Howdy! I'm Ronald S Woan, not so mild mannered change agent, systems architect, code slinger and business development methodologist.

I spent part of 2010 fulfilling my bucket list of travel. The rest, I spent with my mother in the hospital until she died recently.

I am experimenting with living life out in the open with social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc...). I mentor entrepreneurs and developers, spend  time playing with technology, reading, blogging, and taking pictures when I can.

My professional interests are diverse: everything from team dynamics and organizational behavior, product management, User eXperience (UX), Agile/Lean Software Development, Domain Driven Design, distributed systems, operating systems, programming languages, to social networking as a platform. It all comes down to tools for making the world better.

I am active in the local Seattle Alt.Net (member of organizing committee for 2009/2010 Seattle Alt.Net conferences), startup, and UX communities. I am a Senior member of the Institiute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and long time member of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM). I am also a certified Kirton Adaption Innovation (KAI) practitioner.

Personal interests include: food (eating and cooking), movies, travel, and community building through social networking.

Until the end of 2009, I was Vice President of Research for Azaleos Corporation, a Managed Services Provider for Microsoft based IT Infrastructure (we monitor and manage your servers remotely). Since I started as employee two in 2004, I was Director of Product Management, Director of Engineering, and Vice President of Engineering. I am most proud of our lineage of High-Availability e-mail solutions and the 4th generation of our systems monitoring and management platform (super scalable, complete ERP for Managed Service Providers, extending Microsoft Dynamics XRM platform).

I am largely associated with my 16 yr IBM career (1988, 1989 - 2004) where I was:

• Founder of the IBM Extreme Blue Innovation and Internship Program
• A Founding member of the Internet Division, Adtech and WebAhead teams
• A lead architect for special events websites including the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, Grand Slam Tennis, Kasparov vs Deep Blue
• A leader of the adhoc team that created IBM's first World Wide Web (WWW) sites and product support sites
• etc... marketing program manager, internal IT specialist, Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) software developer, processor designer