My Resume

You can view of a copy of my resume online, or download the PDF version:

Some of My Work

Latest Update: Plink

April 6: For the past several months I have been working to found a start-up and get it off the ground. The company, Plink Networks, is making good progress towards finding first customers and seed round investors, but we aren't quite there yet. Needless to say, given my background, Plink has a lot to do with collaboration, and extending the reach of online collaboration tools beyond the traditional "geeks" that make up the Open Source community.

The Power of Collaboration

I have made a career out of studying collaborative communities.

Academia

In graduate school and my subsequent academic work I studied scientific communities and the particular conditions that brought about those transformations we refer to as scientific revolutions. Disruptive change can come from collaborative communities, whether in science or in industry.

Publishing

In my publishing career in Silicon Valley I've been closely involved with Linux and Open Source from the very beginning of these movements. Open Source refers to software available under licensing terms that conform to the Open Source Definition. In essence, software is Open Source if it is made freely available, is made available in source code form, and leaves the recipients free to both modify and redistribute the source code. The best way to think of Open Source is by analogy to scientific theories: our great scientific theories must be publically available and freely modifiable in order for them to contribute to our growing and evolving body of scientific knowlegde. In effect, Open Source treats software as knowledge: to be shared, modified, and redistributed as necessary.

I served as an editor for Morgan Kaufmann publishers, covering web technology when it was a new topic and operating systems when, pre-Linux, others considered it a dead topic. Subsequently I was O'Reilly's Executive Editor for Open Source. That's a fancy way of saying that I was in charge of the editorial group at O'Reilly that produces books related to Linux and other Open Source technologies. In this capacity I also served as the editor-in-chief for the now-defunct Journal of Linux Technology. A notable achievement during that time was the publication of the essay volume Open Sources, which stands out as a seminal volume on the roots of Open Source in particular and online collaborative practice in general.

I left O'Reilly for VA Linux Systems (yes, that VA Linux Systems) where I served as Media Publisher, overseeing and helping to manage key Open Source websites and online community programs including:

Developer Relations

My work with VA Linux evolved to Director of Developer Relations for VA's Open Source Technology Group, OSTG. Essentially that meant I was a marketing consultant to large technology companies on how best to understand and communicate with the OSTG audience, an audience of predominantly software developers and IT professionals, many with a strong interest in Open Source.

Since then I've been an independent consultant, putting my expertise in Open Source and online developer communities to work for companies large and small that need assistance in marketing to technologists. My clients have ranged from small start-ups to Fortune 500 corporations.

ManyOne Networks

For the last year or so, prior to embarking on Plink, I worked in product marketing and product development for ManyOne Networks. ManyOne, or M1 as it is known by its employees, is led by the famous, or perhaps notorious, Silicon Valley executive Joe Firmage. The vision is ambitious: to create a hybrid between a company and a non-profit that can organize and present the best, most relevant scientific information online using state of the art tools for knowledge visualization. Joe describes this variously as "PBS for the Web" or as "Wikipedia done right".

My role was, first of all, to help define and manage a professional level product management process within the company, a necessary step given the sprawling, ambitious nature of the product. I also worked directly as a product manager on M1's most important product to date, the Encyclopedia of Earth, M1's key product for its most important customer, the Environmental Information Coaltion. I knew a lot about web product development and product management from my work with OSTG, but my time at M1 really forced me to push those skills to a whole new level.

The Future

Recently I completed a successor to the Open Sources volume, this one titled Open Sources 2.0. Published in Fall of 2005, it is available now from O'Reilly. I'm also working on some other writing projects, including the forthcoming book Desktop Linux with Ubuntu, to be published later this year by Manning Press. And then of course there's Plink.... so we'll see. Should be an interesting year.