Career Overview: Robert M. Free

[ Software Development | Web Design Awards & Résumés | Contracting ]

Engineering Management, since 1982

  • AEMASS
    VP of Engineering for 3D body scanning - AWS/Cloud, IoT.

  • BELLUS3D
    Director of Engineering for hw/sw development of our 3D face/head scanners, including IoT and 3D Mobile products.

  • NAKED LABS
    VP of Engineering for a 3D body scanner - providing AWS/Cloud, IoT, and 3D Mobile products.

  • MEDCHROMA
    Founder / CTO for an online medical imaging service that converts grayscale CT/MRI scans to color, interactive 3D views on mobile devices.

  • JABICO
    VP of Engineering for a small service developer building AWS/Cloud solutions for companies like Hyundai and IoT video solutions for various production firms.

  • Appscio
    CTO for a video analytics start-up, providing open source solutions for "Actionable Video Intelligence" for government agencies. I provided technical advocacy to investors/partners, drive company roadmap and architectures, establish industry leadership, M&A due-diligence, promote adoption of our opensource contributions.

  • Fabrik
    VPE/Technologist for a small start-up, creating personal media IoT devices. I created a new color space model optimized for visual recognition/compression/seaching/sorting; I designed/implemented our portable DB framework, video/imaging systems, and multimedia/metadata subsystems. Our first appliance was launched under the Maxtor/Seagate brand "Fusion", and was created from start-to-finish by 4 engineers within 4 months. Other projects in progress.

  • Adobe
    Sr. Engineering Manager, responsible for founding Adobe's Application Management Technologies team, a 20+ group of engineers distributed between San Jose and Seattle, with dotted-line reports from our team in India. I drove Adobe's technical initiative to enable Adobe products to share components for enterprise and mix&match suite deployments - instrumental in the creation of Adobe's Creative Suite and DV Suite products. I established Adobe's standard EULA format and review process, while driving the development and Adobe adoption of EPIC - a display interface used by Adobe applications, installers and autoplay interfaces. As an individual contributor, I design/implemented a scalable, distributed image server solution for an Adobe photo-ecommerce project.

  • Club Photo
    Vice President of Engineering. I led the company from a pure B2C play to include a B2B solution for photo-ecommerce and photo-lab affiliate programs, resulting in 500% revenue growth per year. Reorganized engineering, established standards, initiating multiple re-architecture projects to make core technologies more flexible, extensible, scalable and maintainable. Managed multiple engineering groups developing: award-winning, web-based PalmOS photo-applications, photo-ecommerce and automated photo-processing software.

  • PhotoLoft -- Acquired by Canon
    Vice President of Engineering and Production, responsible for the team that created the first web-based B2B eCommerce solution built for photo-personalized products, resulting in a 100-fold increase in eCommerce revenues. Responsible for planning and implementing a company re-org that consolidated R&D, Web Site Development, eCommerce, QA and Technical Support into a single Production group, while establishing cross-discipline Project Management and enhancing the site development process of our industry-leading photo-sharing web community. Responsible for establishing our quarterly Product Road Map. Created a team and process that allowed PhotoLoft to build over 20 custom photo-ecommerce web sites per month. As Vice President of Engineering, I was responsible for improving the stability of our photo-sharing web server array, established scheduled, timely delivery of new site releases, and doubling the size of our Engineering team within months of my arrival.

  • Integrated Software & Devices (ISDCorp) -- Acquired by LynuxWorks
    Director of Engineering, responsible for merging our newly acquired Cirrus Logic Graphics Division - on schedule and within budget. Responsible for newly formed Video & Consumer Devices Division, developing embedded systems for wireless PDAs (WindowsCE & JavaOS), peer-to-peer internet connectivity between consumer devices, and specialized video systems (Microsoft WHQL logo certification). Spearheaded our company focus, developed our product roadmap, and established the foundation for a suite of software products targeted towards peer-to-peer internet image transport.

  • Live Picture -- Acquired by MGI / Roxio
    Director-level manager and Architect for 3D Web Products, where I shipped 7 understaffed applications on time (the award-winning Reality Studio Suite); Program Manager, where I scheduled, spec'd and coordinated R&D, QA, Pubs and Content Development to provide an on-time GM delivery of 4 of those applications (the Reality Studio app, PhotoVista, Object Modeler and our Java Panorama Viewer); Engineering Manager, with R&D, QA and Content Developers as direct reports; I was responsible for designing and implementing pre-alpha versions of two of those applications (the Reality Studio app and Object Modeler). I was instrumental in merging our Scotts Valley and Campbell engineering teams, including developers, QA and content artists.

  • Novell
    Architect and tech lead for engineers on cross-platform networking API's and client/server solutions; Tech lead for engineers developing a cross-platform graphics API. Win3.x/Win95/NT/OS2/MacOS/Unix

  • Netmanage
    Engineering Team lead for Commerce Web Products: Web Server (HTTP/HTML, CGI, ISAPI, SSL) and VRML Server products. Win3.x/Win95/NT

  • Graphcomp International
    Founded GraphComp in 1982, providing software development and seminars to fortune 500 companies such as McDonnell Douglas, DEC, Data General, Baltimore Gas & Electric, and municipalities such as the City of San Bernadino and the County of Santa Barbara. Employed two full-time engineers, one part-time office manager and several consultants. DOS/Windows/VMS/Primos/AOS

  • Grafman Productions
    Founded Grafman Productions as a subsidiary to GraphComp in 1996, providing corporate graphics and web content. HTML / VRML / CGI / ISAPI / Java

  • McDonnell Douglas
    Served as architect and technical lead for engineers distributed in two cities for a high profile McDonnell Douglas project, resulting in two multi-million dollar sales to Pacific Bell and SouthWestern Bell. Responsible for project architecture, implementation of demonstration prototype, all technical presentations and demos, tech lead for initial product implementation, and customer training. VMS/Windows

    Software Design and Development, since 1973

  • Integrated Cloud, IoT, and Mobile Development: Designed and implemented: AWS/Cloud services, shipped several IoT products, and numerous 3D Mobile Apps (iOS and Android).

  • Portable API and Systems design: Designed and implemented: 3D automated cable routing systems used by Pacific Bell, designed and implemented portable graphics, printing and networking SDKs for Novell, 2D/3D CAD and civil engineering packages, internet client/servers, 3D Web authoring applications, multi-branded photo-ecommerce frameworks.

  • Process: Yourdon/Stradis structured design system, AGILE, Extreme Programming.

  • Operating Systems: DOS/Win16/Win32, Unix, MacOS-X/iPhone, VMS, AOS, Primos.

  • Languages: C/C++/Objective-C, Java, ASP/VBScript, Node/Javascript/ActionScript, Perl/Python/Ruby, Fortran, Basic, APL, Forth, Prolog.

  • Assembler/Chipsets: i80x86/7 cpu/ndp, i8237 dma, i8251 uart, i8253 clock, various video, various Texas Intruments chipsets.

  • REST/SaaS/eCommerce Platforms:Node/Express, NT/IIS/MS-SQL/ASP/VB, Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP/Perl, LightTPD

  • Projects: 2D/3D modeling/rendering/CAD/CAE/GIS online services, Photoshop Plugins, scalable font engines, video drivers, optical scanner drivers, automated cable routing and traffic avoidance, 2D/3D file converters, inter-language and inter-platform porting, portable C API and C++ class libraries, internet client/servers, web browser/server, server plugins, 3D web authoring tools, 3D Captcha/authentication, web-based search engines and addressbooks synched to PalmOS PDAs.

  • Graphics: GP-GPU/3D imaging, GDI Internals, XLib clients, video drivers, 2D/3D primitives engines and renderers, dithering and texture mapping, GUI, CAD/CAE/GIS, image processing, optical scanning and recognition, scalable font engines, VRML/WebGL/ThreeJS.

  • Networking: Designed/implemented a cross-platform, multi-transport named pipe API. Client/server protocols: HTTP, FTP, SMTP/POP. Web standards: HTML, JAVA/JavaScript, CGI, ISAPI, VRML/EAI, ASP/VBScript, XML-RPC. Transports: Winsock, UDP/TCP, SPX/IPX.

  • Database: MS SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite. ADO/ODBC/DBI; designed and developed dbi-based perl packages for optimized, abstracted DB objects.

  • Security: PKI, RSA/PKCS, CryptoAPI/OpenSSL, SSL/PCT/HTTPS, web server authentication. Designed/implemented original WinSSL and WinCiph.

    Multi-Media, since 1976

  • Architecture: Trained as an architectural designer; designed several homes and commercial sites near San Luis Obispo, California. Designed/developed/used 3D CAD/CAE/GIS systems.

  • Graphics: Photography, pen & ink, graphite, 2D/3D digital media, animation, video. Corporate identities and logos.

  • Music: Guitar (electric/acoustic), keyboards, sythesizers, sequencers, MIDI, mixing, recording.

  • Web Design: HTML, VRML, JAVA, JavaScript, ASP/VBScript, CGI, ISAPI. Web awards from Point's Top 5% of the Web, C|Net's Best of the Web, Netscape's Best VRML Sites on the Web, The Stock Solution's Top Photo-Design Site of the Week, as well as citations in numerous magazine articles and published books.

    Web Awards:http://www.graphcomp.com/awards/
    Published Works:http://www.graphcomp.com/books/
    VRML Projects:http://www.graphcomp.com/vrml/pics.html
    Animated GIFs:http://www.graphcomp.com/grafman/animate/gifs.html

    Teaching and Technical Support

  • Teaching: Taught APL to graduate math students at Cal Poly. Created and taught CAD/CAE/GIS and programming courses and executive seminars; trained employees of McDonnell Douglas, DEC, Novell, AT&T, Pacific Bell, Baltimore Gas & Electric, City of San Bernadino, Millers Outpost and others.

  • User Support: Technical liason between Unisys and its Japanese subsidiaries, supporting Unix, XWindows and TCP/IP.

  • Sales & Marketing: Technical presentations, product demos, RFI response. Pre-sales and marketing support for McDonnell Douglas.

    Résumés and Additional Information

    Resume:PDF
    Inventions:PDF
    Stats:Performance Metrics
    Read Bob'sPress Releases

    Contact Information

    CONTRACTING:graphcomp.com
    eMail:bfree@graphcomp.com
    Postal Mail:15732 Los Gatos Blvd, Suite 536
    Los Gatos, CA 95032 USA
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