Seattle, Washington, United States
I have been working in the software industry since 1976 when I started working part-time at a computer store while still in high school. Since then I have worked at a variety of large and small organizations, served as VP of Engineering for a startup, worked at Microsoft and Amazon, and worked on my own. As the Chief Evangelist for the Amazon Web Services, I get to tell the AWS story to audiences all over the world. I talk, I blog, I record videos, and I spread the word via social media. I am a strong believer in continuing education and recently earned my Master's Degree in Communication and Digital Media from the University of Washington.
According to my colleagues, "Jeff's super power is distilling complex technical product capabilities into crisp, clear, and accessible prose that resonates with our customers. A secondary superpower would be Jeff's relentless customer obsession focus in his interactions with our service teams." I am closing in on 3000 blog posts for the AWS Blog, and expect to hit that milestone later in 2018. I record What's New videos in our studio each week, and regularly speak to customers in our Seattle Executive Briefing Center (EBC).
My main work product is the AWS Blog which I have been writing since the fall of 2004. I work with the product teams to create interesting, informative, and technically accurate blog posts to highlight the latest and greatest AWS offerings. I have written over 2,500 posts (well over a million words) and currently average 1 finished post per calendar day. In the spring of 2013 I planned and executed an AWS Road Trip. Over the course of three weeks I drove 5,550 miles and spoke to cloud computing enthusiasts in 15 cities across the United States. I made extensive use of social media on this trip, including a daily blog (generated by Octopress and hosted on Amazon S3), time lapse videos, tweets, and more. I am also the host of The AWS Report, a video show that gives me the opportunity to interview AWS customers, along with business and technical leaders from within the company.
At Amazon I focus on making developers aware of our Amazon Web Services. I also work with tool and application vendors to create Amazon-centric demos and sample code. I'm a frequent conference speaker, and am always looking for opportunities to tell folks about our services.
Re-ignited Vertex Development to focus on my consulting practice. Focus areas include interim positions as VP of Engineering or CTO, due diligence for startups, technology evaluation, software development, and internet applications. In conjunction with AMP Capital Partners, evaluated startup teams, business plans, and technologies with an eye to possible funding. Provided post-funding guidance and temporary management. Other consulting customers included KnowNow, eByz, Imprev, Fouger-Pratt, NextPage, Utilis, and BlueStep.
Responsible for the architecture and detailed design of all HTML and XML editing features for Visual Basic.Net including WYSIWYG design view, HTML source view, CSS Editing, schema-driven XML validation, and IntelliSense statement completion. Evaluated competitive products and wrote comprehensive specifications. Worked with development, quality assurance, and user education teams to plan and meet a schedule. Developed and maintained a relationship with the Internet Explorer team for the supply of dependent components. Organized and led weekly team, SWAT, and dependenent component meetings. Demonstrated the product to internal and external groups. Prepared and presented at the VBITS conference. Designed and implemented the multiple selection feature for Internet Explorer 5.5. Former duties included Development Lead for the DHTML Editing Component, Development Lead on HTML Editing on Visual InterDev 6.5, and Development Lead for the DHTML Page Designer feature of Visual Basic 6.0.
Consulted for a wide variety of organizations including Caldera, J.P. Morgan, Diner's Club, Arbor Text, Visix Software, MTI, Software Emancipation Technology, and the Hurwitz Group. For Caldera, ported the Looking Glass and Looking Glass Advantage products to the Linux operating system. For Software Emancipation Technology, prepared an innovative 20-page white paper describing a complex software engineering tool, in 3 days. Wrote a brochure for the REENGINEER/SET product. For MTI, debugged and enhanced OASIS/RLM, an existing Galaxy application. In a subsequent project, produced a comprehensive infrastructure design for the user interface of a next-generation enterprise backup product. Created a web-based shared editing system to allow geographically disparate offices to collaboratively edit and review a specification, then used this system to gain consensus on a complex specification.
Planned and led the development of 3 major releases of the Galaxy Application Environment on 5 platforms. Defined the product, generated a competitive analysis and built the development team. Authored corporate marketing materials including brochures and white papers. Worked directly with strategic customers to gain an appreciation for product requirements. Personally authored the Resource Manager. Designed a set of database extensions to Galaxy. Designed and built Looking Glass Professional, a complete Unix desktop environment. Worked with OEM hardware and software vendors to customize and port the product to their platforms. Participated in industry standardization efforts including the X Consortium, the IEEE, and the Open Software Foundation.