Andrew Cohill

Dr. Andrew Michael Cohill is the President and CEO of Design Nine. He is a broadband architect with an educational background in architecture, ergonomics, and computer science. Cohill has an international reputation for his work advising large and small communities on technology and broadband issues. In the United States, he has worked with communities across the country, with recent community and residential work in New Hampshire, Virginia, Illinois, New Mexico, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In recent years, his international work has taken him to British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Quebec, France, the Guernsey Isles, and Japan. Cohill is an expert in the design and management of open access and Open Service Provider Networks (OSPN systems).

He was the Director of the world renowned Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) at Virginia Tech from 1993 to 2002. By the late nineties, Blacksburg had become widely known as the "most wired community in the world," with more than 87% of the town's residents using the Internet. Today, virtually all of Blacksburg's businesses and residents have one or more broadband access options at home, at work, or at both. Cohill was responsible for the design and development of electronic village and broadband services, supervised a research and development group, and managed an operations group that managed the BEV office and administrative services. He also directed the long range planning effort for the group, and served as an advocate for networking in the university and around the Commonwealth of Virginia.

• He is a member of the Wireless Future Advisory Board.
• He is a faculty member of the Virginia Institute of Economic Development (2003-4).
• He is a member of the National Advisory Board for Communities of the Future, a national coalition of thinkers and policy makers concerned with the sustainability and health of communities.
• He served as co-chair of the Governor's Task Force on eCommunities for the Commonwealth of Virginia for the duration of the task force (2001-2002).
• He is a member of the Association For Community Networks, and has served two terms on the Board of Directors and two terms as President.
• He is a member of the Rural Telecommunications Congress and has served on the RTC Board.
• He is a widely published writer, and author and co-editor of the popular book about Blacksburg (Community Networks: Lessons learned from Blacksburg, Virginia), now in its second edition.
• He is working on a new book on communities and technology that will be published in the summer of 2007 (Understanding Broadband: The Future of Everything, Fire in the Mountain Press).

Cohill's work at the BEV became a widely copied model for "connected communities" and community Web portals around the world. Cohill was the architect of the now widely imitated broadband MSAP (Multimedia Services Access Point) concept; Blacksburg was the first community to have a working MSAP.

Much of Cohill's recent work has been closely connected to telecommunications master planning and economic development. He works closely with communities leaders and economic developers on technology master planning, telecom infrastructure development, and strategies for getting communities connected to the new Knowledge Economy.

Cohill is a gifted teacher and communicator with broad experience in presenting and explaining technology to the public at large. He is wide demand as a speaker on economic development issues and technology because of his clear explanations, shrewd insights, and engaging manner. For more information about Cohill's work, send a note to .

Phone: 01-540-951-4400