Summary

I aim to provide each client with solutions that make sense for their business, while emphasizing simple, down-to-earth designs built with quality craftsmanship.

Experience

January 2007 to present
Founding Partner FolkLogic SARL Quinson, France

We founded FolkLogic to provide high quality software with real business value to our customers through our direct participation in their projects. We do this by developing software, managing projects, and training our customers with the best-in-class techniques we have discovered and developed through our extensive careers in the computer industry.

I am an equal partner in the company with responsibilities for all aspects of management, software and technology development, and customer consulting services.

Principal Engagements:
hotelsearch.com Madrid, Spain
Working with the team at hotelsearch.com, lead the effort to re-implement and re-launch their site, using Ruby on Rails and a custom XML toolchain we have developed. Also provided training and mentoring in Ruby and agile methods.
AutoScout24 Munich, Germany
At AutoScout24 we were part of a large project to migrate and re-implement a custom CRM system in Ruby on Rails. I implemented the reporting system (using Ruby, SQL, Perl, gnuplot and LaTeX), and made major contributions to the commissioning system and the migration of legacy data. The data migration required lots of creative database spelunking, as we didn't have source code to key parts of the legacy system.
January 2005 to January 2007
Chief Engineer & Director of Technology Development Quiconnect SAS Grenoble, France

Quiconnect was a startup building virtual wireless IP networks for market-leading communications companies. I worked with the CTO to define the technical strategy and lead the engineering team, tracked emerging standards and new technologies, and worked closely with the marketing and business development teams. Successfully introduced extreme programming practices and Ruby on Rails to the engineering team, and managed the development of new products and services from conception to production, including:

  • Interconnect Management Portal: An extensive database-backed web portal used by Quiconnect's customers and Quiconnect's network engineers and marketing staff to manage network interconnection projects, hotspot data, end-customer session info, etc.
  • Hotspot Robot: a tunneling solution that provides remote access to partners' networks, based on OpenVPN and OpenWRT running on Linksys hardware
  • Hotspot Connector: an embeddable library that can do web-based logins at public hotspots, for devices such as Windows Mobile or Symbian phones

October 2001 to January 2005
Senior Staff Engineer, Principal Investigator Sun Labs Europe Grenoble, France

Launched a research program in sensor networks -- the "network of things". Recruited an international team which developed architectures, strategies, and business models for Sun the area of wireless programmable transducers (sensors and actuators). Organized a company-wide summit, and influenced several previously disjoint groups to work together. The work we began has since appeared as the SunSpot product line.

January 1994 to September 2001
Research Scientist promoted to Senior Research Scientist Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) Cambridge, Massachusetts

Performed and led application-oriented basic research in the areas of social/networked virtual reality and off-the-desktop user interfaces, including tangible interfaces, computer vision, and speech.

Also served as Evangelist, Coordinator of the Gadget Skunkworks, Chair of the Resume Committee, Chair of the Computing and Network Infrastructure Committee, and Advisor to Management. As Evangelist, I gave television interviews, wrote magazine stories and whitepapers, prepared and presented demos at trade shows, appeared on panels at conferences, gave invited talks, participated in standards meetings, and managed strategic partnerships.

Selected projects:
ComBadge - Conceived, designed, and led a team of 4 to build a wireless device with speech recognition as the primary mode of interaction (inspired by the Star Trek ComBadge).
Low-cost 3D Scanner - Co-PI for a team that designed and built a low-cost volumetric scanner, with software that would classify the scanned object and then animate it -- we brought clay models to life. I helped design and construct the prototype scanner, did the rendering, and worked with a well-known toy company to develop a product vision.
Self-describing Building Blocks - Co-PI, team of 7. We built 600 lego-like blocks, each with a PIC microcontroller and 16 network connections to other blocks. I worked on protocol and algorithm design, and had a hands-on role in debugging and system integration.
Optimisation Table - We performed a set of experiments in interactive optimization, exploring how best to combine the respective strengths of people and computers in solving hard, real-world optimization problems. We were able to show that users can identify promising areas of the search space and manage the amount of computation effort expended on different subproblems.
Design Galleries for Lighting - Business development of a tool for lighting design in 3D environments. Starting from a research prototype, I participated in product definition, development, and launch.
Spline and Open Community - Principal Architect and Tech Lead (team of 10-15, US and Japan) - Further developed and transfered the technology underlying Diamond Park to advanced development teams in the US and Japan. This involved the design and implementation of networking protocols, audio DSP, and 3D graphics, as well as a number of social and collaborative applications. I also initiated and managed strategic partnerships and standards activities, supervised sub-contractors, etc.
Diamond Park - Key contributor and principal software engineer (team of 8) for this social virtual reality environment. Dave Barry devoted a chapter of Dave Barry in Cyberspace to lampooning this 1995 Comdex exhibit, in which members of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe inhabited a virtual park.
Sept 1988 to December 1993
System Designer Information Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

I worked on the IBM-funded Andrew project, developing an advanced campus computing platform. Initially I was an architect and developer, and later manager. I supervised 5 full-time staff members and was responsible for the development and releases of the campus-wide Andrew system (for which I received an ITC award). I worked with executive management to spin off an independent consortium to continue Andrew development, and consulted with IBM to transfer the technology to a product group.

1987 to 1988
Faculty Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Taught courses in Computer Science and AI, and supervised student research projects.

1981 to 1988
Research Assistant Computer Science Department, CMU Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Part of the Mach group, Ed Smith and I invented remote method invocation (RMI) and built a windowing system and user interface toolkit based on distributed objects. I also wrote and maintained a popular email client, the first to provide rule-based filtering.

Other jobs

Other experience

Education

1985
Carnegie Mellon University Master of Science in Computer Science Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
1981
Brigham Young University Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science (double major) Provo, Utah, USA
1980
Macalester College Undergraduate Research Fellow in Operations Research St Paul, Minnesota
 

Publications

2 book chapters, 10 patents, various journal and conference papers (SIGGRAPH, AAAI, OOPSLA, etc.)

Skills

Languages
English: mother tongue, French: fluent, notions of Spanish and German
Systems Architecture
networks, distributed systems, database-backed web applications, real-time and embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, machine learning, speech, vision, 3D graphics, streaming media, user interfaces, tangibles
Programming
Ruby, Javascript, C/C++, Lisp/Scheme, Python, XSL, XQuery, PHP, assembler (680x0, PIC), microcode, and many other languages
Protocols
HTTP, RADIUS, TCP/IP, UDP, MPEG-4, SMTP, IMAP, POP, RTP, RSVP, RMI
Operating Systems
Linux, MacOS and OS X, UNIX (Solaris, IRIX, HPUX, AIX), BSD, Windows, Mach, RTMach, DOS, proprietary