Past Meetings

October 18th, 2006

Tom Evslin

Software developer, entrepreneur, author

Tom Evslin's remarkable career has taken him from nerd to CEO to novelist and consultant with a brief stop as Transportation Secretary for the State of Vermont.  He founded and ran a successful Vermont software company for a number of years, an experience which became a springboard to even bigger and better things.

Tom's talk included:

• His recent work with the Governor's Committee of Telecom to address broadband issues in Vermont.
• Hearing members' input about jobs that are possible, or not possible, given the current state of broadband.
• Clever ways that people have coped with broadband limitations.
• The benefits of "open spectrum".
• Tom reading from his novel hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble.

 His popular blog Fractals of Change is at blog.tomevslin.com.

Evslin was cofounder (with wife Mary), Chairman and CEO of ITXC Corp. The NASDAQ-listed company grew from startup in 1997 to the world's leading provider of wholesale VoIP and one of largest carriers of international voice minutes of any kind by 2004 when it was acquired.

Evslin conceived, launched, and ran AT&T's first ISP, AT&T WorldNet Service. WorldNet popularized all-you-can-eat flatrate monthly pricing for Internet access and forced the rest of the industry, including AOL and MSN, to follow suit. Evslin has been blamed and praised for this ever since. He is unrepentant.

At Microsoft, Evslin was responsible for the server products now in Microsoft BackOffice including Microsoft Exchange and for Exchange's predecessor Microsoft Mail.

Evslin came to Microsoft when key assets of Solutions, Inc. (a Vermont software company he founded and he and Mary ran) were sold to Microsoft. In the 1970s Solutions developed the first commercial EFT software for banks. In the 1980s Solutions was the first developer of commercial communications software for the Macintosh.