Let’s see, you’re probably hitting this page to find out a bit more about me. For the important stuff I’ll point you right back to my blog, read my starting points and you’ll learn all about where I come from and why I started this blog. The main thing I’m looking to accomplish is to get a number of thoughts out of my head and in to the world. I spent the last year doing a lot of thinking, and attempted to write an academic journal paper on it all, but that form seemed to constrain rather than bolster my ideas. And the ideas became more than could be contained in a single paper. So I’m hoping to get them out, and if that’s all this blog serves, then that’s great by me. And who knows, maybe I’ll even have some ideas in the future.

As for a few concrete details about who I actually am:

I grew up in San Diego, California, in a wealthy suburb named La Jolla. Which is lovely to visit, absolutely beautiful, and substantially less fun to grow up in. I was more than ready for high school to end when it did.

I went to Stanford University. Which I really didn’t like for the first couple years, but couldn’t think of where I’d transfer that would be any better. Started to realize that it’s all about you, and making a life for yourself where you’re at.

I didn’t so much concentrate on school at Stanford, decided to listen to everyone’s advice that it’s all about the people. Took whatever classes sounded interesting, ended up with a major in History and a minor in Computer Science (doing about the same amount of work for each).

I moved to New York in 2002, which turned out to not really be the best time to find a job. Found an internship at The Open Planning Project (TOPP), which had me sold with the words ‘non-profit’, ‘open source’, and ‘Java’ (just since it was the language I knew best at the time). I still had all my idealism from college, so doing open source and working for a non-profit had a big appeal for me. Didn’t get the job. Worked there for free anyways, eventually got the job.

Didn’t know anything about GIS, became the lead developer of GeoServer and on the Project Management Committee of GeoTools. Did lots of programming, learned about GIS through osmosis.

Left New York in 2004 to travel, telecommuting part time to keep GeoServer going. Went around SE Asia, then down to Brazil to live with friends for six months. The best summary of that experience is found imbued in the pages of ank’s cookbook: ‘cooking com bigode‘.

Left TOPP to pursue a Fulbright Scholarship in Zambia on the potential of open source software to help implement spatial data infrastructures in developing countries. The project was a failure, as I had been hoping to actually build and install software, but the organization I was associated with was basically dead. So with little else to do, I got to intellectually explore whatever I felt like, which was great. Read lots of SDI academic work, started a few papers, completed fewer, went to a few conferences and gave a few talks. Had lots of fun thoughts, which is why this blog is needed.

Returned to the states in late 2005. Returned to TOPP, but this time my role is Vice President of Strategic Development. Still figuring out what that means, but it means I don’t write code any more. It’s an exciting challenge, basically figuring out how to make us something bigger in this world, how we can do more cool, good things.

Was elected to the board of the new Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation in February. It looks like we can do a lot of interesting things with it. So my next year or two is going to be pretty busy, but I think it should be fun.