Over the next few days, I'm going to answer some questions that so many enquiring minds have wanted to know since we first launched Civil Netizen.  It's your chance to take a peek at the folks behind scenes...so enjoy!

Why did we start this project?

The concept of Civil Netizen was born from our recognition of a few inherent flaws of the commercial Internet. Despite recent advances in web usability and user-centric services, we feel that the commercial web service providers are selling Internet users an illusion of ownership and control. The massive influx of privacy-invading websites and applications, the increasing sophistication of spyware and ad-ware, and the increasing loss of ownership of our own data has made the Internet a frustrating place to live and work. We started this business because we believe that there is a need for Internet applications and services that do not require any tradeoffs in privacy and data ownership while still allowing individual “Netizens” to connect, share, and control their information across multiple networks and organizational boundaries.

How much time do we devote to its growth? Do we have a day job?

The Civil Engines team has devoted the past few years on deep technology R&D and product design to solve the fundamental privacy, ownership, and cost issues we highlighted above. It’s been a slow process at times, but we wanted to make sure things are just right. It’s certainly been a labor of love. In order to avoid becoming beholden to corporate investors, we opted from day one to keep Civil Engines self-funded. As a result, we’ve been working all kinds of jobs to keep ourselves running smooth. There probably isn’t a business industry we haven’t dabbled in over the past few years to earn a buck or two :) ! Can’t knock the hustle.

How large is the Civil Engines team and what are our backgrounds?

The core team of Civil Engines Research (our official company name) is made up of three members; David Evans, Christopher Tse, and Paolo de Dios. The three of us all attended Columbia University’s School of Engineering, with David receiving a degree in Operations Research, and Paolo and Chris in Computer Science.

David serves as President of the company, and focuses on business development, marketing, and overall operations. Chris is the Product Designer, the one most directly responsible for the function and look-and-feel of our products, and Paolo is the Software Architect, who single-handled built all of Civil Netizen and makes sure that our services can operate nice and cheap.

Of course, we’ve certainly had some help along the way from some star interns (who are credited in the about section of our app), and our excellent web designer Ken Rossi.  You might know Ken from such projects as  "The Civil Netizen Website",  "Design Your Ride",  and "Liquid Orb".

Continue to Part II