User:Rkentjames:Who am I

I'm primarily interested in text classification (such as spam marking) and collaboration technologies applied to Thunderbird. I live in Redmond, Washington (no relation to Microsoft). I'm working part-time in Russia as a consultant with UNDP, though you might also say that I'm partially retired.

In my college years (BS and MS Engineering UCLA 1976, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering Stanford 1980) I was quite the programmer, doing mostly number crunching at UCLA and data acquisition at Stanford. I worked for a few years at research at Weyerhaeuser (doing mostly instrumentation, but a little number crunching) until I left to start my own instrumentation business in 1984. At that business (called Quadtek), I did instrumentation, circuit design, optics, and everything else as is typical of the entrepreneur. Oh, and a couple of large programs for embedded instruments, one in assembler and one in C. I sold that company in 1997, at the time we had 50 employees.

From 1997 - 2006 I had a slowly increasing involvement with the country of Azerbaijan, primarily as a result of contacts through my church. I moved there full-time in 2002 to start two businesses, both under the name of Seabak. One was a computer support business, providing network and helpdesk support for foreign companies. A second was a manufacturing company (which never really made it). I returned to Redmond in December of 2006. Since then, I've started the consulting with UNDP in Russia, plus am trying to cure my house of 20 years of neglect. I've also studied various aspects of language processing, including speech processing, which got me interested in statistical methods. My businesses have always adapted ISO-9001 principles, so I also think in terms of business processes and quality control.

I care about spam primarily because I see it as a way to fight evil. I care about collaboration because I'm amazed how badly we still do it, yet it is core to everything I've ever been involved with as a manager. I also went through the Lotus Agenda -> Ecco phase, and am still amazed at how effective Ecco can be as PIM.