I live in eastern Pennsylvania in a house from early 1700s -- old for the USA <g>, but not for the Old World! I have a wife, a son (20 something), and twin daughters (teens), a Yorkshire Terrier, 2 indoor cats, and 2 barn cats.

I began life testing jet engines as an aerospace engineer. Then I discovered software on a Dec Vax. (I also discovered Adventure!) I learned IDL, FORTRAN, some C. Then I discovered object-oriented programming (with Turbo C++). It was all over after that. I cut my teeth on R:Base and learned SQL -- though I did not know it at the time. I did application development on the side. I became proficient at PowerBuilder and later Power++. I learned C as part of my graduate work in numerical computations. I was using C for flight simulation and hardware-in-the-loop projects.

I met Peter Coad in 92 -- he became my OO mentor. I bought Together/C+ + in 1994 and began to do whatever I could to help this wonderful product grow. I formed LightshipInc, a consulting company, in 1995, grew to about 10 people. We designed and built IBM's Manufacturing Execution system. I did the UI design on paper and sold the execs that we could take on the (3 year) project. We did great engineering product order configurator using OODBMS for a pump manufacturer (Ingersoll-Rand).

Throughout the 80s/early 90s, I experienced inefficiencies of doing software government-style. So I had created my own agile methods in "self defense" (besides, I don't like to waste money). I first published this stuff in a Lotus Developers book or two. (Don't ask why <g>.)

In 1999, Peter Coad recruited me to help form TogetherSoft -- with quite a few other guys. In a few years we had grown quite a bit in size. From 2000 to 2002 I commuted to St. Petersburg, Russia, to lead new product development and what not (like learn to drink vodka properly). Brilliant developers.

In February 2001, I attended the gathering in Snowbird that led to the Agile Manifesto -- as I recall (which may be flawed memory), 'agile' being suggested because I had done a lot of work with Agile Fighter research, and Alistair Cockburn did not want to be known as a "Lightweight Methodologist."

In 2003 we sold TogetherSoft to Borland. I was recruited by Compuware to come work for the OptimalJ team in May 2003. I tried my best... there was too much inertia for me to have the impact I desired. Awesome product idea, however. Brilliant developers. I got to start a blog (~35K hits/month), and a newsletter (~6,000 subscribers).

In Fall 2006, I turned private, working with a couple of friends of mine at immuexa... have worked on a SemWeb project, and on a insurance portal project with Synergy Components, among other things. We also do pre-planning software for the fire and first responders at Fire Planning Associates.

My ideal job is working on cool projects with a great team, a great customer; and to be able to travel.

My family and I travel quite a bit... we like to ski, I like to rock climb, climb mountains (Alpine), and drive cars fast (mostly Audis) around tracks and autocrosses :-)

Cheers!