Bill Hilf
General Manager |
Bill Hilf is the general manager of Windows Server Marketing and Platform Strategy for Microsoft Corp. In this role, Hilf is responsible for global marketing of Microsoft’s Windows Server products and leading Microsoft’s platform strategy efforts. The Windows Server marketing organization includes the teams for the Windows Server product portfolio, platform virtualization technologies, high-performance computing and storage solutions. The platform strategy organization includes the Microsoft Open Source Software Interoperability Initiative, which works together with Microsoft technology development teams and the open source community to build interoperable solutions.
Before joining Microsoft, Hilf led IBM Corp.’s Linux/Open Source Software technical strategy at a worldwide level for the Emerging and Competitive markets organization. Before joining IBM, Hilf was vice president of Engineering for eToys, where he helped build one of the premier e-commerce businesses on the Web. Previously, he worked as a software architect for multiple Silicon Valley-based software companies, such as CNET Networks Inc. and Black Sun Interactive. Hilf is a graduate of Chapman University Graduate School.
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Sam Ramji
Director, Open Source
Software Lab |
I started out on the Commodore PET 16K in the 70s, upgraded to one with a built-in tape drive (that was cool at the time!) and finally crawled into the 80s with a ZX Spectrum 48K. It’s hard to remember whether I started playing games or programming first – and sometimes they were intermingled, hacking up existing games and learning silly tricks like PEEK and POKE to change the characters in a Dungeon Hack clone. Since then I’ve used Pascal, 68000 assembler, C, LISP, CLOS, C++, Java, VB, JSP, Javascript, VBscript, DCOM, J2EE, and 4GLs and macro languages that I’d much rather forget. I still game often but haven’t written production code in several years – lately Rise of Nations, World of Warcraft, Civ IV and DDO, whenever the lab team isn’t smoking me at UT 2004 (served by a dedicated Linux server in the lab). I’ve been paid to write client, client/server, distributed, and web applications. I spent many years criticizing Microsoft and then was offered a chance to put my money where my mouth was and contribute to changing the company … so here I am, working in Redmond and having a wild time. Hank and I get along because we can agree on one thing: C++ was the best language ever – because using well it made you feel awfully clever ;) |
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Bryan Kirschner
Director, Platform Community
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My first IDE was a hand-me-down IBM flowcharting template from when ANSI X3.5 was still in draft, a pencil, and construction paper. Building on that auspicious beginning in elementary school, I accumulated a degree in philosophy from Yale University, spent several years applying a passion for statistics and operational research to policy analysis in the public sector, then joined Microsoft in 1999. At Microsoft, I am the Director of Platform Community Strategy, having previously built a primary research team in the Product Support organization and crunched numbers in the Finance organization. |
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Anandeep Pannu
Senior Program Mgr. |
I came to computers late, in my final year of my Physics degree, when my father got me a Casio programmable calculator with BASIC on it. I have never wanted to do anything but software since! After undergraduate/graduate studies in Computer Science I pursued further studies at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon. The courses I took involved cognitive science and computer science and I gravitated toward distributed AI and machine learning. I ran the Distributed Agents Lab as the research project manager at Carnegie Mellon for a number of years.
I always liked building stuff and during the “dot com” boom decided to strike out on my own, building a 250 person company that did B2B software as a co-founder and CTO. I liked the startup life so worked on a couple in the Web services and SAAS arena before an old buddy convinced me join Microsoft. At Microsoft I gravitated towards research oriented stuff, working in the HCI/Search area before coming to the Open Source Software Lab.
I love working here – not only do I get paid to work closely with cool technologies and cool people but I get to pontificate and interact with the OSS community & bring their concerns to the Microsoft world. Someone pinch me!
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Hank Janssen
Group Program Mgr. |
I have been working with UNIX and Later Linux and Other OSS for about 20 years. I started working at AT&T and did a lot of kernel programming and worked on the SYS V process scheduler used for Digital Telephone switches (5ESS). While working at AT&T I designed a globally distributed database system before people knew what they where. Utilizing such golden oldies as uucp and rje. In the early and mid nineties I was the lead programmer and designer on a Point Of Sale system that did real time cell phone activations for Sprint. The first anywhere in the US. It was solely build on and with OSS software. Most of my career has been spend in applications development, data manipulation and database design and development. For the last 7 or so years I have mainly worked as an Architect for large (and small) cellular telephone companies. Virtually all of the work I have been doing has been in or with UNIX, Linux and OSS related areas. Favorite languages remain C/C++ and favorite editor is still Emacs :). Since there is a lot of FUD on both sides, I am hoping that my contribution at port 25 will be a bridge between Microsoft and the OSS community.
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Tom Hanrahan
Director, Linux Interoperability |
Tom works as the Director of Linux Interoperability, and heads Linux/Windows interoperability work, including leadership of the Microsoft/Novell Interoperability Lab. This development lab undertakes much of the engineering work involved in the multi-year technical partnership with Novell. Tom brings 30 years of engineering, management and community development experience to this effort – and the larger Microsoft community. Prior to joining Microsoft, Tom was the Director of Engineering at the Linux Foundation where he was responsible for managing a variety of technical initiatives. Earlier in his career, Tom led IBM’s Linux Technology Center in Portland, and spent 11 years at Sequent Computer Systems in the early days of SMP (symmetric multiprocessing).
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Jamie Cannon
Open Source Community & Platforms Lead |
My first interaction with computers was in 1989 when I recieved my first IBM x86 PC...I want to say it was an IBM Ambra. DOS prompt and all, I was hooked. Years later, I would scare my parents and alienate friends by taking them apart, upgrading parts and generally spending unhealthy amounts of time disecting the operations of the machine. When a friend of mine setup a T1 line and SGI Irix machine in 1995 (for his business), I was quickly hooked on the power of the Internet. Before joining Microsoft in 2003, I spent the intervening years getting my IT degree from New York University and freelancing in web development during the .com years. |
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Mario Madden
Open Source Research and Policy Lead |
I started out to be an electrical engineer in 1987, took a couple of interesting turns through liberal arts academia and ended up a lawyer. After that, while I kept my interest in technology (mainly through gaming), I drifted away from the technical details. I certainly never thought I’d end up at a technology company. But after several years in the law, I needed a different challenge, and what could be a bigger challenge than championing Microsoft in the open source community. I love working here and being part of the team that is making a difference at this company. I’m also enjoying becoming reacquainted with the technical aspects of computing. Turns out, things have changed a bit since I last seriously played with computers in the ‘80s
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Brett Shoemaker
Open Source Business Lead
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After receiving a bachelor of science degree in business from Wake Forest University, I set out down the technology career path but quickly got sidetracked and ended up spending several years in management consulting. Determined to get more involved in technology, I returned to school and pursued my MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. At Microsoft, I provide an open source perspective to business planning as well as provide research support to the Open Source Software Lab. |
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Paula Bach
OSS Research Intern |
Paula is a fourth-year PhD Student in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. Her research interest is open source software development and HCI. Currently, at Penn State, she works in both the Computer-Supported Collaboration and Learning Lab. She is also working with the Open Source Software Lab and Microsoft Research in the Human Interactions in Programming group to understand the integration of usability in open source software engineering. Her research will provide a framework for designing a tool in Codeplex that helps support usability activities. She holds a BA in English and Psychology from UBC and a MSc in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University. At Penn State she works with a multidisciplinary team of professors with expertise in HCI, software engineering, sociology, and instructional systems.
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Jon Rosenberg
Director, Shared Source
(Jon is still at Microsoft, but has moved on to a new role) |
I started using personal computers right after college, while teaching junior high school math in the Virgin islands. PC’s were mostly a curiosity then. Many schools felt that they ought to have a couple, but they weren’t quite sure why. So, our school’s two computers mostly sat in the vault. Yes, the vault. They were the most expensive moveable objects that our school owned. Without any real competition for use of these two machines, I was able to spend most of my preparation time, lunch time, and even some class time, teaching myself to program while simultaneously teaching my students how to use and program these machines. It wasn’t long before I became convinced that the PC was the most important thing to happen to education since the invention of moveable type, and that was before the Web, waaayy before. A few years later, after some serious formal education in both Computer Science and Curriculum Design, I founded an educational software company that was later purchased by a bigger educational software company. Early in 2004, after 9 years at Microsoft, I was offered a job with a team of determined and courageous individuals who wanted to start experimenting with open source development at Microsoft. “My kind of challenge, exactly,” I said, and after a few experiments on SourceForge, we were off and running. We wrote open source licenses that our legal team could love, we found another group of courageous individuals at Microsoft who were willing to build CodePlex for us, and we set about training people around the company how to do open source development. I’ve always thought that the more you learn, the better life gets, and this job is no exception.
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Kishi Malhotra
Senior Program Mgr.
(Kishi is still with Microsoft, but has moved to a new role)
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I started my work with Technology in 1986 as a student of science in north India. By 1989 I was working as a software tester on XENIX based Telegraph Switching Systems. My passion for high-end technology and the curiosity surrounding it brought me to the United States in 1989 to pursue higher studies. I completed my Master’s Degree in IS from Syracuse University in 1992 while working as a Lab Technician and a part-time instructor. My first job out of college was in Connecticut where I spent the next 10 years as a technology consultant for a VAR (Value-Added Reseller). For several years, I was worked on commercial Unix solutions such as AIX/RS 6000, HP Apollo/HP-UX for Sikorsky Helicopters and Smith and Wesson, respectively. Somewhere in-between I was deploying Netware and Notes solutions at Duracell, Black & Decker etc. By the time it was 1997 I was asked to work at Pfizer as an Infrastructure Architect to help design, manage and operate their Microsoft based Datacenter environment. I spent little over four years at Pfizer and that remains to be the place where I got a full flavor managing a “mission-critical” environment. My last gig on the east coast was working as a Standardization Architect tasked w/ interoperability and streamlining disparate infrastructures, storage solutions and platforms at United Healthcare. I moved to the west-coast and came to Microsoft in January 2003 to pursue my passion for high-end Datacenter Management Technologies and Platforms, working with the MSN Operations Team until November of last year. That’s when I started working for the Microsoft Open Source Software Lab. I find myself in a very unique place and position and thrive on the dexterity of the environment I am working within. Outside of work, my two amazing kids, a drop-dead gorgeous wife, sufi music and eastern philosophy is what keeps me going through this mystery….
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