Personal Bits
I reside in Cary, NC and my wife has me convinced it is a nice place to live for a while. We went to high school together not too far away (Burlington, NC). I’ve lived in some interesting places including Silicon Valley during the dot com boom, Boston (MA) while attending MIT, Oklahoma when I was in middle school, and Manchester, England for a study abroad during my undergrad days.
When it comes to technology, I’m religiously agnostic. It is rare to find technologists that can talk intelligently about the pros and cons of different operating systems, programming languages, vendors, applications, etc. without being overly biased to one side. I certainly prefer some technologies over others, but I try to let requirements dictate solutions instead of my own personal preferences.
I’ve worked with a variety of technologies, but have spent the most time with web development (since 1995), enterprise and network management (since 1997), directory services (since 1999), and publishing (since 2000).
Education
I have two graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an undergraduate degree from East Carolina University.
- Master of Science: Engineering and Management
System Design and Management Fellow
MIT, Sloan School of Management and School of Engineering - Master of Science: Information Technology
MIT, School of Engineering - Bachelor of Science: Computer Science (Math minor)
Magna Cum Laude, Honors Program, Graduated in the top 3%
East Carolina University (NC) - Visiting Student: Computer Science
University of Manchester (England)
Publications
I’ve authored or co-authored 10 books with O’Reilly, Apress, and Addison-Wesley and written over 20 articles with Windows IT Pro and the O’Reilly Network.
Public Speaking
Periodically, I speak at conferences on both technical and non-technical topics. Some of the conferences I’ve spoken at include the Conference on World Affairs, O’Reilly’s Foo Camp, Windows IT Connections, and the Directory Experts Conference. See my public speaking page for more information.
Blogs
I update the following blogs on a regular basis:
- Robbie’s Personal Blog - What I’m working on, various events I attend, and other newsworthy items.
- UNC Basketball Update - I’m a UNC basketball fanatic so I decided to become a sports writer.
- StatSheet Blog - Regular updates about new features I release on StatSheet.com.
I no longer update these blogs:
- Robbie’s MIT Musings - My experiences, thoughts, and notes from my time at MIT.
- Publishing Hacks - My thoughts and opinions on the future of technical publishing.
- Active Directory Cookbook Blog - Companion blog to the best-selling book. After the 2nd edition of the book came out I stopped updating the blog.
Awards
- Patent #6,915,309 - “Auto generated replication topology for use by a directory service”
- Patent-pending - “Service locator technique implemented in a data network”
- Patent-pending - “Social Bookmarking based on Network Traffic”
- Microsoft Most Value Professional - Directory Services (2004-2007)
Advisory Roles
I’ve worked with the following companies as a technical and/or business strategy advisor:
- Xobni - Email productivity (2006-2008)
- O’Reilly Media - Publishing for IT professionals (2003-2006)
- Hubspot - Software-as-a-service for ultra small businesses (2005)
- Centrify - Windows/UNIX integration (2004-2005)
- Netpro - Directory Services (2002-2005)
