Professional Purpose

I strive to be constructive, just, and articulate. I also attempt to have higher expectations for myself than do others. I question both my own and society's implicit assumptions when I can identify them in hopes that I might come up with a better way to do things. I focus on building relationships - with my colleagues, clients, friends, and contacts, having found that the lines that divide them are often blurred, and that the value of personal esteem can never be overestimated. I do not want respect that I have not earned.

Both my professional (and personal) behaviour is guided by a few observations:

• openness, especially communicating expectations effectively, minimises stress in all business dealings and personal endeavours
• being worthy of trust is of real value, and is easy once you commit to it
• esteem can only be earned and respect only given
• if you expect more from yourself than others do, they will rarely be disappointed
• focus on quality and attention to detail are habits worth forming
• the product of passion and skill is preferable to the product of money and skill
• if one focuses on doing the best job, financial reward is a pleasant byproduct

Business maxims which I question (and think are detrimental to good business relationships) are

1. you get what you pay for
2. all's fair in war and business
3. IP protection at all costs

The first is untenable in the face of zero cost open source software - and even more valuable than its low price tag is the fact that it's also free as in freedom - part of the global information commons. The second implies a lack of professional courtesy, and denies the fundamental social contract - to uphold the basic principles of honour and fair-play required by a free market. The last, IP protection, while it does have its place in a few contexts, is anathema to creativity and passion in most: it hinges on making ideas scarce.

The economic concept of "scarcity" describes a situation in which a limited resource is divided among a group of competitors. For one to increase his share, another must lose to compensate. But the business world is attempting to manufacture scarcity in a context where there is no limit to the resource: the distribution of ideas. If I have an idea, be it a poem, a song, a story, an algorithm, and I share it with others, I in no way dilute its inherent value to me. It does not, for example, cost a radio station more if many more people tune in than normally would. If anything, sharing information increases its value as people turning it over in their heads add their own perspectives, opening the door to the refinement of ideas and "cross-pollination" - applying an idea well understood in one context to another where it might help to solve a new problem. Moreover, ideas can be infectuous - if a group of people develop a passion for an idea, the sum of their aligned efforts will be vastly more constructive than the sum of their individual effort. Such is the power of "culture". It is this refinement and cross-pollination possible in an open culture that I strive to achieve in my own dealings, encourage in other, and foster in my sphere of influence.

Professional Experience

• Co-founder, co-director, and shareholder of the Effusion Group Ltd. - February 2002 to present. The Effusion Group is made up of 4 "foundation member" companies - Aphid, iOpen Technologies, ZYPE, and Egressive - and a number of associate companies. Its purpose is threefold:
  1. to provide an umbrella company for our Open Source/Open Standards focused IT/Software cluster in Kenton Chambers, Central Christchurch.
  2. to broker larger software/IT projects for industry: hand picking specialised teams of technologists, designers, and writers, from among the highly skilled and business savvy individuals who have built the foundation and associate member companies which make up the Effusion Group.
  3. to provide IT services to other companies in Kenton Chambers and in the emerging Liverpool Street "technology and design" precinct.
• Coordinator of the Openz Open Letter to NZ Parliament and interim coordinator of the nascent Openz Kiwi Open Source Vendor Group - November 2001 to present. In addition to advocacy to government and the NZ business on the value of open source software and the importance of open standards in computing, I also provide ongoing webhosting and content for the Openz portal website at www.openz.org.
• Co-founder, director, and shareholder of OpenStrategies Holdings Ltd. - April 2000 to present. In addition, as director of Egressive Limited, I wrote the original software, "Sextant", and am providing the development services - through my company Egressive - for the second version of the software, now called OpenStrategyTM being sold and supported by a new company (of which I am also a shareholder), OpenStrategies Ltd.
• Founding member of the Centre for Advanced Computational Solutions (C-fACS) - April 1999 to present. This research centre is affiliated with Lincoln University.
• Founder and Director of Egressive Limited, Christchurch - September 1998 to present - Egressive Limited markets, builds, and supports business computer system solutions based on the Open Source (free) Linux computer operating system. These systems provide a host of services, all customised for the specific requirements of the client site, including file serving, web serving, VPNs, and other communications mechanisms to small to medium sized businesses in New Zealand. Egressive also provides comprehensive web application development services building on a variety of open source technologies, as well as customised scientific software development, and general Linux-related computer consulting services.
• TechLink Consultant - November 1998 to present- Registered with the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST), one of New Zealand's primary government funding bodies, as a technology consultant. Eligible to provide government subsidised consulting services to help business clients minimise risk when considering technological research and development.
• Information Technology Manager, South Island Office - August 1997 to February 1999 - Employer: New Zealand Forest Research Institute, Ltd. Private Bag 3020, Rotorua, New Zealand. Official recognition of de facto position held in addition to independent research duties (see below) since January 1997. In charge of small Novell based local network and, to augment its limited capabilities, lobbied for and then constructed a Linux-based TCP/IP network. The TCP/IP network provided Internet access, firewall security, POP3 email service, Usenet news and www proxies and caching for all 20 researchers and staff at the Ilam, Christchurch (campus of University of Canterbury) office.
• Research Scientist/Software Engineer - May 1996 to February 1999 - Employer: NZ Forest Research Institute. Primary developer of TreeGrabber, a computer vision system for measuring and assessing the geometry and quality of felled tree stems on forest skid sites. Responsible for software and hardware design. Software implemented in a Linux/X Window System environment in C/C++. Included full Graphical User Interface (GUI), photogrammetric, image matching, signal processing, and feature recognition algorithms. This is a continuation of work started during Research Fellowship below.

  Publications:

  Lane, D.C., Xin Tian, and G.E. Murphy. "New Developments in Stem Feature Recognition using Machine Vision." Proceedings of the LIRO 98 Forest Technology Seminar, Rotorua, NZ. November 1998.

  Lane, D.C. and G.E. Murphy. "Towards An Automated Tree Stem Description Using Machine Vision." Proceedings of Digital Image & Vision Computing: Techniques and Applications, Australian Pattern Recognition Society (ASPRS), Albany, Auckland, NZ. December 1997.

• Visiting Scholar - May 1996 to January 1997 - University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA in the College of Forest Resources. Collaborated with forestry related software developers in the Cooperative for Forest Systems Engineering while continuing work on the NZFRI TreeGrabber computer vision system.
• Research Fellow - October 1994 to May 1996 - Employer: NZ Forest Research Institute. Initiated work on TreeGrabber project during this trial appointment.

  Publication:

  Lane, D.C. and G.E. Murphy. "A multi-image digital photogrammetry tool for tree stem geometry and quality assessment." Proceedings of IVCNZ95, Image and Vision Computing NZ Conference, Lincoln, NZ. August 1995.

• Independent Consultant - January 1995 to February 1998 - providing services to Christchurch businesses seeking Linux system administration as well as software acquisition, custom development, installation, and system configuration. Specifically development of usage tracking and billing software for Internet Service Providers using Linux systems.

Education

• Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (MSME), August 1994, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Areas of study: axiomatic design theory, computer modeling and simulation, graphics programming, image processing and photogrammetry.
• Bachelor of Science in Physics, May 1992, Haverford College, Haverford, PA 19041, USA. In addition to a full physics curriculum, areas of concentration: fluid instabilities, computer modeling.

Other Relevant Experience

• Independent research, June 1992 to September 1994, for masters thesis involving image matching, photogrammetry, remote sensing, and image processing. Advisor: Dr. James Fridley, Forest Engineering, College of Forest Resources, University of Washington. Research funded by a grant from the US Forest Service.

  MS thesis title:

  "A Prototype System for Step-Wise Close-Range Digital Photogrammetry and Automated Terrain Reconstruction."

• Research Assistant, June 1992 to September 1994, Advisor: Dr. James Fridley. Conducted experimental flight tests of a helicopter mounted camera boom for use in close-range stereo aerial photogrammetry. Designed (full plans in AutoCAD), documented, fabricated, and tested a video camera mount for use with the boom. In addition, successfully acquired a Supplemental Type Certification for the camera boom (designed and manufactured by NZFRI) and video camera mount assembly from the US Federal Aviation Administration.
• Research Assistant, September 1991 to May 1992, Advisor: Dr. Jerry Gollub, Haverford Physics Department. Performed independent research in fluid dynamics, specifically an experimental study of surface wave interactions in a small four-fold symmetrical non-square cell. Developed software (in C on a Solaris platform) to provide ray traced graphical simulations of shadow graph output of the experimental system.

  Undergraduate thesis title:

  "Surface wave interactions in a non-square four-fold symmetric cell."

  Publication:

  Crawford, J.D., J.P. Gollub, D.C. Lane. "Hidden symmetries of parametrically forced waves." Nonlinearity 6 (1993) p. 119-164.

• Research Assistant, May to August 1991, Advisor: Dr. Lyle Roelofs, Haverford Physics Department. Performed research on condensed matter physics model using Monte Carlo computer simulations. Developed system for graphically representing output using open source NCSA image processing software for the Macintosh.

Computing Skills

• System administration: 10 years experience with Linux administration, including network, hardware, application, development support. Specific experience with Linux based NFS, firewall (ipchains, iptables, IPSec), webserver (apache), ftp server, and mail server (qmail and postfix) configuration.
• Development: Extensive experience on the Linux platform, including "make", compilers (GCC) debuggers (DDD/GDB) and CVS (Concurrent Versioning System).
• Operating systems: Linux (and other Unices, e.g. SGI Irix, Sun Solaris), MS-DOS/Win 32, Macintosh, VMS.
• Programming Languages: C/C++ (and the TrollTech QT cross-platform libraries), PHP, Python, Bash, Awk, and some Javascript, Java, Pascal, and Perl.
• Other Development Expertise: SQL Databases - MySQL and PostgreSQL, W3C Markup - XML, XSLT, XHTML, CSS1+2, some XUL and DOM.

Communication

• Written presentation: I consider myself to be an effective communicator in the English language, writing both for technical/scientific and popular audiences. My writing related to Open Source advocacy has been featured by a number of internationally recognised technology news sites, and I am frequently contacted by journalists both in NZ and abroad for my views on open source related topics. Examples of my writing are available at the Openz site, a site for Kiwi Open Source Vendors, for which I developed both the software framework and the majority of the content. Examples of my less serious writings can be found here.
• Oral presentation: I am comfortable and experienced with public speaking in front of both technical and non-technical audiences. I have been invited to speak on a number of occasions to groups on the subject of Open Source Software, including two meetings of the NZ Computer Society, the SoftEd software developer conference (Wellington, 2002), and a number of academic groups.
• Languages: In addition to fluent (Kiwi and American) English, I have a reasonable reading and speaking knowledge of German.

Other Activities

• Founder and owner of PileDriver Productions, June 1994 to July 1996. Manufacture and sales of production quality pruning shears. Primary customers were plantation forestry pruning contractors, the USDA Forest Service, and the US Department of Natural Resources. Also production and manufacture of several pruning accessories.
• Freshman Orienteer, 1989-1990. Lived with Haverford College first year students, acting as a mentor and support person.
• Student Resource Person, 1990-1992. Trained as a crisis support person at large for students at Haverford College.
• Co-founder of The Service Department,1993-1994, a Seattle, Washington-based group of volunteers who organised and performed various activities for the benefit of the community.
• Counsellor at "tripping camp" Flying Moose Lodge, located near Ellsworth, Maine, USA. After several intense, growth-inspiring, cherished summers as a camper there in my teens, I spent the summer of 1989 working as a councellor and trip leader taking groups of boys, aged 10-16, on 4-day to 2-week wilderness canoe and tramping expeditions in the hinterlands of northern Maine. A spectacular experience.

Interests

Ultimate frisbeeR (a fast paced field sport played with a "flat ball"), volleyball, schtick, singing and guitar - founder of a men's a cappella singing group "Splunge" at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, USA, and more recently the Possum Brothers (you can download some sample recordings), freestyle-from-scratch cooking, aikido, photography, sketching in pencil and charcoal, writing, backpacking, canoeing, cycling, and sailing, among other activities. I also enjoy a good meal (favouring spicy asian cuisine), intelligent films, a pithy book, and a proper coffee. I'm also pretty heavily involved with the Christchurch swing dancing (lindy hop, collegiate shag, charleston, balboa) scene. Most recently, I've hooked up with 4 others to start 3kg, the soon-to-be-legendary Christchurch funky/swingy/croony musical extravaganza.

Personal

Immigration: I am a US citizen birth (February, 1970), and a naturalised kiwi (dual NZ/US citizen as of 13 November 2003). I have been a permanent resident of NZ since 1996.

Status: I am unmarried, self-employed, an ardent non-smoker, in good health, and I believe in looking both ways before dodging traffic.