Don Steiny, President

Don Steiny graduated from UCSC with a BA in Linguistics in 1981. As a student he created a class "Computer Literacy for Humanities Majors." While still a student and for one year afterwards he worked on a project with John Grinder, the founder of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Jan Russak, a consultant at Bell Laboratories, on a natural language parsing program in C on Unix. Don and Jan worked on the project using the forerunner of the Internet, with Jan in New Jersey and Don in Santa Cruz.

After graduating Don worked on the natural language project for a while and then started working in the computer industry. Don created the first commercial validation suite for Unix. This was a set of programs that were (and whose descendants still are) used to show that a Unix system behaved as expected.

Don worked as a consultant for several of the key companies in the history of computers. The first Unix port he tested was by Microsoft. He consulted to Visi-Corp, developer of the first spreadsheet. He developed tests to test the accuracy of floating point computations with one of the developers of the 8087 chip. Don developed the programming language called "vuser" that has been used by Hewlett-Packard since 1986 years for functional validation and reliability testing. Don worked on the first System V Unix port to the Intel architecture. Don has developed several commercial software packages including "AIM Resource Accounting" and "AIM Suite III Benchmarks."

In addition to Don's extensive technical background he has the ability to communicate technical information to people at any level. He has developed and taught courses on Unix internals and device drivers (the most detailed aspect of how the computer program, Unix, works) for HP, Motorola, Convex, Mitsubishi, and Bell Laboratories (now Lucent).

On the other side he teaches courses to beginners and writes for business magazines. He has given talks to business people all over the US and in Finland.

Don started working with the Internet full time in 1994. This made his primary focus facilitating the use of technology, hiring and training people to develop software. His mission is to use technology for businesses to do business better. He has worked with hundreds of businesses and regularly attends seminars, classes and networking events to keep up on the latest developments. He is on the board of directors of International Angel Investors and is a founder and president of the Central Coast chapter.

Don recently helped start the Institute for Social Network Analysis of the Economy to help fund research in Social Network Analysis and apply the results of the research to promote economic growth and social well being.

Don is an accomplished guitarist and singer playing primarily swing and traditional jazz, but he has been known to play country blues, bluegrass and bebop