I consider myself a seasoned veteran of the software industry who loves to get his hands dirty solving hard problems and building great products. Even with my gray beard, I can still say I’ve “been there, done that” without putting out the “get off my lawn” vibe.

As a serial entrepreneur, I’ve been involved in a wide range of products, and have a number of patented inventions. I’ve been coding since I was a kid. Forging new paths and trying exciting, new things are part of what makes me who I am – Fortune favors the bold.

I love automating everything. It’s a passion for reducing waste both in product and process. Some people call programmers lazy because we work so hard at eliminating work. I call that pragmatic.

Don’t let my titles fool you. I find great success at leading teams and taking wide responsibility for a product, but I also have a passion for being on the front lines and building things – especially when it comes to staying at the cutting edge of technology.

At Facet Digital,  we pride ourselves on sticking to lean principles and efficient management practices to provide a refreshing experience at a great value. Pragmatism, attention to detail, and work ethic are the secret ingredients to our “ship culture”…and we understand the difference between “Simple” and “Easy”.

My team and I have been innovating in the embedded software, operating systems, communications, mobile, and distributed computing industries since the mid-90s. We have a very good understanding of the technical and business challenges in scaling both enterprise and consumer platforms.

Over the years, I’ve been very involved in the open source software community, contributing commits to the Rails core, developing open source jQuery plugins and Ruby gems, blogging about unique solutions, and providing feedback to other open source developers.

I went to the University of Washington, where I graduated at the top of my class in Computer Science. While there, in the early 90’s, I was published for my pioneering work bringing interactive learning and research applications to the emerging World Wide Web. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, UW still managed to shape me into a well-rounded businessman with courses in accounting, economics, composition, public speaking, philosophy, and music. Plus, we dominated PAC-10 football back then.

Soccer has always been my favorite sport, and I’m a diehard Seattle Sounders fan. My apologies in advance for my tweets during playoff season. Don’t worry, we’ll win the MLS Cup next year. Scarves up, Seattle!