User Conference 2001 Presenter Biographies

Richard Baum, Perforce Software

Biography

Richard has been working with computers since 1978. In that time he has had the chance to work with numerous operating systems and platforms.He has worked in various consulting and support roles at Lehigh University, Ingres, Lucent Technologies, and other companies. He is currently a Technical Support Engineer at Perforce. When not busily answering customer calls, Richard likes to travel with his wife and children.

Jeff Bowles, Piccolo Engineering, Inc.

Biography

Jeff has a varied background: he has done Unix kernel development, tech support for C compilers (and the people who use them), porting work, and sings as a tenor in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. He's a Perforce Certified Trainer and Consulting Partner, and is available to bring Perforce courses to your company.

Robert Cowham, Vaccaperna Systems, Inc.

Biography

Robert has been working in software development since 1984 including several years on the continent (European that is). Roles ranged from project manager, programmer, designer to making the tea. He came across Perforce in early 1997 and liked it so much he became one of the first two Perforce Consulting Partners. One of his main interests is the Japanese martial art of Aikido - and a paper on "Configuration Management as a Martial Art" is in the works!

Sandy Currier, Release Engineering, Inc.

Biography

Sandy earned a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in1986. At his first job, he determined SCM and release engineering was his career calling even though this entailed hacking CVS 1.2, Perl4, and GNU 1.76 makefiles. Sandy then implemented several ClearCase installations for Boston based companies before eventually becoming a release engineer for Atria Software itself, using ClearCase to release ClearCase. He soon thereafter discovered the power of changesets. Sandy then joined True Software, the supplier of TrueChange, a changeset based SCM tool. Using TrueChange to release TrueChange, he once again embarked on the automation of the release process. At this point the idea of a release engineering product took hold, and he founded Release Engineering Inc. to create such a product as well as to consult in the area of SCM. With the growing success of Perforce, Sandy has found himself over the past few years consulting primarily on Perforce.

Richard Geiger, Perforce Software

Biography

Richard has spent the past couple of decades or so doing mainly release engineering work at the likes of NEC Information Systems, MIPS Computer Systems, Ultra Network Technologies, General Magic, and Network Appliance. At Network Appliance, Richard became aquainted with Perforce, and spearheaded the process that led to Network Appliance's selection of Perforce as its SCM platform. Most recently, he decided that he liked Perforce so much, he joined the company, in the new position Open Source Engineer at Perforce.

Peter Jackson, Symbian Ltd.

Biography

Peter is a software architect working on software production processes at Symbian. A system manager and developer by background, he joined Psion in 1994 and became part of Symbian when it was formed in 1998. In 1999 he was part of the team responsible for introducing Perforce into the company and organizing the accompanying process changes and training. Configuration management is now his key role.

Gareth Rees, Ravenbrook

Biography

Gareth studied Computer Science at Cambridge University, specializing in the theory of object-oriented programming languages. He worked at Persimmon IT, Canon Research Europe and Philips Research Centre before joining the consultancy firm Ravenbrook Limited.

Stephen Vance, Steller Advances

Biography

Stephen has filled a variety of roles (application developer, Web developer, product manager, systems administrator, process guru, consultant) in a variety of application domains (CAD/CAM, EDI translators, virtual reality, 3D simulation, manufacturing metrology, content delivery networks) over the last 11 years. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science, a B.A. in Linguistics and several technology certifications, including being a Perforce Consulting Partner. He strongly believes that process without purpose and justification doesn't make for a healthy development team, and our use of tools should address risks in our environment.

Lorna Williams, Perforce Software

Biography

Lorna is a Technical Support Engineer at Perforce. Her background is in Computer Engineering but she has spent most of her career in Technical Training. She has taught UNIX, SQL, HTML and other proprietary software to mainly technical audiences over the past 10 years. She's from Ireland but we promise you'll be able to understand her.

Laura Wingerd, Perforce Software

Biography

Laura is the Director of Product Technology at Perforce Software. She currently leads the P4Web development project, and continues to work with customers in her role as Perforce product expert. Her mission is to reveal the power and elegance of Perforce to everyone.