Robert L. Brown

Resume
November 2006

(http://www.openeye.com/rlb/resume.html)

Summary

Strong executive technical management experience, leading software development project departments from 6 to 80 engineers. Recent experience in managing development of Java-based ERP-class applications for retail and manufacturing and previously C++-based multimedia authoring and scientific visualization products. Management at all levels from line to executive.  Strong technical expertise.
Key markets: enterprise web-based applications for retail, marketing and manufacturing, business-user applications for relationship marketing and clienteling, scientific visualization. 
Key focus: product development process, management mentoring, system architecture, research community, application development, release process.
Product focus: customer requirements, usability, ROI. Have managed numerous releases of "shrink wrap," premise-based, and hosted products.
Core values include integrity, cultural consciousness, personal development, and life-style balance. 

Background

I make software development departments work effectively by identifying what blocks excellence and removing it.  I bring energy, enthusiasm, and ownership to the workplace and set an example for my managers and directors on how to get the best from their people.  Under me at Blue Martini Software, the Engineering department matured and grew in expertise to where we are generally recognized as having 100% strong contributors, any of which would be a leader at most software companies.   At Model N, I completed the corporate transition from an infrastructure company to an applications company.  At Visible Path, I launched and lead the project to fully rewrite the hosted application, creating a high performance, scalable, and extensible solution.

Professional Experience

Vice President, Engineering
Vice President, Research & Development

• Responsible for development and release of product versions on the existing code base while simultaneously redesigning and developing the new generation Visible Path service.  Transitioned the team from a Manhattan-based small team to a Silicon Valley + Bangalore moderately sized team to develop the new product.  Set standards for the development process from requirements to implementation.  Transitioned to an R&D role to fill a technical void that was a critical pain point for the company.

Vice President, Product Development

• Responsible for the Product Development department (31 people), include engineering, SQA, and publications.  This is an executive-level position, reporting to the CEO, and entails managing these departments and contributing to the decisions about product direction and corporate management.

Vice President, Engineering (December 1999-November 2002)

• Responsible for the engineering department (75 people).  Special programs include quality improvement, process definition, bringing clarity to the product development process.  Managed through two reductions in force from 80 to 55 and growth through acquisition to 75.  Have introduced numerous process improvements including extreme programming and agile modeling.  Created the Blue Martini Method documenting the entire end-to-end development process.  Also was lead architect for a major new application for customer relationship marketing.
• Blue Martini Engineering is widely recognized in our industry as being a leader in productivity, releasing a major product version every 6-9 months with numerous layered products in between.  We average a release every 5-6 weeks.  The software product has won several industry awards.

Director of Visualization (November-December 1999)

• Managed visualization, UI, and design groups.  Chartered to build the visualization team in engineering.

Manager, Graphics Solutions Software (July 1998-November 1999)

• Managed several projects (unannounced at this writing) in the area of graphics APIs.  This role is a continuation of the Fahrenheit role, described next.
• Managed three announced and three unannounced projects concerning high-level 3d graphics APIs.  The three announced products are Fahrenheit Large Model, OpenGL Optimizer, and OpenGL Volumizer. These libraries implement high-level graphics objects: parametric surfaces and 3D volumes.
• Managed the relationship with Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard as pertaining to the Fahrenheit Large Model library.  Microsoft breeched the contract by failing to implement one of the components and SGI backed out.

Manager, Interactive Authoring Tools, Alias|Wavefront Subsidiary (August 1996-June 1998)

• Initiated new effort to redesign and implement polygon tools for Alias Wavefront's Maya product. Development on Windows NT, and transitioned a Unix development team to Windows NT 
• Managed a team responsible for the development of new tools for game developers; these tools build on the foundation of the Alias|Wavefront Power Animator product. Projects included terrain building, BSP tree generation, HTML reference page generation, etc.
• Release 1.0 of PowerAnimator Worlds went to manufacturing October 20, 1997 and released the following month. Version 1.1 is in beta as of May, 1998.
• Alias Wavefront closed the Mountain View office in June, 1998.  I returned to the parent company, SGI.

Manager and Architect, Firewalker Project (January 1994-August 1996)

• Managed a team that grew from 5 to 15 engineers to design and implement a multimedia authoring tool. In November, 1994, this team split into three groups; I took over one of the three. Specific responsibilities included primary architect, group manager and leader, customer relationships, presentations and demonstrations, coordinating technology licensing deals and joint development agreements, scheduling, and implementation. My engineering team had responsibility for the PC part of the project: the runtime engine based on Windows 95 & DirectX.  The subsidiary, Silicon Studio, was dissolved as a separate entity in 1996.

Manager and Architect, Scientific Visualization Group (January 1990 January 1994).

• IRIS Explorer is a large grain data flow system for scientific visualization that within one half year of shipping had two to three thousand known users.  Explorer was a bundled software product and became a key factor in the sales of many SGI machines across the product line. See http://www.nag.co.uk/Welcome_IEC for the current state of this product.
• Initially, system architect, then managed the team of 8-10 software engineers in charge of development of the IRIS Explorer system. Released three major versions in two years.
• IRIS Explorer has won industry awards and remains in active use nine years after its initial release.

Project Area Leader (August 1987 - June 1990).
Activities included:

• PI on the RIACS Virtual Planetary Exploration project ($290K/year grant, NASA) - Virtual Reality for Planetary Exploration.
• co-PI and author of the Unified Information System project ($250K/year grant, DARPA).
• Design and implementation of the technical program for the Workshop on NASA Workstation Technology (120 attendees).

Research Scientist, (June 1983 - June 1990).

• First core research scientist hired when RIACS was founded, responsible for specifying and building the computing facility and contributing to the design of the short and long-term institute research plan. Continuing responsibility for the research program in distributed heterogeneous systems, workstation technology, and virtual reality

Graduate Student, Teaching Assistant, Graduate Instructor, Research Assistant

• Computer Systems Staff Member, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University (August 1980 to May 1983).
• Research Assistant, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University (August 1980 to July 1981).
• Teaching Assistant, CS 220, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University (June 1980 to July 1980).
• Graduate Instructor, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University (August 1979 to May 1980). Managed a course of 500 students and seven Teaching Assistants.
• Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University (August 1978 to July 1979).

• Member of five-person computer R&D department, responsible for designing, building, and deploying mini- and micro-processor-based process monitoring and control systems

Education

Doctoral Dissertation:
"A Distributed Program Composition System"
Major Professor
Peter J. Denning & Douglas E. Comer

Professional Activities

Member, Distributed Systems Architecture Board (DSAB) (1986 - 1988)

DSAB is a committee initiated by DARPA to oversee the development of a national distributed operating system. Initially, this operating system is MACH developed at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Chairman, DSAB Task Force on Scientific Computing (1986 - 1988)

The Task Force is designed to provide requirements on distributed systems from the scientific computing domains.

Member, DARPA Internet Activities Board (IAB) Task Force on Scientific Requirements (1986 - 1990).

Vice President, Member of the Board of Directors, Sun User Group, Inc., Boston, MA. (1987 - 1990).

Other Activities

1. Sun Microsystems User Group: elected to the Board of Directors by popular election of the membership, 1987
2. Ohio Wesleyan University Student Chapter of the ACM: President, 1974-1975
3. Purdue University Student Chapter of the ACM: President, 1980-1982.
4. Purdue University Department of Computer Sciences: Student Member of Faculty Graduate Committee, 1980-1982. Student Member of Facilities Committee, 1981-1982

Computer Languages and Machines

All popular languages, machines, and operating systems plus many more obscure ones. Most of my early professional experience is Unix-based (created Unix cron in 1979) with C and C++; I managed the first PC application development group at SGI in 1994 and have experience with MFC, COM, ActiveX, Visual Studio. Since then have managed product development on Windows, Solaris, and AIX in a 100% Java/JSP shop.  Have personally built over a dozen PCs from components, and have several networked Windows machines in my home on a LAN with my own domain, serve my own DNS, and maintain my own domain, web and application server on the Internet.  Home applications run on Perl/CGI with MySQL and Jakarta Tomcat and Struts. 

Publications, Grants, Invited Talks, Professional Societies

Available on request.

Personal

US citizen. Clearable at all levels.

References

Available on request.