Reviewer, interviewer and writer. Reviews theatre, storytelling and astronomical art. Interviews actors, artistic directors, managing directors and astronomers.

President.Teaching behaviours and attitudes that have been demonstrated scientifically to make people successful and allow them to make their own luck.As well as teaching "Manufacturing Success", I have also made presentations to various groups about the course. Clients for presentations have included the Department of Finance and TD Canada Trust.Created “Manufacturing Success” course and taught it to small classes in person, over the telephone, and over the Internet.Enabled students to win new contracts, find new jobs in Ottawa, Calgary and Seattle, start new ventures, change companies, and find resources to improve their health.Based course on the textbook “The Luck Factor” by British psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman.Lead and facilitated visionary planning for Third Wall Theatre, resulting in a rebuilt board of directors, new sources of revenue, and award winning productions.Facilitated brainstorming groups within community organizations.

Performance advisor for largest Nortel telephone switches (based on XA-Core platform). Presented the scientific case for XA-Core capacity to a variety of Nortel customers.Delivered the impossible: built a new methodology to convert a single processor telephone switch to run call processing in parallel on a multiprocessor shared-memory system at 6X the speed of predecessor telephone switch. Competitors were telling Nortel’s customers that it couldn’t be done. Enabled incremental sales of $3 billion (U.S.) on a new, high-speed telephone switch. Demonstrated capacity at target of 6X predecessor switch. Final capacity reached 15X.Produced methodology, working with software and hardware architects, modelling experts, and performance tool designers to identify what code to change to reduce shared memory contention, what not to change, and how much call processing throughput would result. Identified the majority of the 25+ million lines of code that did not need to be modified, thus making the project feasible.Presented methodology to an XA-Core User Conference of Nortel customers (including BellSouth, SBC, VoiceStream, Viag, Optus, Sprint, MCIWorldcom, Bell Canada, Qwest) to convince them that Nortel’s wireless and wireline switches would deliver the rated capacity in million-calls/hour to the field.Guided modelling experts to produce results based on must change, bang for buck, and where the time goes criteria. This “outside the box” guidance resulted in peer-reviewed publication of original research.Gained buy-in for methodology from platform and application groups to implement the required changes. Built trust across multiple labs and disciplines by emphasizing mutual benefits. Enhanced methodology to identify real-time bottlenecks in implementation so the hardware and software architects could resolve them.Resolved capacity issues through exploratory data analysis.Identified as critical resource for Nortel (top 5% of Nortel employees).

Software development manager for capacity tools, SS7 software maintenance,Created tools to investigate the conversion of single-processor, telephone switch software to a scalable multiprocessing system.Eliminated release-gating terminal response problem in Nortel Signalling Transfer Point (STP), reducing response time from 40 minutes to less than 3 minutes.Enabled delivery of software release for STP by recovering 4% real-time in STP. As a result, the product returned to the capacity contractually promised to customers.Implemented overload controls in STPs to enhance SS7 network reliability.

Software development manager for overload controls, DMS messaging. Solved capacity issues working with clients like Verizon and BellSouth.Helped specify the software architecture of multiple messaging systems within Nortel’s Digital Multiplexed Switch (DMS) to enable splitting platform and product architectures. This allowed independent development of software in the platform and various product lines.Developed and delivered overload controls for the Sonet DMS telephone switch. The controls coordinated call processing demand between central and peripheral processors. Validated the performance of overload controls via modelling simulation to 5X and 9X the capacity of the switch.Enabled delivery of billing system by reducing customer problems on a reliable messaging transport system for billing records. Reduced the Nortel support required from daily problem tracking to one problem report per quarter.Used visionary planning to coordinate plans among multiple software development groups across two sites.Prepared and presented a two-hour presentation on planning skills for software designers. Gave presentation 15 times to a total live audience of 750. Presentation was then videotaped and the videotapes were used for nine years in four countries.

Software designer for telephone switch overload controls, capacity tools, call processing messaging. Gathered requirements from clients like Bell Canada.Developed a faster packetized messaging system for DMS telephone switch call processing. Packetized messaging speed improved by 20% with zero degradation of call processing.Analyzed customer requirements and built new call processing performance measurements to satisfy those requirements. Identified top priority metrics needed for implementation.Built telephone switch peripheral overload controls to survive demand exceeding 10 times capacity. Worked with a modelling expert to develop and validate proposed control designs. Peripherals remained stable in field overload scenarios for over 14 years.

Software designer for real time communications systems, including an adaptive antenna array, a mobile communications simulator, a spectrum scanner, and a marine radio.Clients included Communications Research Centre, Department of National Defence, and Motorola.Designed and delivered software for a five-processor adaptive antenna array used to communicate with Mach 1 aircraft. This required successful implementation of an algorithm to invert a 4X4 complex matrix in less than 1 millisecond.

Developed a graphics editor for animation on a minicomputer when state of the art ran on mainframes.

Developed sample survey methodology for Government of Canada surveys, including the Labour Force Survey.