Mike Lawrie                     
Manager: Uninet                               
Foundation for Research Development 
Pretoria 0001, South Africa
mlawrie@frd.ac.za
ph +27 12 841 3542
fx +27 12 804 2679


My experience with computers has been continuous since 1963, on
hardware, software, operating systems, user-support, networking and
managing staff. I was in charge of the Computing Centre at Rhodes
University from 1971 until 1994, and lead the team that established the
first permanent email link between the South African academic network
(Uninet-za) and the rest of the world. The problems that I solved were
not only technical and financial, but political as well. My experience
with inter-university networking pre-dates the founding of the Uninet-za
network.

I have been closely involved with establishing low-cost email links into
10 other countries in Africa. This has given me a good grasp of the
problems associated with such links. I have travelled to several of
these countries, and I have been involved with workshops and other
discussions. I have also been at the other end of the technology, eg at
three Interops, one INET, and have visited a moderate number of people
in the USA and Canada who have an interest in email links with Africa.
Hardly a day goes by without me handling some email about such links.

My present job is managing the Uninet-za network. The primary
responsibility is to see the orderly development of academic and
research networking within South Africa, but at the same time to fit
into the developments taking place in Southern Africa as the new South
Africa emerges.

My formal qualifications are a National Engineering Diploma in
Electrical Engineering from the Cape Technical College, a Bachelor of
Science (Hons) degree majoring in Mathematics from Rhodes Univeristy,
and a Master of Science degree from the department of Electrical and
Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology.


For personal interests, I enjoy computer games (both strategic and
action), I played in a Steelband for 12 years and I enjoy African
xylophone music, I cultivate bonzai trees, I did well at .22 target
shooting and played goalie in a social (field) hockey league. I also
served as a city councillor for 5 years, and was deputy mayor of
Grahamstown for a year.

My contribution to ISOC will be to give input relating to an area of
the world that is currently ill-served by the Internet and email, viz
Africa.  Even a brief look at the International Connectivity map will
show that this continent is very isolated from the facilities that are
taken for granted in a developed country. I would endeavour to see
that ISOC does not lose sight of the need to cater for the expansion
of full Internet facilities into the continent. Although my experience
is still limited, I do feel competent to provide some insights into the
practicalities of networking in Africa, and such insights are likely
to be relevant to networking in a number of developing countries.

In South Africa, I am well placed to deal with the high technology of
the Internet in the USA on the one hand, and the low-tech low-cost
networking as is demanded in Africa. I am willing to travel within the
continent if necessary to deal with problems in either a hands-on or a
strategic manner, and I wish to arrange visits in the reverse direction.
At the same time, I have to stay in touch with current trends on the
Internet as part of my present job. ISOC needs to be sensitized to some
of these issues in order for it to keep a balanced perspective on what
is needed of the Internet.