Executive Summary

I was born and raised in and around Denver, Colorado. I grew up interested in computer technologies and pursued a degree in computer science in college. After college, I worked for the University of Denver as their computer resource coordinator for the School of Law.

I took a job that combined technology and publishing in Maryland and moved there with my fiancée. Four years later, the firm sold the newsletter and I found I missed publishing. We moved to Indiana and I took a job in publishing with Macmillan Computer Publishing, where I worked for eight years. At the end of my stint at Macmillan, I was the product director of a successful line of Linux retail software products.

While at Macmillan, I wrote a dozen videogame hint guides for BradyGames, a division of Macmillan, and contributed to several other computer books. In 1997, I authored the first book on the Palm Pilot, The Palm Pilot Companion.

The decline of the software department led to my accepting a job at EarthWeb, an online publishing company. The company was sold in late 2000, and I moved to Progeny, a Linux service and support company. I started as their product director but took over as president and CEO during a lean time, leading a business transition and financial turnaround. I moved to the position of COO at Progeny in late 2002, to accommodate hiring a financing-savvy CEO to help raise more money.

While at Progeny, I wrote several online technical articles and three Internet technology books in my spare time.

In mid-2005, I changed companies, joining Humanizing Technologies as their executive director. The position wasn't ideal, however, and my wife and I decided that the time was right for us to move back to Denver. I quit HT, got our house ready to sell, and moved to Denver to find employment there.

I'm a very career-oriented individual--a quick study and a hard worker. I'm always looking for ways to challenge myself and to learn as much as possible in all walks of life.

The Whole Story

I was born in the mid-1960s in Denver, Colorado. I grew up in the suburbs north of Denver and graduated with honors from Iver C. Ranum High School.

In my last two years of high school, I developed an affinity with computers--at the time, "computers" were mainframe and mini-sized (with hard drives the size of washing machines). The first IBM microcomputer (PC) was released during my senior year. While still in high school, I learned how to program in BASIC and perform system administration tasks.

After finishing high school, I enrolled in the University of Denver's Honors Program and pursued a degree in computer science. I taught myself Pascal and some assembly language while DU taught me system design and administration, circuits, advanced assembly language, and the usual litany of math and English. I worked at the computer lab for the School of Librarianship--maintaining the lab equipment, helping students, writing maintenance and test programs, etc. In my sophomore year, it was announced that the School of Librarianship was closing at the end of the year. Various administrative personnel left throughout the year, leaving me as the director of the lab. This was my first management experience, but destined not to be my last.

At the end of the year, the School of Librarianship did close, and the School of Law obtained most of the lab equipment. I became the computer resource coordinator for the School of Law, with responsibilities for all computer resources on the law campus. (The School of Law was on a remote campus, geographically distant from the main university campus and without dedicated support of its own.) I managed the student computer lab and microcomputer resources for several departments, and provided individual support for professors, administrators, and students.

It was during this time that I found my wife-to-be, Angie. We met online on a computer bulletin board system (BBS). This was before the days of the Internet and companies like eHarmony or Match.com.

Many of the departments in the School of Law standardized on WordPerfect for their word processing needs. The lab had a subscription to The WordPerfectionist, an independent newsletter on WordPerfect. I noticed an ad in the newsletter for a technical editor and applied for the position. Several months later, I accepted the position and moved to Maryland with Angie.

The WordPerfectionist was published by a small mom-and-pop company called Support Group, Inc. (SGI), based in McHenry, Maryland. McHenry is in the western tip of Maryland, almost directly south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I joined SGI as their computer support guy and technical editor of the newsletter. SGI had another product, TAPCIS, the first automation program for the CompuServe online service. TAPCIS allowed users to minimize the amount of time spent online (for which CompuServe charged a hefty per-minute fee) by moving most of the activities offline.

I was promoted to managing editor of the newsletter in my second year at SGI, with the responsibility of the editorial schedule and content for the newsletter. During this time, I continued to provide support for all technologies, programmed modules for the in-house accounting system, provided second-tier support for TAPCIS, and occasionally wrote articles for the newsletter.

In late 1992, SGI sold the newsletter to a competitor, The Cobb Group. I found that the newsletter, more specifically publishing, was a core calling and missed that part of my job. I had met several people at Macmillan Computer Publishing over the years and was offered a job as a product development specialist. I accepted the job and we moved to Indianapolis.

At Que (an imprint of Macmillan), the product development specialists acted as the general contractors for books. The authors' manuscript was "developed" by the PDS prior to being copy edited. The PDS' responsibilities included making sure the manuscript was clear and complete, and covered the topic adequately and accurately. I was asked to provide structure and management to the PDS group and given the title of product development manager. In addition to performing my regular duties as PDS, I also managed the schedule of books through development, hiring of new PDS staff, and training of existing staff.

During my first few years at Que, I contributed (as an author) to several books. I was also signed by BradyGames, the videogame hint book publisher at Macmillan, to write several videogame hint guides.

Angie and I built our first house (that we still occupy as of this writing) during our second year in Indiana.

A few years later, I was offered a job at BradyGames, managing a series of hint guides under license from Virgin Interactive, a (then) prominent computer game developer. Unfortunately, the relationship between BradyGames and Virgin didn't work out--Virgin's publishing schedule didn't lend to enough hint guides. I returned to Que as a title manager in charge of Internet technologies. (Title managers conceived ideas for new books, got said books approved by management, and shepherded the titles through the editorial process.)

In 1996, the Palm Pilot was released. Being a big gadget freak, I bought one of the first units. Shortly thereafter, Que signed me to write the first book on the device, The Palm Pilot Companion.

I took a short sabbatical from Macmillan at that time, joining a small consulting firm and being engaged as a desktop support specialist for Dow AgroSciences. I used that time to finish the Companion book and work on a few other publishing tasks.

In 1997, I rejoined Macmillan in their digital department as the product manager for gaming titles. I was asked to perform this role due to my penchant for gaming and experience in dealing with gaming companies. Macmillan produced several add-on products for such popular computer games as Doom, Quake, Quake II, Duke Nukem, Battlezone, and Dark Reign. I was in charge of managing the relationships between Macmillan and the game developers, creating add-on concepts, finding talent to provide the add-ons, and shepherding the products through the production process. Unfortunately, the business of computer game add-ons didn't end up making financial sense. The licensing costs to legally create add-ons was much too high and the demand way too low. Macmillan did create a successful series of hunting games, riding the wave of Deer Hunter and competitors in 1998. The series, 3D Hunting, had the distinction of being the first hunting titles to use a true 3D engine, bringing unprecedented realism to the genre.

In early 1999, I took over the operating system products, and the gaming add-on products were officially cancelled. The mainstay of the operating system line was Red Hat Linux, providing about $500K/year to the publishing bottom line. Several years prior, the president of Red Hat and the president of Macmillan Digital (who were old friends) got together and forged a deal in which Macmillan would sell Red Hat Linux to the retail marketplace. That deal helped launch the mainstream popularity of Linux.

Shortly after I took over managing the operating system products for Macmillan, Red Hat severed the deal with Macmillan. Red Hat, Inc. had decided to go public and needed its own sales force and the bulk of the revenue from sales to make the IPO happen. That left Macmillan with a large hole in its publishing plan. The president of Macmillan gave me a mandate of producing a competing product to Red Hat's version 6.0 within a month of its release (three months away).

I approached Jacques Le Marois, co-founder of Mandrake Linux, with a publishing deal. The partnership, in which Macmillan would publish and distribute Mandrake Linux, blossomed into a five-year, multimillion-dollar deal. The products released under the partnership successfully competed against the established Red Hat brand, and Macmillan's Linux products grew to more than $15M in annual revenue.

In late 1998, Pearson PLC purchased Simon & Schuster (Macmillan's parent company) from Viacom. The digital business was hit hard by the acquisition, since Pearson was in the book business, not the software business. By 2000, the software group comprised only four individuals, down from a height of twelve. I accepted a position with EarthWeb, an online publisher, and joined the organization as the executive editor of networking and hardware content. Later that year, EarthWeb was sold to Internet.com (now Jupitermedia). Existing EarthWeb staff were given six months of amnesty, but the writing was on the wall, Internet.com did not need the extra staff.

I found a job with Progeny, a local Linux-based services company in need of a product director to help spearhead their products to market. I joined Progeny in February 2001.

In late 2001, Progeny was out of money. The tech crash had hit the markets hard and no additional venture capital was to be found. Progeny's founders, Ian Murdock and John Hartman, didn't want the company to tank, so they decided to slim down the company to half its size and pursue consulting for revenue. Neither founder had an interest in running a consulting firm, so they asked me to step up and run it in their stead. I then led the company as president and CEO. Within three months, we were cash-positive and built solid cash reserves for rainy days. Over two years, we did odd jobs for the likes of Hewlett-Packard, building a few Linux distributions for deployment on their hardware. During that time, we built the company back to a solid 20 employees and remained cash-positive.

In late 2002, Ian Murdock and I had a conversation about the company's future. It was decided that we needed to transition back to a product-oriented business (steady-state consulting would never return the initial investment) and explore raising additional money. I agreed that I would move to chief operating officer to continue running the company day to day, and we started searching for a financing-savvy CEO to help raise capital.

In October 2002, Garth Dickey, a local businessman and former investment banker, joined Progeny as CEO. Ian, Garth, and I ran the company until mid-2005.

Meanwhile, from 2003–2005 I wrote three books for Wiley--all based on Internet technology. It was a lot of work, but very rewarding.

In June 2005, I felt that I needed a change, career-wise, and began exploring other opportunities in the Indianapolis area. The thought of moving back to Denver had crossed my mind, since both Angie's and my parents and extended families were there. However, I was hesitant to move without having a job there waiting for me. I had found that looking for a job in Denver while still in Indiana was problematic, to say the least. Firms were hesitant to consider hiring a geographically distant employee due to relocation costs and other concerns. Plus, there were plenty of able, out-of-work candidates in the Denver area.

I happened across Humanizing Technologies, an Indianapolis firm building unique browsing tools and Internet search technologies. They were in need of a product manager and operating officer to help streamline the company and push products to market. I joined HT in August 2005 as executive director--a cross between COO and product director. It looked like an ideal match, allowing me to utilize my product and management skills to take a company to the next level.

For personal reasons, however, I decided that the move to HT was a mistake. It wasn't a good environment for me, and we were past due to return to Denver. I made the decision to make the leap I had avoided several months earlier--quitting my job and moving to Denver to find employment. Our house went up for sale in early November and I relocated myself and my office to Denver to begin my job search.

I found several consulting positions, but nothing of a permanent nature until August of 2006 when an old boss, and colleague (Ian Murdock) offered me a job with The Free Software Group as their director of certification. In October of 2006 we decided to move Angie out to Denver, despite the house still on the market.

The latest development is that the FSG (Free Software Group) merged with a competitor and I became a casualty of the merger--entering the job market once again. As of mid-February, 2006 I am unemployed.

To be continued...

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What degree do you have?

A: I don't have a college degree. I lost my financial aid package at the University of Denver (a private school) and transferred to the University of Colorado at Boulder. The transition necessitated me retaking several classes, despite my being enrolled in honors classes at the University of Denver. I quickly burned out and decided to take a semester off. While I was out of school, I realized that I was learning more about technology--more quickly--while working instead of studying. I choose to pursue my career and not to return to school.

Q: What is your skillset?

A: That is somewhat hard to answer given my diverse background. I remain very technical, knowing several programming languages and staying active in various areas of computer technology. In addition, I continue to write technical books on many subjects. I have a solid background in publishing--books, newsletters, software, and online content. I'm also an excellent manager, having managed products, people, and entire companies to success. At the base level, I'd say I'm a product manager and crisis manager. I excel at conceiving, building, and launching products to market. I also thrive under pressure and can easily bring order to the most chaotic environments.

Q: Why do you write books?

A: I don't know. Really. It tends to be a lot of work and, despite what you might think, the pay isn't that good. However, there is something uniquely rewarding about being able to pen a large reference or tutorial on technical subjects. It also provides a good way for me to keep my hands in publishing, and I'm driven to understand everything about technology.

Q: Are you married?

A: Yes. Angie and I married in September of 1989 and have been happily married since.

Q: Any kids?

A: No. Circumstances to this point have conspired against us starting a family, but we continue to work toward that eventuality.

Q: Now that you've relocated to Denver, would you be willing to move again for the right job?

A: Yes, for the right job. I'm a very career-oriented individual, prone to relocating for the right opportunity.