A bit of background

Personal

I was born in 1978 and was a military brat. My formative primary education took place in Howard County, Maryland. I skipped a few grades and in 1994 I matriculated to The Johns Hopkins University where I started pursuing a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics; neither of which were achieved. In 1997, I received my B.S.E. in Computer Science and entered the Ph.D. program in the Center for Networking and Distributed Systems. 1998 rolled around delivering me my M.S.E. in Computer Science where I focused on graphics and randomized algorithms in distributed systems. I went on to research resource allocation techniques in distributed systems during four years of post-graduate work where in 2003 I was asked to leave the Ph.D. program, but that story is only told after you buy me a beer.

I love food. In particular, I love meat. I thoroughly enjoy a great number of vices including fine scotches, bourbons, whiskeys, beer, wine, cigars and bacon.

I practice Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu ¹ and Ninjutsu martial arts.

Professional

After a very brief stint doing government contracting and watching my soul seep out through my pores, I quit and started my own business.

My mother and I founded OmniTI in 1997 where I was the CEO for 17 years. Two years after starting OmniTI, I was joined by my brother George. In 2008, we spun off a digital messaging company called Message Systems which later became Sparkpost and was ultimately sold to MessageBird. In 2009 we started a company called Fontdeck to bring richer typography to the web. In 2010, we spun off a company called Circonus to change the world of systems montioring to be more data driven.

In 2014, I stepped down as CEO at OmniTI to focus on Circonus.

From July 2015 until March 2016, I took a sabbatical to travel the world with my family.

Industry and Volunteering

I am also @postwait@mastodon.social and you can find me there.

I am very active volunteer with the ACM ² where I am a Distinguished Member and have held or do hold positions on the ACM Professions/Practitioners Board, the ACM Queue Editorial board, the ACM Publications Board, the ACM Digital Library Board, and the ACM Council as an elected Member at Large.

In 2022, I joined the board of stewards of The African Women Entrepreneurship Cooperative.

I wrote a book on Scalable Internet Architectures and content in Web Operations and Seeking SRE.

I’ve spoken at over 100 industry events and conferences. A handful of recorded talks can be found on youtube.

I’ve worked on a lot of open source software: