2003, where he was a co-founder of the Internet Governance caucus. He is also presently serving as member of the .it Policy Board, and of the Council of ISOC Italy.