Brian Howell

[Brian Howell]

I'm a Mid-westerner by birth. I spent my early years in a small town on the outskirts of Chicago. Think of Norman Rockwell's covers for the Saturday Evening Post. Or the early Peanuts television specials. 

I moved to California in 1970 when my dad took a professorship at Cal. Berkeley was a great place to finish growing up: I spent summers at Scout Camp and backpacked 50 Milers in the Yosemite backcountry. In the winter I cross-country skied. Year-around, I hiked in the many of the close-by Regional Parks, as well as on Mts. Diablo and Tam. And I hung out at the Lawrence Hall of Science, where I taught myself to program computers while I was in high school. (Actually, I had taken a couple of introductory courses when I about eleven; during the second course they told me I had no aptitude for it and refunded my mother's money.) 

I've spent my life in and around technology. I've worked on everything from 8-bit single board computers with 1K of RAM to supercomputers. I starting working with video game developers when I was young, moving on to a graphics and image-processing start-up in my early 20s. Since then I've worked for a variety of firms, large and small, including a stint at Match.com, where I was the company's first technical hire and served as its System Architect during its initial rapid growth. I've also expanded my skills to include technical writing, user experience and interaction design, as well as marketing, sales and operations. 

I love spending time outdoors: I used to sail extensively. I still backpack and hike. And I cross-country ski whenever there's snow—which means not so frequently these past few years. I enjoy creative activities, especially photography. And my wife Kate and I enjoy traveling, going to museums, and a diversity of theater arts: symphonies, opera, plays and musicals.