[Advisors] sad news - Mike Gurstein

[Marita Moll]

It saddens me to circulate this news I have just received about the 
death of one of our directors -- Mike Gurstein. Mike was a member of our 
community and a board member for many years. Full obit below

Marita

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	obit
Date: 	Sat, 14 Oct 2017 17:30:54 -0400
From: 	Glenn McKnight <mcknight.glenn at gmail.com>
To: 	Marita Moll <mmoll at ca.inter.net>



Michael Gurstein
October 2, 1944 - October 8, 2017
Michael Gurstein was born on October 2, 1944 in Edmonton, Alberta, 
Canada to Emanuel (Manny) and Sylvia Gurstein. While still an infant, 
the family moved to Melfort, Saskatchewan where Manny grew up and his 
family still lived. In Mike’s youth, Manny and Sylvia ran a successful 
retail store. There, the family grew with a younger sister, Penny.
Mike excelled at school. He spent his summers working at a golf club in 
Waskesiu and graduated from Melfort Composite Collegiate Institute high 
school, and then completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy at the 
University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. Mike was driven by pragmatism 
and curiosity about the wider world that motivated his doctoral studies 
in Sociology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. While a student, 
he began his life-long exploration of the world, with trips through 
North Africa and a long journey from Southeast Asia through Afghanistan 
and Iran and back to the U.K.
Upon Mike’s return to Canada, he worked in politics and policy, as a 
senior civil servant for the Province of British Columbia under 
Barrett’s NDP government (1972-4) and for the Province of Saskatchewan 
under Blakeney’s NDP Government (1974-5). While teaching at York 
University, he ran unsuccessfully for the NDP in the riding of Parkdale.
Mike moved to Ottawa in the late 1970s where he met his wife, Fernande 
Faulkner. Together they had two children, Rachel (1981) and Marc (1983). 
He and Fernande established and ran a management consulting firm, 
Socioscope, which studied and guided the social aspects of the 
introduction of information communication technology. In Ottawa, Mike 
also built and managed a real estate portfolio. In 1992 the family moved 
to New York, where Mike and Fernande worked for the United Nations.
In 1995, Mike became Associate Chair in the Management of Technological 
Change at the University College of Cape Breton. There, he founded the 
Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C/CEN) as a community 
based research laboratory exploring applications of ICT to support 
social change in one of Canada's most economically disadvantaged regions.
Grown out of his early experience in rural small town Saskatchewan and 
his later experiences in impoverished but culturally and communally rich 
Cape Breton, Mike's work provided the conceptual framing for “community 
informatics”. He published the first major work in the field, and 
introduced the term "community informatics" into wider usage as 
referring to the research and praxis discipline underpinning the social 
appropriation of ICT. Within the area of community informatics a major 
contribution has been Mike's introduction of the notion of "effective 
use" as a critical analytical framework for assessing technology 
implementation superseding approaches based on the more commonly 
accepted frameworks such as that of the "digital divide".
In 1999, the family moved to Vancouver to be closer to Mike’s parents 
and sister. In 2000, Mike and Fernande returned to New York, to work at 
the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the UN, respectively. Mike 
returned to Vancouver in 2006 and established the Center for Community 
Informatics Research Development and Training (CCIRDT). With this 
platform, he traveled the world to consult with governments and civil 
society organisations, present at conferences, and conduct research.
Mike was the founding editor of the Journal of Community Informatics and 
was Foundation Chair of the Community Informatics Research Network. He 
was at the time of his death the Executive Director of CCIRDT, and 
formerly an Adjunct Professor in the School of Library and Information 
Studies Vancouver Canada, and as well as Research Professor at the New 
Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey, and Research 
Professor at the University of Quebec (Outaouais). He was also a member 
of the High Level Panel of Advisers of the UN's Global Alliance for ICT 
and Development. He has also served on the Board of the Global 
Telecentre Alliance, Telecommunities Canada, the Pacific Community 
Networking Association and the Vancouver Community Net.
In recent years he was active as a commentator, speaker and 
essayist/blogger articulating a community informatics (grassroots ICT 
user) perspective in the areas of open government data and internet 
governance. Through all of his work, Mike was motivated by his 
commitment to democratising access to the tools of information 
technology and the advancement of civil society.
Mike passed away peacefully at home on October 8 after a two year battle 
with prostate cancer. He is survived by his wife Fernande, his mother 
Sylvia, his sister Penny, his children Rachel and Marc, his 
step-children Bruno and Nina, his grandchildren Emmanuelle and Daniel, 
step grandchildren Patrick, Emilly, Jessica and Erica, and niece, Natasha.


Glenn McKnight
mcknight.glenn at gmail.com <mailto:mcknight.glenn at gmail.com>
skype  gmcknight
twitter gmcknight
289-830 6259
.
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