JohnLittle

Revision 16 as of 2006-08-14 12:25:05

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Contact

Email: mailto:johnwlittle@gmail.com

WWW: http://www.johnlittle.org

IRC: JohnLittle on network irc.freenode.net

Ubuntu Memberships

Marketing Team: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam

Ubuntu Video

WWW: http://www.ubuntuvideo.com

Project Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/UbuntuVideo

About Me

Bio from Blogs of War: http://www.blogsofwar.com/about-john-little/

My name is John Little. I’m 37. I live and work in Houston, Texas. I’m a Business Systems Analyst and about 95% of my time is spent dedicated to supporting the ongoing maintenance and development of a web-based application that serves over 34,000 hospital patients. I’m the primary bridge between our project’s technical folks and over 1,200 staff members in 20+ care centers. I have quite a bit of ground to cover so I try to devote 1-2 days per week to making rounds and engaging center managers, nurses, physicians, business center staff, and patients. The work is demanding but rewarding.

I majored in History and Political Science at Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State University, and Texas A&M, but my entire professional career has centered around technology. I started playing with personal computers somewhere around 1979-80 with a Timex Sinclair and Commodore VIC-20. I spent a lot of time online, even then, exploring computer bulleting board systems (BBSs). I even ran my own UNIX-based BBS for a while. I started exploring the Internet sometime in the 80s almost 15 years before the WWW as we know it arrived.

I spent a number of years in aerospace working in and around NASA’s Johnson Space Center for a variety of contractors including Loral, Lockheed-Martin, and SAIC. Notable jobs during those days included serving as a field engineer for the Shuttle Training Aircraft program and later as the webmaster for the Space Shuttle Program Office’s secure global extranet (SSPWEB) via the United Space Alliance Space Flight Operations Contract (SFOC).

I have a bit of an entrepreneurial streak. In the early nineties I was involved in a startup that would have created, actually did create, the first online florist wire service. We spent a few million dollars over a couple of years, had EDS build some really nice software, create customer service centers, bandwidth, and launched successfully only to have the primary partners sue each other into oblivion. I was Vice President of Operations when we finally closed the doors for good.

More recently I co-founded, and served as the CEO, of bAnywhere.com. I’m no longer affiliated with bAnywhere.com but my partner and I had quite a bit of success developing wireless applications for the Palm VII platform. Our customers included Palm Computing, Lockheed-Martin, and the PGA Tour. We developed some really interesting systems, in the brief period that the platform was supported, including the first use of a wireless PDA to send commands to an orbiting satellite and a system that would deliver real-time PGA Tour scores to wireless PDA users.

In my spare time I take on various marketing and public affairs jobs. Recent projects include crafting Internet word of mouth marketing campaigns for companies like Ford and Lincoln-Mercury. I also occasionally take on various national security related (usually) public relations projects.

I started using Linux with the release of Madrake 1.0 around 1998. It's now known Mandriva. I quickly moved to SUSE and used it on and off through the years. It's a great distro. Sometime in 2004 I finally ditched Windows for good.

In February of 2005 I installed the first Ubuntu release (Warty Warthog) for a friend and was so impressed with it that I said goodbye to SUSE and installed Ubuntu a day later. I've been using it, and being amazed by it's progress, ever since.