I’ve been avoiding the ‘about me’ post until I first contributed some content to this blog. I didn’t want the inaugural entry to tell you what an interesting guy I was, only to be followed by the dead silence that comes from having nothing else to say.

But now that I’ve written a few entries, I’d like you to read them. And if I expect you to take interest in my writing, it’s only fair that I tell you a bit about me.

Like Eric Sink, I’m not a software legend. I haven’t written any books. You probably haven’t heard me give a talk. I don’t live in California or Washington. I live in Wisconsin. Yes, Wisconsin.

But if your home contains an item from the largest consumer products company in the world (Pringles, Puffs, or Tide to name a few), know that I helped design and construct the software that moved that product off the production line, through the warehouse, onto the truck, and into your local retailer. The next time you reach for the Charmin, think of Terski. If you own a pair of shoes with a swoosh on them, it’s possible that they were conveyed, sorted, and packed by software that I helped design, build, and deploy (along with this guy).

I spent the first era of my software career building logistics execution software for big clients. In those days I learned hard lessons about performance, scalability, and reliability. Nothing says, “Your software sucks,” quite like a stream of boxes falling off the end of a conveyor or semi-trucks backed up for two miles waiting to be diverted to the right dock door.

During this time, I got excited about the Booch notation – and later the UML. I thought these design notations were a key to advancing software engineering’s state-of-the-practice. Ironically, core development team for Rational Rose was located about two miles from where I was working at the time (yes, in Wisconsin). When I found this out, I got myself hired by Rational and began the second era of my career.

I spent the next few years working on Rose and its successor, XDE. I liked being at Rational and worked with some great people. But admittedly, I grew somewhat disillusioned with the UML and the efficacy of the modeling tools of the day.

So in 2002, I started the third era of my career when I co-founded Serlio Software with three of my colleagues from Rational. I’ll spare you the sales-pitch, but at Serlio we’re passionate about software engineering and the .Net development platform. My current technical interests include service-oriented architectures and rules-based systems (a.k.a. rules engines).

I’ll blog about these topics and more. I hope you’ll stick around.