Vittorio Bertola Email & Phone Number

Turin, It

Torino, Italia

I coordinate Open-Xchange's activities in policy, community relations and standardisation, to pursue the company's long-term strategic objective of building an open, secure and privacy-friendly Internet infrastructure.As the company's head of public affairs, I monitor ongoing consultation and policy development activities in relevant venues, and when necessary I draft and release statements, promote campaigns and work with other stakeholders. I represent the company in institutional relations, more frequently with the European Parliament and Commission, where I was active on dossiers such as the Digital Markets Act and the Cyber Resilience Act.I also represent the company in global and local Internet governance institutions such as ICANN and the U.N. Internet Governance Forum, and in Internet standardisation organisations such as the IETF and the W3C. I take care of relationships, activities and public speaking towards the open source community and the customers and users of our products, to promote the ideal of a free and open Internet and to foster the adoption of best practices in terms of security, privacy and openness.In terms of innovation, I monitor and scout the technical developments of Internet standards in our infrastructural niches, email and DNS, looking for new product opportunities.

Turin Area, Italy

I was the leader of projects to create new Internet products and services based on open standards and architectures, by fostering the collaboration of several companies and community members, fitting Open-Xchange's long-term strategic objective to build an open, secure and privacy-friendly Internet infrastructure.My activities included exploring new technologies and concepts to address unfulfilled Internet user needs; transforming them into tentative product/service ideas; gathering consensus and participation around these ideas; defining the possible business models, policies and use cases; formalizing the technical and service specifications; working with industry groups, governmental institutions and standards organizations to get appropriate support and vetting; developing, deploying and testing proofs of concept and prototypes; promoting public awareness and adoption through communication activities; and managing these projects up to when they were mature for release to the Internet community and for consideration as additional features, products and services in Open-Xchange's portfolio.Over time, given my experience with Internet governance matters, I also conceived and started the company's policy activities and representation in relevant venues.

As an all-around Internet expert, I worked as an independent professional on a broad range of projects and activities, usually through my sole proprietorship venture.On the policy and governance side, I served in voluntary positions in several national and international bodies taking care of the administration and development of the Internet, attending the major conferences in the field, often as panelist or invited speaker; I wrote papers when requested, and participated actively in several global discussion forums. I continued my engagement with the global At-Large constituency at ICANN, and served for one year (2007) on the ICANN Board, with Dr. Vint Cerf. I was a member of Internet advisory committees of the Italian government under different administrations and led several other efforts and campaigns, including the Internet Bill of Rights Coalition at the Internet Governance Forum. I repeatedly served on ISOC Italy's Board and on the .it top level domain Policy Board (lastly on 2012-4).As a start-up expert, I offered consultancies and supported new business ideas; I co-founded an online television platform and a local online news outlet, and I joined a management consulting boutique. I had to stop these activities in 2010-11 as I entered politics.As an engineer, I dealt with technical projects, such as designing and developing complex Web applications and services, or creating websites from scratch to finish, from user experience design to technical architecture and coding, using Wordpress and/or a custom CMS that I developed over the LAMP architecture.

Turin Area, Italy

In 2011 I ran for Mayor of Turin, in a nationally relevant election, after co-founding the local section of the Movimento 5 Stelle party and leading its local campaigns for three years. I was the most voted independent candidate, gathering over 22.000 votes (5%) and ranking third overall. I then served in the Town Council as the spokesperson for Movimento 5 Stelle, also dealing in detail with the administration of a 1-million-people city in matters as varied as urban and infrastructure planning, public transportation, environmental issues, waste management, commerce, economy, local jobs market, health, welfare. I have repeatedly spoken to crowds of tens of thousands and appeared regularly on television and radio networks. I established the record for the most active town councillor ever - over 3000 sessions attended in five years.

Turin Area, Italy

Novajo is an Internet start-up focusing on the online production and distribution of local news, starting with Quotidiano Piemontese, an online newspaper for Turin and Piedmont. I was one of the founders and dealt specifically with the business and strategy of the company. However, I had to hold off participating in the project after being elected as a town councillor.

Turin Area, Italy

After leaving my operational role as CTO, I was still a major shareholder, supervising the technical activities and strategical evolution of the company.

Turin Area, Italy

I was a co-founder and major shareholder, and I did a bit of everything - from strategical discussions to actual coding, going through the management of the technical operations of the company (software and hardware architectures, hiring and supervising programmers) and technical sales support (meeting customers and designing technical solutions to suit their needs, and then acting as their technical account and dealing with integration issues).As a technical backbone to most of the company's products, I architected and coded a client-server platform and protocol that allowed early smartphones, using either Java (J2ME) / C# (.NET) applications, WAP pages or text messages, to interact with a PHP-based Web backend to exchange data and perform operations. Initially we used the platform for J2ME games, but then we moved to business customers and the platform was used by companies such as Number1 (Barilla logistics), Ferrero and Fiat.

Milan Area, Italy

TIG is a consulting boutique for top managers. I provided expertise on making business and communicating over the Internet, and especially on how to adapt marketing strategies, organizational processes and business models to the Internet's social and technical paradigms.

Turin Area, Italy

Glomera was an Internet television startup focusing on content aggregation and distribution through peer-to-peer technology. I was a founding, non-executive partner, only doing some consultancies on the technical architecture for the service.

Ivrea, Italia

I co-founded the company, initially targeted at the development of consumer appliances based on embedded Linux. I dealt mostly with strategy and product development, until the company switched its focus to custom PC hardware design and pre-production, and I sold my share.

Turin Area, Italy

I joined the company on its first day and managed the creation and growth of its technical infrastructure, heading the technical department in the Turin headquarters; I started as Perl/PHP coder and Linux system administrator and went on designing technical architectures, selecting and managing suppliers, hiring and managing engineers, leading a €1'000'000 project for a consolidated data centre, and doing technical assessments for M&As.The company went public in Milan's Nuovo Mercato in October 2000, incorporated other digital music companies such as Peoplesound in the UK, IUMA in the US and FranceMP3 in France, and grew up to 10-country operations at the moment I left it.

Ivrea, Italia

My group planned the fixed backbone network interconnecting the main regional switches, both technically (capacity planning, routing policies) and economically (wireline supplier management, interconnection deals with other fixed and mobile operators).

Turin Area, Italy

I was supervising the customer care office of the internal ISP service, selecting internship students to work there and organizing them; I was also responsible for the website, which I directly managed both at the editorial and technical level, and which won the 2nd prize in its category at the "Il Sole 24 Ore" national contest in 1998.

Laurea, Electronical Engineering, 110/110 Cum Laude

Activities and Societies: Member of the Board of Directors as student representative. First Vice-Chairman of the Comitato Paritetico per.

Education record