Cool Person of the Day

There are very few companies in the technology sector that invest heavily in research and development anymore.  Ironically, for an industry that has seen the greatest growth come from spontaneous invention, the computer and consumer electronics markets have stopped investing as much time, money, and resources on pure discovery.  While most big businesses in the technology sector work to refine already-existing technologies, Intel continues to innovate.  Leading the software development efforts of Intel is Renee J. James.

Renee J. James serves Intel as one of the company’s Senior Vice Presidents.  James acts as the General Manager of the Software and Services Group, which is a key division of Intel.  Intel, which develops advanced computer hardware, relies upon the Software and Services Group to ensure that the hardware they create in the laboratories functions with the dominant software platforms on the market.  In some ways, Renee J. James works as a corporate ambassador between Intel and every major OS and software provider in the world!

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With technologies changing very fast, popular companies absolutely need the best possible advertising to survive.  In fact, the corporate strategy that a company devises to survive changes or remain dominant in a given field may be useless if they are not able to properly express that strategy to their customer base.  With the move toward digital media (downloads) over physical media (DVD, Blu-Ray discs), companies like Netflix have been struggling to adapt.  Or, rather, Netflix would be struggling were it not for the effective efforts of Leslie Kilgore!

Leslie Kilgore is the Chief Marketing Officer of Netflix and she has served the company since 2000.  Kilgore is credited with much of the success of Netflix in terms of winning over the American people on the concept of a mail-delivery DVD service.  As Chief Marketing Officer, Kilgore was responsible for the advertising campaigns that launched Netflix into the collective consciousness and made Netflix into a serious competitor to traditional video rental chains, like Blockbuster Video.  Through her tireless efforts, Netflix surpassed Blockbuster as the primary video rental service in the United States!

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Regardless of what one may think of 3-D movies, 3-D technology is undeniably cool.  Visual effects may only be one component of popular movies and television works, but it is an increasingly important component.  Visual effects are also created more and more through the use of computers.  A significant number of the computers used to create special effects for blockbuster movies and popular television shows run Autodesk.  Carl Bass is the CEO of Autodesk.

As CEO of Autodesk, Carl Bass is responsible for developing and marketing the Autodesk tools to keep them the industry standard for special effects.  Infatuated by 3-D effects, Bass recently made many Autodesk 3-D applications free to Autodesk users.  By increasing the availability of the 3-D tools, Bass hopes to keep Autodesk dominant in the market.  So far, his plan is working quite well.

Bass came to Autodesk when Autodesk bought his first company, Ithaca Software, in 1993.  Having marketed HOOPS, an important 3-D software, for Ithaca Software, Carl Bass was a great asset to Autodesk and was part of their interest in the smaller software company.  Carl Bass ascended from Executive Vice President of product development to Chief Technology Officer of Autodesk.  When Autodesk promoted Carl Bass to Chief Operating Officer, Bass developed his abilities at worldwide marketing and marketing.  From there, he was the natural choice when the Board started looking for a new CEO.

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Internet humor is, arguably, an acquired taste and it is certainly dominated by youth!  Because young people tend to be fickle, staying with something only so long as it is trendy, many Internet humor sites and Internet humor phenomena are not enduring.  They rise up, the novelty of their form of humor captivates an audience and then the audience dissipates and the contributors go on to the next big thing.  One of the real exceptions to that cycle came from the creative mind of Sherrod DeGrippo.

Sherrod DeGrippo is the creator of Encyclopaedia Dramatica and, before you go looking for it, don’t bother; Encyclopaedia Dramatica is no longer on the Internet.  The site closed down in 2011, but what makes Sherrod DeGrippo so impressive is that she almost singlehandedly held together the perverse, edgy and often disturbing Encyclopaedia Dramatica for seven years.  That makes Encyclopaedia Dramatica one of the biggest successes in Internet free speech and Internet humor yet.

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In the current economic climate, it is hard to imagine that the profession of “inventor” still actually exists.  There are so few companies that invest in pure discovery and so few tinkerers who can afford to devote their time to projects that may take decades to pan out.  But inventors still exist independent of any corporate structure and one of the coolest contemporary inventors is Stephen Kurtin.

Stephen Kurtin is a bona fide inventor who has spent almost forty years puttering around.  In the process, he has made some significant inventions and improvements on other people’s work.  Kurtin graduated from MIT in 1966 with concurrent S.M. and S.B. degrees in Physics.  After receiving a Howard Hughes Doctoral Fellowship to Caltech, Stephen Kurtin studied Applied Physics in California, amid the boom in transistor and microchip discovery.  After earning his doctorate in Applied Physics, a world of opportunities opened up to Kurtin.

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There are few job sectors where women are overlooked for hiring, promotion, and leadership roles compared to their male counterparts as in the technology sector.  Despite intense gains in social equality in the legislative arena, concerted efforts to provide computers specifically to impoverished girls, and rising test scores for girls in math and science, jobs in the technology sector have remained scarce for women.  But because the Internet has helped women to network, the barriers to women in the technology sector may be broken down.  If they are, it will be in no small part thanks to Carolyn Leighton.

Carolyn Leighton earned her bachelor’s degree in human development at Pacific Oaks College.  In her studies there, she became passionate about women’s rights, specifically in the workplace.  An expert on the gender gap and the glass ceiling, Leighton’s studies revealed to her a profound inequity in the treatment of women in the technology sector.  As a businesswoman, Leighton was baffled at how slowly women were making progress in companies responsible for computer development and electronics manufacturing.  Having had several successful businesses since college, Leighton was building Criterion Research when she conceived of the International Network of Women in Technology.

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Internet social networks are still a relatively new phenomenon and as a result, programmers, businesspeople and the public do not yet fully understand the nature and impact of them.  For sure, Myspace, Facebook, and Google+ have all grown and attracted people to them, but there are few people who understand why.  To unravel this great mystery of why people use Internet social networks and how to retain users, there is Paul Adams.

Paul Adams is fascinated by sociology and studied social media on the Internet as it developed.  Adams holds a Bachelor’s degree in Design in Industrial Design and he earned his M.S. in Interactive Media.  Armed with those credentials, he initially entered the workforce as an industrial designer.  As a free agent, Paul Adams designed car interiors for Faurecia and he designed the vacuum that became Dyson’s best-selling vacuum in Japan!

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Internet videos have made overnight celebrities.  Most of the viral videos that have launched obscure people into the collective consciousness of popular culture have resulted in a very fast rise and fall for the subject of the video.  In fact, there are very few subjects of Internet viral videos who have had real success following their peak popularity in a viral video.  One of the few to actually have a successful career following their viral video’s inevitable flameout is Amber Lee Ettinger.

Amber Lee Ettinger grew up as a dedicated student who was deeply interested in fashion.  After high school, she was accepted to New York City’s prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology, where she began to study fashion and clothing design.  At that point in her life, she wanted to be an entrepreneur and design her own clothing line.  After a brief stint on the beauty pageant circuit – she was Miss NYC in the Miss Hawaiian Tropic pageant – she set her sights on the performance arts.  Ettinger appeared in a music video for the John Popper Project and appeared on a very popular segment for the Internet show The Onion News Network.

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The rise of video games on smartphones and tablet computers has led to many changes in perception about video gaming.  People who used to despise video games now make Gardenville and Angry Birds exceptionally popular.  With the change in both attitudes toward video games and the rise of untraditional video game platforms comes the need for new business models.  One of the new attempts to make money off these new forms of gaming comes from Roy Liu.

Roy Liu is a co-founder of the new company GimmieWorld.  Liu is also the company’s Chief Technology Officer.  GimmieWorld is the innovative new site that rewards video game enthusiasts for trying new games on their mobile computing device or smartphone.  Liu’s idea for the platform was to have incentives for trying new games and GimmieWorld provides points to users for trying new games.  Those points may be redeemed for freebies both within the games and on the emerging GimmieWorld site.  To lure more developers to GimmieWorld, Roy Liu has illustrated a strong connection between mobile computing customers and giveaways that gives developers a real incentive to try the new service.  As a developer himself, Roy Liu recognizes the importance of getting your product in front of the intended consumers and his GimmieWorld provides that service for emerging mobile video game developers!

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A few years back, Microsoft had some legal troubles.  The U.S. government decided to aggressively pursue the Microsoft Corporation for antitrust violations.  This resulted in a restructuring of much of the way Microsoft does business and as Microsoft progresses past that dark chapter in its corporate history, it is once more growing steadily.  The results of the government probes and prosecution would have been much worse, had it not been for Mary E. Snapp.

Mary E. Snapp is the Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel in the Law and Corporate Affairs branch of Microsoft.  She specializes in providing legal advice for the Products and Services Division of Microsoft.  As Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the vital Products and Services division, Snapp oversees 150 lawyers working to protect Microsoft’s legal claims for some of the most widely-used Microsoft products.

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