January 16th, 2005
About Me
Last updated: Feb 12, 2009
My name is Alan Lepofsky. I work in the software biz, speak at lots of conferences, play a lot of sports, love to travel on adventurous vacations, and try to take a few good photos along the way. I currently live in Cambridge, MA, USA, but am moving home to Toronto, Ont, Canada this spring.
I am the Director of Marketing at Socialtext, an awesome Silicon Valley startup in the collaboration and social networking software industry. We make wikis, dashboards, and social networking products. Think of it as Wikipedia + Facebook + Twitter + iGoogle all rolled into one, but for secure use by your company. If you think in terms of buzzwords, its all about Enterprise 2.0.
I studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto, where my thesis was on people's max vO2 capacity. Think of it as the fuel economy for the human body. For each breath you take in, how efficiently do you use that oxygen.
I began my IT career with IBM in 1993 as a coop student, and worked there until June 2008. In my many years at IBM, I focused on several aspects of Lotus Software, ranging from running customer councils and conferences, to product pricing and licensing, to working with business partners, and even on technical architecture. My final position at was working for the head of software strategy, helping think about the future directions that software could go in. As you can see in this blog, I'm a big fan of Lotus Notes, perhaps the most misunderstood software product in history!
I've been fortunate to travel to some amazing places including Israel, Jordan, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Greece, France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and I am sure I am missed a few. I've not been to Africa or Asia... yet!
Outside of work, I try and be very active, filling my free time with a variety of sports. I play ultimate frisbee, try to golf, take spinning classes, play tennis, volleyball, and ski. If I'm going to spend my day at the keyboard, I need to spend my free time keeping my body and soul in shape. I also am a want-to-be photographer, here are some of my photos.
You can reach me either via this blog, or all the popular web 2.0 sites... Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, etc, etc.
