Mike O’Connor

I’m a community organizer, entrepreneur and tech-geek turned business-leader type person. I became moderately famous here in Minnesota as one of the people who popularized the Internet back in the mid-90’s. These days I divide my pretty-retired time between being a “domainer” (I’ve still got about a half-dozen great generic domains to figure out), serving on the ICANN Business Constituency, restoring 420 acres of Wisconsin farmland to the state it was in prior to agriculture, participating in a variety of local non-profits and learning the craft of furniture-making.

In the mid-to-late ‘90’s I co-founded gofast.net (a St. Paul based ISP that ultimately became the tech-core of Agiliti). I also served as the founding President of the Minnesota Internet Services Trade Association (MISTA). I have been an active participant in all sorts of Internet community-building activities (The Blanden Foundation Broadband Advisory Board, The St Paul Broadband Advisory Committee, the Lowertown Pub, Twin Cities Freenet, Minnesota E-Democracy, Minnesota Citizens Online, MetroNet’s Plugging Along project, and the River project). My colleagues and I at gofast.net pioneered much of the “interesting” high-speed Internet access technology here in Minnesota — ISDN, ADSL, wireless and wired cable modems. I guess that makes me a fully-qualified “construction worker on the Information Highway.”

I also got moderately famous in the domain-name community for turning down a $50,000 offer for TELEVISION.COM in the mid-90’s. Later, the sale of that name and others allowed me to retire at age 50 — and confirmed for me that old adage “if you have a choice between being really smart and being really lucky, take lucky.”

I’ve done a fair amount of civic committee type stuff. A few of the recent things include; the St Paul Mayor’s Y2k Taskforce (chair), St Paul Mayor’s Education Taskforce (chair), Minnesota Legislative Coordinating Commission Working Group on Taxation of Telecommunications (member), St Paul Mayor’s High Tech Council (founding member), State of Minnesota Information Policy Council (member, Steering Committee), and the Lowertown Cyber Village Association (founding member).

My background includes about 30 years of managing large-scale technology and information systems initiatives and leading a variety of non-profit sector development efforts. My previous positions have included President and General Manager of several public radio stations, divisional MIS Director at CDC, Managing Associate at Coopers & Lybrand, and Associate Vice President of Finance (and Controller) at the University of Minnesota.

I graduated from Grinnell College with a Bachelors Degree in Economics, and received a Masters in Business Administration from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.

At various times I have held the CPIM (Certified Production and Inventory Manager) certification from APICS, and the CSP (Certified Systems Professional) and CDP (Certified Data Processing professional) certifications from ASCSP.

Details…

Local and national public sector programs in which I have participated include:

  • Defining and launching a comprehensive Y2k plan for the City of St. Paul. This approach emerged as a national model for cities that wanted to develop broad public/private community preparations for Y2K and similar wide-area infrastructure disruptions.
  • Helping a large public agency avoid substantial investments in an ill-timed and inappropriate systems development project. When systems development methods were applied to the work that had been performed to date, the conclusion was reached to completely redirect the efforts of the organization towards lower-risk, higher return activities.
  • Assisting a large local governmental unit with the process of rechartering a large-scale systems implementation project. By applying the principles of program and project management in the middle of this project, the project was redirected toward more achievable target dates, and more useful objectives without a major disruption in the work that was already underway.
  • Leading, as interim Controller, efforts to complete the troubled implementation of American Management Systems CUFS (College and University Financial System) system at the University of Minnesota. The project was $7 million over budget, the system was unstable and customers of the system were extremely dissatisfied. The system was stabilized, customers were brought into the process and the remedial project was completed 40% under budget.
  • Leading, as a Big-6 consulting manager, a project at the University of Minnesota to establish a systems direction with regard to replacing Human Resources, Payroll and Student Information systems. This project, while concluding that proceeding with these systems was ill-advised, spawned a number of strategic technology and management initiatives at the institution.

Project leadership in a variety of technology planning and selection project for local nonprofit agencies including:

  • The Minnesota AIDS Project
  • United Arts
  • Resources and Counseling for the Arts
  • Management Assistance Project
  • Ordway Music Theater
  • Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota

Other public-sector activities:

  • ICANN GNSO - Inter-Registrar Transfers PDP Workgroup (member)
  • Blanden Foundation - Broadband Advisory Board (member)
  • City of St Paul - Broadband Advisory Committee (member)
  • City of Eagan - Broadband Planning Taskforce (consultant)
  • St Paul Mayor’s Y2k Taskforce (chair)
  • St Paul Mayor’s Education Taskforce (chair)
  • Minnesota Legislative Coordinating Commission Working Group on Taxation of Telecommunications (member)
  • St Paul Mayor’s High Tech Council (founding member)
  • State of Minnesota Information Technology Council (member, Steering Committee)
  • Lowertown Cyber Village Association (founding member)
  • Minnesota Internet Services Trade Association (founding President)
  • Minnesota Citizens Online (founder and Steering Committee member)
  • Twin Cities Schools Telecommunications Group, Inc. (cofounder)
  • The National Federation of Community Broadcasters (founder and Steering Committee Member)
  • Minnesota Computer and Information Management Symposium (speaker)
  • Minneapolis YWCA’s Computers For Your Information Conference (speaker and workshop leader)
  • Non-commercial community FM radio station (founded and managed WORT-FM in Madison, WI)

Private-sector initiatives in which I have participated include:

  • Co-founding, capitalizing and developing gofast.net, a Twin Cities based Internet access provider.
  • Leading the development of 3-year MIS strategy for a Fortune 100 manufacturing company. This was the first such effort that had ever been completed by the company, and resulted in increased customer satisfaction, while reducing the cost of the MIS function by 30% over the three-year period.
  • Planning, launching and supervising the implementation of integrated order processing, manufacturing and financial systems in a Fortune 100 computer manufacturing company. This $4,000,000 project was the first large-scale cross-functional implementation project ever successfully completed in the company.
  • Implementing integrated order processing, manufacturing and financial systems in a high-tech manufacturing company. Established the MIS function, introduced systems development methods, and managed a 2-year implementation project to 20% below the original budget projection.
  • Supervising the selection of a Materials Planning system for a nuclear electrical utility company. The project resulted in the first successful implementation project, based on packaged software, in the history of the company. This was also the first successful application of systems development methodology at that company.
  • Project management responsibility for an activity based costing requirement definition project for a Twin Cities based manufacturer of high-technology disk drive components. The team had become bogged down after a year of effort. This 10-week project resulted in a complete costing approach and a high-level design of the automated system required to support the costing methods selected by the team.
  • Responsibility for a $2.5 million order processing system development project for a Fortune 100 manufacturing company. This was the first major IBM mainframe, IDMS database development project for the company. This custom system was designed (using IEW CASE tools) to integrate with complex in-house multi-divisional financial systems, as well as Cullinet’s MRP II manufacturing package.
  • Beta-testing a large-scale systems development methodology in a $3 million cost accounting development project for a Fortune 500 chemical manufacturer. Worked closely with the team responsible for developing the methodology to improve and tune the product.