Federico Lucifredi teaches C++, Java and OOP at Boston University and works a freelance writer, chiefly on Open Source / Free Software technologies. He is frequently a speaker and/or committee member at industry conferences such as the Linux Expo Europe. Before his current appointment Federico has been a software developer and a consultant on Open technologies for several well respected companies - in one of which he also served as interim CIO.

Federico's interest in Instant messaging has spanned many years, but only with the arrival of Jabber on the software scene a sufficently Open IM platform has become available to make the certain types of his CSCW research not only reasonably accessible but at all possible.