WHOIS
My first employer of any consequence was SUN Microsystems. I started as a contractor at a firm in a contract and account management group for SUN Educational Services. Eventually I joined a small consultancy made of then current SUN employees, and went to SUN Ed directly. What began as a brief stint with inside sales turned into a role as an account manager for mostly large clients in the defense and finance segments. I also managed to get Sun 1000 Certified; this was where I first got my taste of Unix as purely a user (on a Sparc 10), and I have preferred *nix overall ever since (although I am by no means exclusive to it).
In between those points I acted as project liason for various initiatives (including an internal toolchain rollout, departmental due diligence and business analysis, and training teams at the campus that opened in Broomfield, Colorado). Who could imagine so much excitement? Sun was good for getting a broad set of experiences.
During this time I was also appointed to the Board of Directors for the S.E.S. Corporation. A 501c3 non-profit that served as a hub for the local Portuguese diaspora (as one might guess at this point, I am of ethnic Portuguese stock). The youngest person to ever hold the position, and serving two consecutive terms, the corporation hosted or sponsored various entertainment and informational events, an engaged in fundraising for related community groups as well as political interaction at a local level. They also had weekly bingo nights, of which I actually spent a few evenings in the number calling booth. I am not proud of this, as much as I enjoy the blank expressions I get when I mention this fact to people who know me and are not in the professional box-number stamping field.
I left SUN after two years not because I was tired of it or wanted to leave, but I decided I wanted to actually finish an undergraduate degree. This is where I packed up to Yolo County, to the University of California at Davis. I jumped in the deep end, joining the International Relations Student Association, the Ski or Snowboard Club, and helped revive the Model UN Group (first as Director of Research, later as Secretary General.) and was one of the founding members of the Linux User Group of Davis, which continues to this day.
I also engaged in a second adolescence, all while trying to write my own major. I eventually succeeded in getting the major, International Affairs and Technology Policy, approved.1. I also managed to find two excellent faculty advisers: Emily O. Goldman and Richard Walters. However, right after getting approval, I left abruptly to go to VA Research.
I had done a few spot gigs for VA after getting the spin from Chris DiBona, who I had known since he moved to the valley from DC. Starting in the Community and Developer Relations group, that occupied my first two years; speaking engagements, trade shows, LUG events, and other evangelism/PR roles across two continents and a lot of expense reports on my Amex.
Parallel to this was work with business development on a Developer Resource CD, recruitment, competitive research, and a neverending stream of random projects (because as a start up moves from 20-something to 600-something employees in 24 months, you often get to do a lot of that), including being on the Ignition Team for Sourceforge.net and being there when the first major cluster for a National Lab (Brookhaven to be precise) was test fired up after hours.
Eventually VA Research had become VA Linux Systems, went through the biggest IPO in stock market history (a record it holds to this day), and then hit a contracting period as the so called dot-com bubble burst. The Community group split, and I went into project managent for the Operations side.
VA Linux became VA Software, and with the change in business came a large number of projects centered around that change. Support agreements, documentation and archiving, and working with corporate counsel on due diligence/discovery tasks were a large part of my workload. Other major responsibilities were the relationships with the third party support organization for the U.S. and the VA subsidiary that handled E.U. support agreements. In the former case, this included contract renegotiation.
I also reviewed a trio of chapters for the third edition of the O’Reilly Linux in a Nutshell book.
My last few months at VA was spent in Professional Services, where I worked with more government industry clients before deciding I needed a bit of a change of venue. I assumed I would take some time off and then maybe return to finish the degree. Of course, things rarely happen as planned.
A week after departing VA, I was contacted by the former project lead for Sourceforge, Tony Guntharp, about some hardware I had laying around, and he found out at my home that I was also trained as an illustrator –something I had done as a sideline off and on since before my SUN days– and asked if I wanted to help on a start up idea he had been pondering. I was effectively his first employee, even before he secured the other two founders and made everything officially Damage Studios. Work began in earnest on a MMOG called Rekonstruction in a renovated space in SOMA.
Concept art was coupled with work on process design and serialization of procedures, naming conventions, and testing assets in 3D space. Estimates were that we would eventually have to have an entire planet set to scale, so this was nothing if not ambitious. Eventually Damage folded after little over a year, but I was given permission to repost some of the concept work, which has trickled out slowly. I still feel that the concept had legs, just not adequate funding and time. It was the only time where at least part of my livelihood was exercising an artistic muse, which I generally never expected nor sought.
At one point I had an appearance on the TechTV show Screen Savers with Leo Laporte that looked likely to become a regular spot. Once again, timing -the show was bought up and moved to Los Angeles- made it a one-shot affair. I still occasionally get people who recognize me from the show, which is admittedly somewhat weird.
At this point I did some tech review for a second book, Linux For Non-Geeks from No Starch Press.
During this period an offer to become a volunteer admin for DevArt came into view. In marketing terms, the site is a category killer, and with good reason. In both size and scope, it really has no peers, and I was honored when the opportunity was offered. Initially supporting in services and forum moderation roles, my path eventually led to being one of the Gallery Directors for the traditional categories. This includes maintenance of the actual galleries themselves, creating written content, and generally helping to nurture an online community/social network that is large enough to support a panoply of demographic subgroups, yet still manage to stay coherent as a whole. This requires a sensitivity to legal subtleties related to content, as well as to the ever morphing trends in such a macrocosm.2. Serving one of the longest tenures of any GD, I retired from the role in May of 2008.
I finally went back and completed by undergraduate degree, settling for the more expedient option of a standard Political Science major, as my advisors were wither retired or had moved on to run the University of California Washington Center. During this time I commuted regularly between the Bay Area and Davis, all while maintaining a full time courseload, and full time employ as a Data Control Analyst for a network startup. I completed the degree requirements in December of 2006 with a small sliver of my sanity intact.
I have since become the manager of the Data Control group at said undisclosed ’startup’ (which has doubled in size since),which essentially works as a juncture between product development, software engineering and IT. I manage part of the requirements gathering process for some internal product tools, as well as all software QA, application deployments, documentation and the proverbial herding of many vexatious cats.
I consult to a corporate attorney on issues related to software and content licensing (FOSS). In between all of that, there has also been work on two state level political campaigns, mainly on fundraising and opposition research.
Since graduating from UCD, I have begun a paralegal certification courseload as well as pondering graduate studies or law school proper. Because really, who needs sleep or food?
1. The University of California allows you to create your own major, but the approval process is arduous and in no way do they make it easy for you. However, if you are fortunate enough to get approval, the major then goes on record and future students can petition to have the same major. At the time (late 1990s) a major covering technology policy in the way I addressed it was novel, an while I regret not capitalizing on it then, I am glad to see that the concepts I was fascinated with have become part of more regular discourse.
While I was there, I also spent several months as a research intern for a political opposition firm in Sacramento. It was an experience that was both enlightening and frustrating, as petty office politics took precedence over work product. But that is what I suppose one can expect when you are stuck between a CEO that is a level-headed and erudite academic with strong ambitions and an office manager that was an ideological loon and social inept whose only previous work experience was in catering.
2. Since joining DA, I have been made a member of the established Breed Art Group, the Resurgere Stock Resource Group, and have done a few one man shows at bay area cafes. I have also had my work used at the Anaheim and San Diego stops for the recent BT & Thomas Dolby tour, and done commissioned works for private individuals and currently negotiating to have some portraiture work to appear in a published collection with other artists within the year.
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