FORA.tv Speaker - Richard French

Richard French combines technical expertise with business savvy. Through varied experience working with large multinational companies and startups he is able to bring both an entrepreneurial spirit and the knowledge of how to run large organizations. Mr. French built his career at a series of companies. He is currently CEO at Avvenu, Inc. a venture backed company which provides a free service that lets consumers and business users securely access their home and office computers directly from their web-enabled mobile device or computer. Most recently he was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Open Source Development Network at VA Software Corporation/OSDN, Inc. of Fremont, CA. At OSDN, now renamed to OSTG, he brought together 11 disparate Internet properties, including such notables as Slashdot, Sourceforge.net and Thinkgeek, into a cohesive whole with the result that it became the de facto network for open source news and downloads.