Gavin Andresen

Current positions

Code Monkey Gravity Switch

I joined Gravity Switch in 2004, and work on complex web development projects (mostly in PHP/MySQL). I wrote a lot of the code for the custom content management system behind the Isenberg School of Management and UMASS Student Affairs websites.

Chief Technical Officer All inPlay

In January of 2001, I joined All inPlay, creating online games that let the blind and their sighted friends and family socialize and play together over the Net. I still work for All inPlay part time, keeping the game servers up and running and doing game development (in C++, with web-side stuff in PHP/MySQL) as All inPlay's finances permit...

Educational Background

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science
Princeton University, 1988

Previously in Gavin's career...

Lead Engineer HearMe

I lead the creation of the VoiceCONTACT 1.0 and 2.0 products for HearMe. VoiceCONTACT was an innovative product that makes it easy to initiate a VOIP (voice-over-the-internet) conversation by simply sending an email message to the person you wanted to call.

I got tired of telecommuting to California, and decided to leave HearMe in January 2001. HearMe was a victim of the .com bust, and went out of business in 2002.

Head of Development Resounding Technology

Alas, Resounding Technology no longer exists. Resounding was purchased by HearMe in late 1999. Resounding's product, Roger Wilco, is still used by lots of people to talk to each other while playing online games. And it is still being distributed by the good people at GameSpy. I learned a whole lot about voice, audio, and VOIP (voice-over-the-Internet) technologies while at Resounding.

CTO Wasabi Software

Alas, Wasabi Software no longer exists. We made the classic mistake of creating a great product for too small a market. SkyPaint, Wasabi's product, is still being sold and supported by me.

Chief Architect, VRML97

I'm the chief architect of VRML97. I led the Moving Worlds VRML proposal effort at Silicon Graphics; I spent about half of that time working with lots of different people both inside and outside of SGI to come up with a good solid design and proposal, writing it all down and constantly revising it. The other half of my time was spent building consensus-- talking with people about what features they needed from VRML, convincing people that our approach to scalable 3D worlds will actually work, and participating in discussions on the www-vrml mailing list.

I still think that networked 3D worlds are pretty spiffy, but I think that the mistake made by VRML was putting the cart before the horse. I predict that within the next few years one of the massively multiplayer online games will transform itself from "just a game" into a general platform for 3D content on the network. The game developers won't really intend for that to happen, it will just spontaneously occur as soon as one of the games becomes open enough, and generic enough, to support non-game 3D content (like scientific visualization, educational content, etc.).

Author, The Annotated VRML 2.0 Reference Manual

Rikk Carey and I wrote this book to fill the gap between the tutorial books that teach you how to use VRML and the VRML spec, which states only how a VRML implementation must behave. I wrote most of the design notes in the book, explaining the reasoning behind the VRML architecture. I also wrote many of the authoring tips and some of the examples. The book is organized around the VRML spec-- it is the VRML spec liberally annotated with design notes, authoring tips, examples, and diagrams-- and, as one of the three primary authors of the VRML spec, I also wrote much of the spec itself.

Former member of the VRML Review Board

I was one of the eight people elected to the first VRML Review Board (VRB) by the members of the VRML Consortium (now knows as the Web3D consortium). As a member of the VRB, I was responsible for keeping track of all of the work being done related to VRML, and to understand it well enough to make recommendations about it to the VRML consortium board of directors and membership. August 1995 - Feb 1998.

Member of the Technical Staff, Silicon Graphics

I worked at Silicon Graphics for eight years, working on 3D applications, tools, and libraries. I started in a technical marketing group, creating demonstration applications to show off the power of SGI's machines. I then joined the Open Inventor group at SGI, and helped design and implement Open Inventor (the second major release of the Inventor object-oriented programming toolkit). Finally, I was the project leader for the CosmoPlayer PC VRML 2.0 browser. July 1988 - April 1996.

Contact Information

gavin@skypaint.com
Phone: (413) 256-1141

Address:
45 High Street
Amherst, MA 01002