Dr. Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond (B.Eng (Hons), M.S, Ph.D, DIC, MIET, MIEEE, MISOC) received a Bachelor of Engineering with honours in Computer Systems & Electronics from King's College London in 1990 and a Ph.D in Telecommunications from Imperial College London in 1997.

He has been actively present on the Internet since 1987. His earliest contributions to the Internet community can be found in the well-known RISKS-L Digest / comp.risks, the Forum on Risks to the Public in the Use of Computers and Related Systems. He is known to be still reading that ACM forum on a regular basis.

Click below to jump to a particular era:

• 1990s
• 2000s

In November 1988, the Internet was hit by a "worm", and although C-L played no part in the operations taking place to counter the threat, he watched closely from the sideline, as the UK was saved from infection due to another set of protocols being used for E-mail on his local network, JANET. (Joint Academic Network). A link through SATNET (from UCL to NASA NSN), a remnant from the historical first overseas ARPAnet link (Internet's ancestor) enabled him to be "virtually" there. C-L was already hooked by the Internet's potential.

1990s

A couple of years later, he was amongst the original team of 15 co-conspirators drafting the Virus-L / comp.virus Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document about Computer Viruses.

The battle against computer viruses being of fading interest to him due to the appearance of thousands of poorly-engineered PC-based versions of new viruses, he somehow put this activity on the back-burner, and concentrated on worldwide internet access issues. His plans for UK-based ISPs relate back to 1992, when only 2 commercial ventures existed. Both ventures are well known today.

Meanwhile, he was still consulted in 1993 by the UK's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in a closed forum on the setting-up of IT Security Evaluation and Certification Schemes for anti-viral products.

In the meantime, he had set-up a list of international E-mail accessibility, distributed monthly as a FAQ document in the moderated Usenet newsgroup news.answers, as well as on a handful of other Usenet newsgroups. He also took over the maintenance of the periodic posting " Welcome to alt.sources!" from Jonathan Kamens - alt.sources was one of the first channels open for sharing of sources (cf. Open Source Software)

Later in the year, he advised a number of African countries on Internet networking, from policy to technical matters, an activity he has sustained to this day. The FAQ document on International E-mail accessibility prompted publication in CDROMs (Walnut Creek 1993-1999) and magazines, and was translated to various languages including German, French, Spanish and even Chinese. The Web version of the document was developed from Virtual Tourist World Maps and contains hundreds of links to the rest of the Globe. The list based on ISO3166 was also included in the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet (1994), and some books and publications amongst which:

• "Your Internet Consultant - the FAQs of life Online" by Kevin Savetz, Prentice Hall/Sams Publishing, 1994
• "Internet Success With Fred", by Dr. Fred Klopfer and Susan Klopfer, Vanatech Press, 1995.

In December 1995, he was chartered by acclaimed authors John Levine and Carol Baroudi (Internet for Dummies) to write a chapter entitled "Setting-up a European Internet Provider" in the IDG book entitled "Internet Secrets". Seen today, it is an extraordinary snapshot of what was available then.

1995 is also the year when he was involved in the early development of a Web Design company that became one of the UK's largest Web Designers - sold for tens of millions of pounds in the early 2000s.

C-L then contributed to the PC Magazine Networking supplement for the Middle and Near East edition (March 1996) and was mentioned in Boardwatch Magazine (December 1996) for his Web directory already described above

Furthermore, references to, and inclusion of the directory in private and company publications are too numerous to list here.

Acclaimed as an "Internet Veteran" by lemur-fan Joel Furr, a well known Internet columnist in NetGuide, C-L is not as dull as he sounds. On the 1st April 1993, he published a FAQ document through the official news.answers channel on " International Planet Domains", a tongue-in-cheek document describing the re-organisation of the Top Level Domain namespace. Strangely enough, in late 1996, the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Internet Ad-Hoc Committee (IAHC) came-up with proposals to add new Top Level Domains to the list of existing TLDs. C-L got involved in the discussion of proposals, and his published Internet Draft was critical of the selection process and haste with which the changes are being implemented. A further Internet Draft that he wrote comments on the 19 December 1996 intermediate IAHC document, which he is much less critical of.

So many years later, the subject is still so controversial and so closely related to Internet Governance that only a few new Top Level Domains have been created. The "fly by night cowboy" attitude of so many players in the arena of Internet Governance prompted C-L to distance himself from endless flame wars and arguments, whilst still monitoring things from a distance.

Olivier's details are included in "Marquis' Who's Who in the World" (Reed-Elsevier) since 1999 specifically for his acclaimed internet and networking related work.

With Mobile Emporium Ltd, a separate company he founded in 1997, he made a name for himself for a few years as a mobile phone fashion designer under the pseudonym "Olivier James". Mobile Emporium Ltd was then sold in 2000.

2000s

C-L then flew across the pond and spent a year in New York City, working on a large internet project that was virtually shot down on 9.11.2001 - thus prompting his return to London a month later.

With GIH running itself and a thanks to a sizzling London property market, C-L founded a construction company called Blitz Solutions Limited in 2003. This was transferred to a friend of his in October 2006.

His desire to get re-acquainted to his birth country (and to improve his French) prompted him to return to France and take a one year Specialised Masters course in Competitive Intelligence & Knowledge Management at the CERAM European School of Business in Sophia Antipolis, near Nice. This is essentially where he brushed up on skills ranging from Strategic Analysis, Supply Chain & Process Risk Analysis, Decision taking in Information Systems, Intelligence Analysis Psychology, Webmetric Analysis, Complex Search methods, InfoWar, War Rooms, Crisis Management, Influence & Rumours, PsyOps, Body communication & behaviour psychology, through to Intercultural Management, Geopolitics, Strategic Marketing and all aspects of Knowledge Management, including those within high levels of uncertainty - skills that, in his opinion, should be acquired by all competent managers having to deal with today's increasingly globalised but complex & chaotic information society.

An internship as a Strategic Analyst in the HQ of European Aircraft manufacturer Airbus SAS completed his Specialised Masters degree. (eh, one more to add to the collection...)

The rest

In no particular order: book writer (other nom de guerre); director & producer of several TV programmes (other nom de guerre); founder of an events management company.

Being French, having lived in the UK for 21 years, and having learnt most of his English in the USA, C-L's accent is a mixture of foreign-sounding phonemes, qualified as Irish by some, South African by others, North American by the clueless, and English by the French.

He has been running Global Information Highway Limited since 1995, is available for consulting and can be reached by E-mail on ocl@gih.com.

Copyright © Global Information Highway Limited 1995-2007