John O'Duinn

John O'Duinn Email and Phone Number

Strategist, Author and Mentor @ Release Mechanix, LLC
United States
John O'Duinn's Location
United States, United States
About John O'Duinn

As a computer guy, I'm comfortable with high stress, high ambiguity situations and have written code and led teams in organizations ranging from four person startups to non-profits to multinationals - including in the US Government as part of the U.S. Digital Service in the Obama White House.In addition to technology, I love fostering a culture where diverse groups of humans work well together in a distributed global workforce. I've worked in distributed teams for 32 years, led distributed teams for 17 years and coached/mentored fast-growing distributed companies for 10 years. So far, I've lived and worked in 13 cities across four continents.My book "Distributed Teams: The Art and Practice of Working Together While Physically Apart", was first published in 2018, with an expanded, fully updated second edition published in January 2021. This practical easy-to-read business management book covers essential practical mechanics of how to work in and run distributed organizations, as well as the wider diversity, environmental, urban planning and community renewal benefits of distributed organizations. I helped write the State of Vermont’s 2018 “Remote Worker” law – a very different approach to Economic Development which was so successful that it has become the model followed by other jurisdictions. I also advised on the State of California’s 2021 Telework Policy. I consult, give testimony, help draft bills and write policies for jurisdictions worldwide.

John O'Duinn's Current Company Details
Release Mechanix, LLC

Release Mechanix, Llc

View
Strategist, Author and Mentor
United States
John O'Duinn Work Experience Details
  • Release Mechanix, Llc
    Strategist, Author And Mentor
    Release Mechanix, Llc
    United States
  • Internal Revenue Service
    Senior Advisor
    Internal Revenue Service Apr 2024 - Present
    Washington, District Of Columbia, Us
    Helping make things better. One day at a time.
  • Release Mechanix, Llc
    Strategist, Author And Mentor
    Release Mechanix, Llc Apr 2012 - Present
    Advise jurisdictions on telework policies and distributed economic development initiatives — including providing strategic briefings, testimony, coaching and helping draft policies/memos. Advise and mentor distributed companies dealing with "remote issues” as well as streamlining how they rapidly grow teams, technologies and processes. This includes fostering a distributed leadership culture with hands-on practical training and mentoring - while also building internal processes and technical infrastructure that scales.* Wrote “Distributed Teams: The Art and Practice of Working Together While Physically Apart”. (1st ed 2018; 2nd ed 2021). * Advised on and provided testimony for the State of Vermont’s “Remote Worker” law (2018). This new approach to distributed economic development was so successful, the initiative exceeded the four year goals in only 5 months. This initiative has since become the economic development model followed by multiple other jurisdictions within the USA and internationally. * Advised on and provided testimony for the State of California’s Telework policy (2021). This focused on long-term, wide-spread telework-at-scale as a way to measurably help reduce climate impact of commuting, improve workforce DEIA hiring and retention.* Provided testimony, strategic briefings and ran workshops for government agencies in the US (Vermont, California, and various Federal agencies) as well as internationally (Spain, Canada and Australia).* Presented at national/international associations and institutes, including: National League of Cities, NetHope.org, actiac.org, apolitical.co, Metropolitan Information Exchange, Society for Information Management, WhiteHouse Leadership Development Alumni, UCBerkeley Haas School, Georgetown University Beeck Center, and the Harvard Kennedy School National Preparedness Leadership Initiative.* Co-founded Upwork’s US Military Veterans Group.
  • Dumpling
    Advisor
    Dumpling Feb 2017 - Present
    Berkeley, Ca And Seattle, Wa, Us
  • Gsa
    Senior Advisor
    Gsa Apr 2022 - Apr 2024
    Washington, D.C., Us
    Helping make things better. One day at a time. Some projects I worked on were covered in the press.
  • Civicactions
    Senior Strategist
    Civicactions Jan 2018 - Apr 2022
    Lafayette, California, Us
    CivicActions is a professional services firm providing design, technology, consulting, and training services to government clients. Founded in 2004, CivicActions has no physical office and is 100% distributed. * Resolved human, technical and operational issues for multiple mission-critical client projects at a range of State of California and US Federal agencies. These projects involved teams from different stakeholder organizations working together with overlapping yet different definitions of success. These projects involved hybrid technical work, connecting existing mission critical systems in on-prem data centers with other systems being created and hosted with commercial cloud vendors.* Helped create and lead the Distributed Government practice area in CivicActions. This included providing strategic briefings, policy advice, leadership mentoring, consulting and creating training offerings for various government agencies. At a tactical level, this included helping clients update internal processes and modernize technical systems to support long term “telework-at-scale.”* Advised California’s Department of General Services and the Government Operations Agency on updating California’s telework policy before and during COVID-19. Publicly announced in October 2021, this includes the first live telework dashboard to track effectiveness of the new policy. Testified at California’s Little Hoover Commission.* Advised leadership at multiple federal Canadian government agencies on policies and leadership issues unique to telework-at-scale during COVID-19. Led workshops at Canada’s Institute on Governance.* Program Chair “Evolving The Workforce”, American Council for Technology - Industry Advisory Council (actiac.org)
  • Code For America
    Consulting Engineer
    Code For America Feb 2017 - Nov 2017
    San Francisco, Ca, Us
    Resolved human, technical and operational issues to ensure Code for America’s products scaled gracefully as user load increased.* getcalfresh.org helped people enroll for SNAP/EBT/FoodStamps online, faster then with previous paper-based process.* clientcomm.org helped case managers and parole officers interact with pretrial clients and parolees to measurably reduce parole violation rates.
  • United States Digital Service
    United States Digital Service
    United States Digital Service Apr 2016 - Jan 2017
    Washington, Dc, Us
    Resolved human, technical and operational issues within large distributed systems to improve operations of various federal government agencies. Some projects I worked on were covered in the press:* https://www.wired.com/2016/07/inside-the-obama-tech-surge-as-it-hacks-the-pentagon-and-va* https://medium.com/@USDigitalService/new-tool-launches-to-improve-the-benefits-claim-appeals-process-at-the-va-59c2557a4a1c#.ormn9a2fj* http://fedscoop.com/usds-launches-app-to-improve-va-claims-appeals
  • Hortonworks
    Director Of Release
    Hortonworks Jan 2014 - Feb 2015
    Santa Clara, California, Us
    Hortonworks helps develop Apache Hadoop in the open source community, and also provides enterprise-grade support to customers running mission critical “big data” systems. Fixed human, infrastructure and cross-group process problems impacting Hortonwork’s ability to support customers within contractual SLAs, as well as fix mechanical issues in advance of the IPO in December 2014.Created infrastructure and cross-group processes to accept code changes from Apache community members, both inside and outside of Hortonworks, and then reliably build, test and distribute those changes to customers. These same processes and infrastructure also needed to handle emergency fixes for customer issues on production systems - all within the time limits of our contractual support SLAs.Fixed, streamlined and productized infrastructure so other Hadoop companies could share ongoing development work, and ongoing code fixes, with each other as well as the wider open-source community. This involved me evangelizing the idea with internal strategy, sales and engineering stakeholders, pitching to potential clients, reviewing contracts with internal legal teams as well as external clients. This strategically important project was announced publicly in January 2015 as the "Open Data Platform Initiative" (odpi.org) and marks the first time in my career that Release Engineering became a profit center, instead of a cost center.As part of these responsibilities, I built and led a globally distributed Release Engineering team of 9 people in 4 cities in 3 timezones.
  • Mozilla Corporation
    Director Of Release Engineering
    Mozilla Corporation May 2007 - Dec 2013
    San Francisco, Ca, Us
    Fixed human, infrastructure and cross-group process problems impacting Mozilla’s ability to ship products in a timely manner and stay relevant in the market.My responsibilities included infrastructure and automation for build, test, and release of all Mozilla products, including: o Firefox (for all desktop OS). o Fennec (Mozilla's Firefox-on-mobile offering). This new project expanded my responsibilities to add maemo, then WinCE, and then Android armv6/armv7/x86.o FirefoxOS (Mozilla's Boot2Gecko mobile phone OS offering). This new project went from proof-of-concept to available on devices from 4 handset manufacturers, across 7 telephone operators, and 16 national launches by the time I left.These infrastructure and process improvements improved developer productivity and also scaled faster than Mozilla’s rapid hiring growth. Some examples of these improvements:o Reduced time needed to ship emergency release from: 4-6 weeks; to: <11 hourso Increased number of releases that could be handled simultaneously from: 1-2; to: 8o Reduced time needed to ship a new feature release from: waterfall model (unpredictable 18-24 months); to rapid release (predictable 6 weeks)o Increased number of OS simultaneously-shipped with each release: from: 3; to: 8 (5 desktop OS, and 3 mobile OS)o Increased number of locales simultaneously-shipped with each release: from: 34; to: 94o Increased number of developer checkins per day from: ~15; to 350-400 (peak: 443)o Increased number of active development code lines from: 1-2; to 40+o Increased number of machines & VMs from: 86 in one colo; to: 5,400-7,500 across 4 physical colos and 3 Amazon AWS regions (~70% physical, 30% virtual)As part of these responsibilities, I built and led a globally distributed Release Engineering team of 18 people in 14 cities in 4 non-adjacent timezones which strategically improved efficiency of Mozilla's process for shipping software, while also improving human retention.
  • Oracle
    Senior Development Manager, Release Engineering
    Oracle Jun 2004 - May 2007
    Austin, Texas, Us
    Founding member of the Release Engineering group, we were mandated to solve mechanical issues impacting Release Managers and the overall Development Production Process throughout the corporation.Proposed, designed and led delivery of “Continuous Integration” to Oracle’s 2700+ person Application Server division. Proposed and restructured component build and label flow processes to reduce time from developer merge to working shiphome from 9.5 week average to 3 day average. This also ensured predictable shiphome generation (the AS10.1.3.0.0 release in Jan 2006 had 6 months of continuously working new daily shiphomes during active development – a first at Oracle).Proposed and converted components into “generic” components within the Application Server division where possible. This significantly simplified testing and debugging work across platforms, and hence reduced time to release on other non-base platforms. For the AS10.1.3.0.0 release, Linux and Windows shipped within 3 weeks of each other (a first), and another 4 platforms shipped within 3 months (a first). Converting other products to use these “generic” labels were then rolled out company-wide.Introduced and implemented automated metrics for reducing build time, improving build stability.Introduced and led rollout of code quality measurement tools for automated code coverage (Clover), standardized code format (CheckStyle) and automated security vulnerabilities (Fortify).Parallelized and automated Sun Java Compatibility Test Suites, reducing turnaround time from a manual intensive 8 person-days down to a fully automated 12 hours.
  • Oracle
    Release Manager
    Oracle Dec 2003 - Jun 2004
    Austin, Texas, Us
    Coordinated the release of the J2EE runtime component within Application Server for the AS9.0.4.0.0 release. This component involved 140 people, in 5 different cities working on 1.3M lines of code, and shipping on 6 platforms. Coordinated how other Oracle divisions worked with the J2EE runtime component for their own product development, during the J2EE runtime development cycle.Temporarily re-assigned to Oracle Release Management Group to coordinate the entire Application Server 10.1.3.0.0 release. This involved coordinating 2700+ people working on the entire Oracle Application Server release. (December 2005 to February 2006)
  • Oracle
    Principle Member Technical Staff
    Oracle Feb 1998 - Dec 2003
    Austin, Texas, Us
    The Java Products Group is responsible for developing all Java functionality for the flagship Oracle database server, the J2EE runtime in the Oracle Application Server, as well as the JDBC and SQLJ drivers.Implemented portions of the Java Server Pages runtime, as part of the 8 person JSP development group. This shipped in Oracle 9.0.1 (Autumn 2001). Implemented portions of the JAVAVM native compiler, as part of the 4 person ncomp development group. This shipped as a major feature in Oracle 8.1.7 (September 2000) and generated a 2-40 times performance gain over interpreted Java code.Implemented portions of Java Transaction Support within the J2EE EJB engine, as part of the 6 person EJB development group. This was implemented using the underlying Oracle transaction engine and shipped in Oracle 8.1.5 (February 1999).Converted the JAVAVM Makefiles to Ant to speed up build time - reducing build time from a variable 32+ hours to a consistent 9 hours.Delivered 28 technical presentations on EJB, CORBA and Java Stored Procedures during two Oracle developer world-wide conferences tours (iDevelop 1999, 2000) across South America, Asia and UK; some simultaneously translated! Attendance at my sessions ranged from 50 to ~2000 developers.
  • Lotus/Ibm
    Senior Development Manager
    Lotus/Ibm Sep 1996 - Jan 1998
    Armonk, New York, Ny, Us
    After being bought by IBM, Lotus was charged with making it's products more web-centric. This effort was focused in two main groups. The Iris Group, which developed Notes, was responsible for building Domino - integrated web server technology for Notes servers. The Emerging Products Group developed value-added applications which ran on top of this Notes/Domino infrastructure.Development Manager responsible for Domino.Action, Domino.Merchant and Domino.Broadcast products. Domino.Action allowed customers quickly create interactive web sites featuring workflow, security, usage tracking and user-specific HTML content dynamically generated from Notes databases. Domino.Merchant added ecommerce support by integrating with Cybercash, SSL, TaxWare and Verifone. Domino.Broadcast added push technology support by integrating with Backweb, Marimba and Pointcast.Grew the group from 3 to 18 developers in one year.Technical lead on localizing Domino.Action to 14 languages and porting to 5 operating systems. Co-presented these new technologies at the Lotus Developer Conference.
  • At&T New Media Services
    Development Manager
    At&T New Media Services Feb 1995 - Sep 1996
    Dallas, Tx, Us
    Ziff-Davis Interchange Online System was acquired by AT&T, and as AT&T New Media Services, we were tasked with solving large scale content conversion and loading issues for content providers, regardless of the source or destination formats required of the content and automating this process where possible. Customers included Ziff-Davis publications, The Washington Post, and the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune.Built and led a 10 person team developing an industrial grade cross-platform Content Management System, providing SGML content conversion, content loading and repurposing for large scale content providers. This included custom server-side and client-side tools originally developed during launch of AT&T Interchange Online Network (summer 1995).Technical lead in multi-country, multi-company project to prototype publication of large numbers of technical journals on the internet, including significant volumes of backissues. Partners included Adobe, Burda Publishing Group and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
  • Quay Financial Software
    Development Manager
    Quay Financial Software Nov 1992 - Feb 1995
    QFS developed mission critical real-time client-server software for Financial Dealing Rooms, which allowed dealers to simultaneously access live data from multiple real time financial data feeds such as Reuters, Dow Jones Telerate, Standard & Poors and Knight-Ridder. This software was used by over 2500 institutional currency traders in 35 countries as their sole method of live trading on international currency markets.Hired as engineer, then promoted to Development Manager for the InVision API group. This 10 person developed platform-independent InVision APIs upon which all QFS products were developed. These APIs used one code base to provide activity logging, caching and fault tolerant communication links within an InVision networked environment, and were identical across 9 operating systems and 3 network protocols.Established source code control, cross-platform automated builds and work flow processes to allow timely shipping of reliable, auditable API products. Founded and co-hired the Lotus Notes group. This 4 person group installed & supported Lotus Notes across our offices, mobile remote staff, clients, and distributors in Europe and the USA, as well as provided business analysis. This allowed QFS to achieve Ireland’s first purely electronic ISO9000 certification.

John O'Duinn Skills

Distributed Systems Scalability Cloud Computing Release Management Distributed Team Management Team Management Culture Change Release Engineering Continuous Integration Amazon Web Services Open Source Software Open Source Mobile Devices Android Software Engineering Software Development Architecture Oracle Databases Linux Distributed Teams

John O'Duinn Education Details

  • Dublin City University
    Dublin City University
    Computer Science
  • Dublin City University
    Dublin City University
    Computer Science
  • Technological University Dublin
    Technological University Dublin
    Computer Science

Frequently Asked Questions about John O'Duinn

What company does John O'Duinn work for?

John O'Duinn works for Release Mechanix, Llc

What is John O'Duinn's role at the current company?

John O'Duinn's current role is Strategist, Author and Mentor.

What is John O'Duinn's email address?

John O'Duinn's email address is jo****@****inn.com

What is John O'Duinn's direct phone number?

John O'Duinn's direct phone number is +165063*****

What schools did John O'Duinn attend?

John O'Duinn attended Dublin City University, Dublin City University, Technological University Dublin.

What are some of John O'Duinn's interests?

John O'Duinn has interest in Health.

What skills is John O'Duinn known for?

John O'Duinn has skills like Distributed Systems, Scalability, Cloud Computing, Release Management, Distributed Team Management, Team Management, Culture Change, Release Engineering, Continuous Integration, Amazon Web Services, Open Source Software, Open Source.

Free Chrome Extension

Find emails, phones & company data instantly

Find verified emails from LinkedIn profiles
Get direct phone numbers & mobile contacts
Access company data & employee information
Works directly on LinkedIn - no copy/paste needed
Get Chrome Extension - Free

Aero Online

Your AI prospecting assistant

Download 750 million emails and 100 million phone numbers

Access emails and phone numbers of over 750 million business users. Instantly download verified profiles using 20+ filters, including location, job title, company, function, and industry.