URL: Inter-Spatial Enterprises

Bio:

Sometimes the Blissful Path takes a rather twisted course, but if colorful scenery is the point of the journey then I have been suitably entertained so far. A 1978 graduate of the US Coast Guard Academy, I served as an engineering officer on a sea-going cutter and in a technical design review office before departing the military for the greener pastures (and fewer lifestyle restrictions) of civilian life. Ten years spent in the cube farms of engineering companies hardened me to the ways of the Corporate Beast and provided a close-in view of complex social systems. While my professional expertise was in electrical power systems and energy engineering, I found many functional parallels between the system structures of the engineering world and the interactive structures of the people world. I put these experiences to work as I followed my sports car bliss (1973 BMW 2002tii) to a position of organizing and managing the Driving Events Team for the local 2000+strong chapter of the BMW Car Club. This proved to be an excellent forum for developing interactive human systems as the need to integrate vastly diverse volunteer help required a creative skill that is typically untapped in a homogeneous work environment. The recession of the early 90's forced an exodus from the Cube Mother for a more direct living doing the consultant thing. A natural curiosity about how things work and a pathological desire to make them work better was a perfect fit for setting up and maintaining small office computer networks. This in turn led to bigger office networks, which in turn led to the even bigger network space of the Internet. To me, it is all the same. All interactive networks - machines and people - share a common functional model. It is only a matter of scale. If we can understand and optimize the core model, then we can successfully integrate and energize all levels of the Total Network. My current professional position as the Network Administrator for the California Institute of Integral Studies is a true testing ground for developing resilient networked systems, as the chaos energy unleashed by the merging of seemingly opposite influences - soft/nurturing vs. hard/unforgiving - requires a surgeon's touch and a magician's sleight of hand to mitigate successfully.

Topics and themes for Conference:

Besides being the main nuts-and-bolts techie on the job, I will facilitate a presentation and discussion on the subject of Stupid Webserver Tricks. This will mainly be an introduction to various webserver types and the means available to deliver dynamic and interconnected content to further the overall goals of resilient networked systems and critical information delivery.

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