Update, 2018: See my new improved bio on achangeiscoming.net!
I’m a software engineer / entrepreneur / strategist who spends most of my time in the Seattle area, San Francisco, and cyberspace.. Currently I’m Tech DIVA (Technical Diversity, Inclusion, and Values Advisor) at O.school, and architect at OPTYVA. I also develop the diversity-friendly open-source social network platform TapestryMaker, and consult for and advise tech companies interested in diversity and/or software engineering.
Previous work includes
- running an international 60-person engineering and product management organizations as Senior VP of Products at Accellion
- leading the Ad Astra (Analysis and Development of Awesome STRAtegies) project as General Manger for Strategy Development in Microsoft’s Online Services Group
- creating the static analysis tools PREfix and PREfast as founder and CTO of venture-funded startup Intrinsa (acquired by Microsoft in 1999) and then at Microsoft Research.
- security planning and company-wide culture change with the Windows Security Push and XPSP2 task forces
- co-founding Qworky, a Seattle-area startup developing an intelligent platform for “meetings that don’t suck”, with Mikal Lewis and Sally Abrolous
- co-chairing the Northwest Entreprenuers’ Network’s First-Look Forum pitch competition (with Rebecca Lovell and Rochelle Whalen)
- chairing the ACM conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in a Network Society, where we developed a social network users’ bill of rights
- the National Academies/CSTB software dependability panel Sufficient Evidence?
As a researcher, my overarching interest is re-imagining computer science as a social science. Some of the social science approaches I’ve explored include asset-based thinking, narratology, emotional software, cognitive diversity and evolution, intersectionality, standpoint theories and situated knowledge, oppression theory, action research, and hot pink beanbag chairs. Sarah Blankinship and I applied this perspective to computer security in a succession of papers and presentations. Guys talking to guys who talk about guys looks at diversity-oriented business strategies, communication, innovation, and software experience; Towards Diversity-Friendly Open Source Networks (2014, with Deborah Pierce) and Building Diverse Social Networks (2015, with Lynn Cyrin) look at communication technologies.
With my activist hat on, I was a board member with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee from 2011 to 2014. Earlier, I focused on social network activism as one of the organizers of Get FISA Right; working with Baratunde Thurston and Tracy Viselli on the Voter Suppression Wiki, and a great team of people on Twitter Vote Report; and starting #p2 (the largest progressive hashtag on Twitter) with Tracy. Cognitive evolution and revolution (from the opening plenary at Politics Online 2009), and Social network activism and the future of civil liberties (originally published on Pam’s House Blend) are good starting places; my recent writings on activism page has a lot more links.
As a writer, projects have included poetry on E-luminatus; blogging on Liminal States and occasionally elsewhere; and a novel in progress about social networks, g0ddesses.net.
You can reach me by email at jon@achangeiscoming.net, or social networks via Twitter, Google+, Diaspora *, Facebook, LinkedIn, or free-association.