About Me

I'm a passionate geek, who loves software and technology. I like to dive deep, understand existing tools/APIs, data flows, customer use cases and issues to develop end-to-end solutions that will help the customer succeed.
I have an engineer's mind, a developer's background, and 16 years of experience juggling multiple hats in startup and advance development group environments as both a senior manager and hands on contributor. I recently returned from a six year, round the world, sailing adventure where my focus shifted from developer to consumer. I saw my friends struggle with technology and cringed as management of their website/blogs and photo updates became a chore instead of something fun to do. I couldn't help myself, so hacked together various APIs and RSS/JSON feeds to develop an integrated Blog/Photo/Mapping solution for our sailing blog.
The gap between technologists and main stream users has widened while I was gone and I would like to help close that gap. It kills me that the thing that brings so much joy to my life (and occasional frustration) is so misunderstood and underutilized by others. After my return I targeted my exploration at the large gap that exists between technologists and "mainstream users"  with respect to social media tools, APIs and methods. I've been engineering various solutions to help companies engage online that are targeted to their unique situation of products and customers. I understand the benefits of social media because I have experienced them (See World Traveling Sailors: The Most Bizarre Social Media Example?).
I enjoy the challenge of solving complicated problems: from developing software to integrate the electrical and mechanical design functions across Ford, their suppliers and manufacturing facilities which resulted in the world's first electro/mechanical design synthesis tools, to designing complex algorithms that model next generation device/processors for Intel used to analyze prototype designs for signal integrity, ground bounce and EMI effects, to planning an independent self-funded  6 year round-the-world sailing trip including the tools to communicate and share the experience. The latest challenge has been evaluating all the social media tools and flows to help clients and friends/family deal with the ever changing mess we seem to be creating for ourselves by attempting to become "more efficient".
I'm a self-motivated, enthusiastic and customer oriented product manager/design engineer who thrives in a fast-paced environment that encourages creativity and use of problem solving, design analysis, and interpersonal skills. I enjoy helping people and businesses solve the puzzles in their endless struggle to keep up with changes in technology.
If it doesn't exist, I'll build it .. If it exists, I'll try to make it better, easier, more accessible and useful to a broader customer base.

Are your hiring or looking for a great teammate? My Resume, a little more about me (other posts) and my LinkedIn profile are available online.
Feel free to contact me with questions, comments or ?. If you are in the Massachusetts area and want to connect, check out my tungle.me and plancast pages. My google profile contains all my webosphere links but I'm much more fun to meet in person because passion doesn't always translate online.

A perfect example of Google's backwards thought process

Find your favorite locations faster with personalized search.

"Now, if you're signed in with your Google account and have Web History enabled, personalized suggestions can make searching easier and faster by showing you suggestions based on past searches.

via google-latlong.blogspot.com

This seems like a pretty cool feature, but what happens if you don't have Web History enabled? When Google launched this feature they also removed an existing "Saved Locations" feature that long time Google customers had been using to build a database of saved locations to manage their business, driving direction etc. Needless to say those customers are pissed off that they received no notice or automatic option to migrate from old to new (update: six months later there is no improvement and the browser based form history is still broken).
A Google employee replied "We're looking at the Personalized Suggestions tool, and how we can update it to meet the needs that were filled with Saved Locations." Wait a minute, Google is just doing this now? They removed an old working feature and added a different one that is only enabled when web history without thinking about this first!! The good news is you can extract a saved locations KML file (after some serious prodding) which can be used elsewhere including Bing maps.

Passion is the secret but does it translate?

I'm in a unique situation where I don't have to work [1]. Ok, maybe at some point I need to do something so I can justify a couch for our little freecycle decorated apartment and I wouldn't mind upgrading our wine from two buck chuck to something in the $5 range. But I'm making a conscious choice to dig deep in my search to find something I can be passionate about and I want to take full advantage of this opportunity.
If you ask anyone who knows me or has met me in person, they will tell you that I am passionate. If asked to describe me in a single word I bet 95% would say passionate even without a picklist. Yet I think passion is very difficult to recognize in today's hectic real-time 140 character world. The subtle nuances of emotion visible during a face-to-face conversation are hard to detect through the web, especially if they've already scrolled off the bottom of the page or get stuck at the bottom of the inbox. Energy, excitement and passion seem to get lost in the digital conversion to 0s,1s and ABCs.
The last time I wrote a resume and interviewed for a job was 20 years ago and I'm struggling with ways to show my passion in this digital age. Bits and words fly before our eyes in record quantities, how do you make them stand out?

World Traveling Sailors: The Most Bizarre Social Media Example?

The other day I was invited to take part in a brainstorming session as the "social media expert" (notice the quotes). I was introduced by my friend as a past colleague who had just finished a 6 year, around the world, sailing adventure and no one laughed.. but I'm sure more than one team member was wondering how the two were related. If you take a newbie with a full inbox, an already overloaded schedule and stick them in front of the social media firehose I guarantee you will create a skeptic. I used social media throughout my trip to make life easier and free up valuable time and resources, not just because somebody told me I should.

A little background.. I'm an electrical engineer who switched to software after I realized the incredible leverage I could gain by developing it. I could create a library of components for CAE tools, typing them in by hand, or I could write an awk script with some csh pipes to accomplish the same result adding re-usability, creating flexibility, and increasing efficiency. I was hooked and I never turned back. My experience ranges from customer support to developer to VP of engineering services all within start-up or advanced development organizations where customer interaction is critical. As part of my reintegration I've spent a lot of time evaluating the tools and data flows used with social media, then it hit me.. it's really NOT new to me!

The Social Organization: Achieving Swing

The management lessons are particularly applicable for the networked world. Yes, skill is critical - you can't win without it. Strategy is also critical so that you all know what the goal is and how you're all going to get there. But ego, in-fighting, and people that want to win at all costs? That kills swing.
It is better to agree and execute a sup-optimal decision collectively than to have a team of rockstars that all want to convince people to do it their way - even if each one of them is a genius.  That reality has huge implications on hiring, performance management, and leadership. It changes our ideas about what it means to be competitive. However, swing is so powerful that it can overcome strength and natural advantages.

via thesocialorganization.com

Swing is an amazing feeling that really can't be described to someone who hasn't experienced it. Everything just clicks and effort/energy seems to be transferred without friction. Crew is an amazingly competitive sport. You push yourself to the limit, compete against each other for seats in the boat, and then get together as a seamless team to do battle. I still remember those cold early morning workouts and all the powerful lessons they taught me.

Two days of Google Goodness: Geo + Wave Hackathons

New York Geo Hackathon Friday Nov 20th
I've been using Google's geo products and APIs for a large portion of our Sailing Trip, so when I read about the NYC Geo hackathon and that it was on the same continent, I had to go!! It was a long day starting with a 4am wake up to drive to the 5:45 train from Providence to NYC (luckily I had Google maps to help).
Although I didn't really learn anything new about the APIs, I had a great time talking with the other developers. You have to realize that I've been living in a virtual "geek vacuum" for the past six years. All of my interactions have been through online forums, my sailing friends typically glaze over at "click the Start Menu". I selectively demoed my sailing blog with integrated geoblogs, blurbbits and automatic interactive maps. I was actually a little bit surprised about how much I knew about the various Google products and APIs. I found myself helping others with their issues/projects..

• "Use a Google spreadsheet as the map data source" ..
• "I would use the chart APIs to map your data"..
• "Static maps are better for that"..
• "use the data APIs" ..
• "map your geotagged calendar entries"..
• "use the Map Bridge to control 3D flash maps with javascript".

I even got to talk in detail with one of the developer advocates from Google, Roman Nurik. I realized it's a lot more fun to brainstorm when you get to bounce ideas off other people.

Friendfeed please don't go away..

This started out as a "simple" comment to Robert Scoble's post The second life of friendfeed.
I still use friendfeed to "play around" with ideas about how I want to interact with the web, as both a content consumer and provider. Nothing I've found (yet) can replace friendfeed's functionality, easy to explain "common interface" (WRT to twitter/feeds) and the simplicity/flexibility of their embedded pages and widgets.
Before the Facebook merger and the mass exodus, Friendfeed revolutionized the way I interacted with the web. I looked at the comments of the people I respected before I visited the site/page that was being discussed. For me, real-time search has nothing to do with friendfeed's value (I actually use FF paused). I love the focused search capabilities (title, user, # of comments and groups/lists). Come on how cool is that ..as long as you actually have content/comments to search?