Hi, I'm Robert. I'm a technologist who lives and works in Fort Collins, Colorado.
This is my personal site, which I use to host my CV and a few bits of information about myself for the interested. Contact information can be found by scrolling down a couple of pages. Here's what you'll find here:
When not working, I enjoy hiking, biking, and just enjoying Colorado's beautiful mountains, and, of course, spending time with my family. I write some and develop software for pleasure and profit.
Philosophically, I believe software should be as small as practical to get the job done, should make few assumptions about the user (that can't be proven true), and should ultimately provide some compelling utility. I also believe the economic models around software development and delivery are in serious need of some tweaking, and the agile methodologies are the best hope we currently have for fixing the worst of the problems that are endemic in professional software delivery.
On the Feb 28, 2009 episode of the totally awesome NPR radio news-quiz show Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!, I was lucky enough to be a listener-contestant. I've grabbed a copy of the show and am hosting it here. I'm about 34 minutes in. And yes, I won my game, so I am the proud owner of Carl Kasell's voice on my answering machine. The limerick I wrote myself—I thought it fitting since I won on the listener limerick segment.
I'm grateful that in my career to date I've had the chance to do a lot of interesting and challenging things. And every time out I learn a little bit more. I've been a coder, an architect, a pro-from-Dover consultant, a CIO, a project manager, Scrum Master, an agile coach, and nearly everything else you can be in software development. I've written parsers, compilers, device drivers, and lots and lots of business applications. I've written in C, C++, C#, Java, Ruby, Oracle-ecosystem, Microsoft-ecosystem, Python, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, and even some mainframe-flavored dialects.
I've architected numerous systems from the modest to the 5-nines enterprise-class system. More to the point, nearly every system I architected I also got to lead the building of, which has done a whole lot to keep my architectures honest. Glib-but-not-thought-through answers have a way of coming back to haunt you, and I'm glad I've always had organic forces at work to keep me from grabbing easy but insufficient answers off the stack.
I've designed, built, tuned, assessed, and refocused software delivery organizations, from individual teams up to entire shops. I tend to gravitate towards the pragmatic in these engagements, focusing on building what's needed in the near-term while planning for the middle- and long-term to preserve a wide array of future options.
I've spent a lot of my professional life consulting, which includes reviewing proposed system designs, evaluating technical designs and other foundational artifacts, and conducting after-actions and post-mortems on system implementations.
Currently I'm doing consulting under the auspices of Wales Consulting Group LLC. You can find my contact information on my resume or on my contact me page. Drop me a note if you've got a horribly exciting challenge that you think I can help with.
