About Me

I am an enterprise data architect and developer with a focus on NoSQL and strategic consulting services. I have an undergrad degree in Physics/Computer Science from Carleton College and a Masters Degree in EE/CS from the University of Minnesota.

My first job was as a VLSI circuit designer for Bell Labs. I went on to work in the Supercomputer Industry (ETA Systems) doing UNIX development and then I went to work for Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer. After that I started my own custom software development firm with over 75 employees.

Around 2000 I started to do heavy message-oriented integration work using XML for state and federal data exchanges. I work extensively on GJXDM and NIEM standards. I found that most of the problems were due to lack of shared semantics so I did quite a few years of research on ISO-11179, semantic web, OWL and RDF. In 2006 I got my first exposure to native XML databases and XQuery. I have been a big fan of NoSQL and functional programming ever since that experience. I co-founded the NoSQL Now! conference with Tony Shaw in 2011.

I am very interested in helping organizations take advantage of NoSQL solutions and empowering non-programmers to build and maintain their own web applications.