Julf Helsingius

Swedish-speaking Finn Johan "Julf" Helsingius - now living in Amsterdam and married to an American - was part of the early EUnet mafia, along with people such as Axel Pawlik, Jaap Akkerhuis and Daniel Karrenberg. After a stint as the Chief Technology Officer of the doomed telecom company KPNQwest, he left the corporate world and has been hiding in the IoT startup space for the last 20 years.

He served five years in the ICANN GNSO Council, and is currently the chairman of SIY – the Finnish ISOC national chapter.

Out of his many sins, one was running the anon.penet.fi remailer that gained him his 15 minutes of questionable fame on the front pages of major newspapers, but the thing Julf remembers most fondly was taking a young Linus Torvalds to his first visit to Bell Labs to meet the original UNIX team.