Two Q-Free leaders will help lead the newly formed #FREEtheMIBS Advisory Board, the campaign announced. Trisha Tunilla, Q-Free America’s Executive Vice President of Marketing & Proposals will chair the group and Tom Stiles, Executive Vice President of ATMS Solutions and founder of the #FREEtheMIBS campaign, will join her on the board. The Advisory Board will help steer the fast-moving campaign as it continues to grow in direction and influence.

In just 15-months, #FREEtheMIBs has grown to include advocates from public agencies, private industry and academia. The campaign began after Q-Free took the bold and unprecedented step of becoming the first signal controller manufacturer to share its own MIBs. Management information bases or MIBs, contain manufacturer specific language protocols that allow signal controllers and other devices to communicate. Until Q-Free’s move, MIBs in North America were traditionally kept proprietary by manufacturers, restricting competition, locking agencies into a single-company solution and ultimately costing taxpayers who were often forced to pay for limited and sometimes ineffective products.  

Tunilla says the advisory board represents the campaign’s appropriate next step. “For a short while, we were on our own, but that has all changed. We are thrilled and a little overwhelmed by the success of the campaign to date. We hope everyone at Q-Free is as proud as we are, that our company is taking a leadership role in opening standards and completely shifting the sales conversation to one based on the merit of each manufacturer’s solutions and services.”

The #FREEtheMIBs Advisory Board members were nominated and selected from the broadest spectrum of transportation management. In addition to Q-Free’s Tunilla and Stiles, members include:

• Alan Davis, Assistant State Traffic Engineer, Georgia Department of Transportation
• Doug Spencer, ITS Standards Engineer, Oregon Department of Transportation
• Tam Tran, Associate Traffic Engineer, City of Oceanside, CA
• Carlos Ortiz, Chief Operating Officer, Advantec Consulting Engineers
• Dr. Edward Smaglik, Professor and Director of AZTrans: The Arizona Laboratory for Applied Transportation Research, Northern Arizona University
• Michael Gaertner, Director of ITS Solutions and R&D, Siemens
• Erin Skimson, Vice President of Product Management and Corporate Programs, Miovision
• John Snedeker, Territory Manger, Traffic Control Products, Inc.

The board held its inaugural meeting virtually in December and agreed to begin an industry-wide education and advocacy campaign. The group will meet quarterly with members committing to a minimum two-year term.

Since Q-Free became the first manufacturer to open its MIBs, #FREEtheMIBS has garnered attention in numerous transportation publications, at trade meetings and in corporate boardrooms, and Tunilla says managing both the message and the conversation will be crucial to the influence the campaign has moving forward. “Every member of the advisory board is united behind this being a right side of history campaign,” she says. “We have the opportunity to make lasting change and the diversity and influence of this group is just what we need to make that happen.”

For more information on the campaign and Q-Free’s role, please visit FREEtheMIBS.org.