Charles H. Ferguson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007) |
Charles Henry Ferguson (b. March 24, 1955)[citation needed] is founder and president of Representational Pictures, Inc., and director and producer of No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, which is his first film. It won a special jury prize for documentaries at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar in 2008 in the documentary feature film category.
A native of San Francisco, Ferguson was originally educated as a political scientist. A graduate of Lowell Highschool, he earned BA in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978,[1] and obtained a Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T. in 1989. Following his Ph.D., Ferguson conducted postdoctoral research at MIT while also consulting to the White House, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Defense, and several U.S. and European high technology firms. From 1992–1994 Ferguson was an independent consultant, providing strategic consulting to the top managements of U.S. high technology firms including Apple, Xerox, Motorola, and Texas Instruments.
In 1994, Ferguson founded Vermeer Technologies, one of the earliest Internet software companies, with Randy Forgaard. Vermeer created the first visual Web site development tool, FrontPage. In early 1996, Ferguson sold Vermeer to Microsoft for $133 million,[2] which integrated FrontPage into Microsoft Office. After selling Vermeer, Ferguson returned to research and writing. He was a visiting scholar and/or lecturer for several years at MIT and Berkeley, and for three years was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Ferguson is the author of three books and many articles dealing with various aspects of information technology and its relationships to economic, political, and social issues. Ferguson is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a director of the French-American Foundation, and supports several nonprofit organizations.
For over 20 years, Ferguson has been intensely interested in film, and has regularly attended film festivals such as Telluride for over a decade. In mid-2005, after learning that no major documentary covering U.S. policy in Iraq was being made or was planned, he formed Representational Pictures and began production of No End In Sight. This ultimately resulted in an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in January 2008.
Ferguson is unmarried, and divides his time between Berkeley, California and New York City.
[edit] Books
- Computer Wars: The Fall of IBM and the Future of Global Technology (with Charles R. Morris) (1993)
- High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars (1999)
- The Broadband Problem: Anatomy of a Market Failure and a Policy Dilemma (2004) ISBN 0-8157-0644-8
- No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos (2008)
