John Plocher

I'm a senior software engineer and architect with a passion for systems-level architecture, open source development, process design and model train electronics.

My primary responsibility at Sun Microsystems was to guide and maintain its global Software Development and Architectural Review processes. I did so by working directly for senior executive VPs on key corporate programs, leading architectural governance, mentoring development teams on a global basis, evangelizing developers and stakeholders, working on cross-company strategy efforts and building tools to support knowledge sharing and product development risk assessment.

• I managed Sun's Architectural Review process and associated committees as a Process Expert and Appeals Committee Chair.
• I lead one of the architectural governance committees that reviewed hundreds of complex layered and middleware software projects at Sun. The committee was composed of senior staff from across the company and around the world.
• I lead the effort to open source Sun's architectural review process by developing consensus among Sun's internal stakeholders, forming the OpenSolaris Architecture Community, publishing information about thousands of historical "ARC Cases" and developing new processes and procedures to enable OpenSolaris developers from outside the company to play an active role in the process.
• I developed and maintained various web, command-line and database tools to support the review process and provide reports and decision-making information to its various stakeholders.

John Plocher’s Specialties:

Software architecture, engineering process and governance
Open Source community development and leadership
Software development - C, C++, Java, Perl, SQL (Informix, Oracle, MySQL)
Web development - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, PHP, Ruby/Rails
Embedded microcontroller board design and programming - PIC and AVR

John Plocher’s Experience

Charter member

Willow Glen Lions Club

(Philanthropy industry)

2009 — Present (less than a year)
Governing Board Vice Chair

OpenSolaris Community

(Computer Software industry)

April 2008 — Present (1 year 8 months)

Elected for the board's 2008-2009 term
* Built consensus, fostered a culture of inclusion and transparency and actively worked to include participants with diverse and dissenting viewpoints into the community decision making process.
* Drove the creation of board policies and procedures that modeled transparency and openness.
Mentor and tutor

Estudio 17, SMUM

(Non-Profit Organization Management industry)

2007 — Present (2 years )

Santa Maria Urban Ministry serves the inner city San Jose' community by providing basic services to meet short-term needs, such as food, clothing and referral services, and by supporting long-term transformation through education, counseling and seasonal programs. Estudio 17 is an after school program for youth aged 6-17 which gives the students access to computers and homework assistance.
Board Member

Silicon Valley Lines

(Railroad Manufacture industry)

March 2006 — Present (3 years 9 months)

Founded in 1979, Silicon Valley Lines (SVL) is a 20-member HO Scale Model Railroad Club located in San Jose, California. SVL hosts a monthly operations night where members and guests step into the role of "real railroaders" and run dozens of trains over the course of several hours on its member built DCC equipped 23' x 72' layout.

* President, March 2006-Feb 2008
* Secretary, March 2008-present
Architecture Community Founder

OpenSolaris Community

(Computer Software industry)

June 2005 — Present (4 years 6 months)

* Founder and Leader of the OpenSolaris Architecture community (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/)
* Updated and published Sun's ARC process documentation and artifacts for use by the whole open source community.
* Developed processes and tools to allow external developers to monitor and participate in architectural reviews for OpenSolaris.
Member of Development Team

JMRI

(Computer Software industry)

2003 — Present (6 years )

JMRI is a 2006 Duke's Choice award winning open source project devoted to developing Java based model railroad control software. See http://JMRI.sourceforge.net

* Developed and deployed the www.decoderpro,com Web site infrastructure
* Rewrote and extended locoIO device configuration
Embedded systems designer

SPCoast.com

(Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing industry)

1998 — Present (11 years )

Designed and produced open source model railroad components using embedded PIC and AVR microcontrollers, distributed sensor and control systems. See http://spcoast.com/electronics/
Staff Engineer

Sun Microsystems

(Public Company; JAVA; Information Technology and Services industry)

1997 — November 2008 (11 years )

Systems and software architect, development process expert, tools and database developer, webmaster, mentor and Six Sigma Process Certified Greenbelt
• Guided systems development processes and architectural review committees staffed by ~200 engineers worldwide that were used by hundreds of project teams and thousands of projects
• Open sourced Sun's architectural review process, developed consensus among executives, formed the OpenSolaris Architecture Community, and published technical details and artifacts from thousands of historical ARC Reviews
• Managed Solaris Management Console team using agile development methodologies to develop Java based system admin tools
• Developed scripts, database applications and web dashboards for Solaris project management, ARC process maintenance and long term trend analysis
• Developed a PHP/MySQL application that reduced Solaris consolidation/project tracking team effort from a 1-week per-person cycle time to less than 30 minutes
Co-Founder, VP/Engineering

BigBook, Inc

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Information Services industry)

1995 — 1997 (2 years )

Grew a team of a dozen engineers who developed and maintained one of the leading Internet Business Directory services in the world, with ~300K unique users per day.
Project Lead, SunSoft Internet Products Group

Sun Microsystems

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SUNW; Computer Software industry)

1995 — 1995 (less than a year)

Responsible for integrating Netscape's web technology into Solaris, helped develop the software base for the Netra-i product, and provided sustaining support for Sun's Firewall-1 security product.
Software Engineer and Project Lead

Sun Microsystems Computer Company

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SUNW; Computer Hardware industry)

1993 — 1995 (2 years )

Developed Installation and Sysadmin tools for Sun's SPARCCluster and Highly Available Database Cluster products.
Software Engineer, Project Lead

Sun Microsystems

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; SUNW; Computer Software industry)

1989 — 1993 (4 years )

* Developed OMG/CORBA compliant demo programs, desktop services and application prototypes and Makefile based build/test systems.
* Researched, wrote and published the "Project DOE C++ Programming Style Guide", which described both a common programming style (with rationale) and advice on C++ defensive programming. The style guide became the core of the OMG's IDL style guide, which, in turn, was used when developing the Java style guidelines.
* Ported OpenWindows 2.0 and 3.0 to Solaris 2.0.
* Designed and implemented a new source tree layout and build process for OpenWindows, the X/NeWS window server and Deskset tools.
* On a team that ported OpenWindows 1.0 to SVr4 for inclusion into AT&T's SVr4 portable source release.
* Wrote "The Portability Guide to OpenWindows Source", published by AT&T, for developers porting OpenWindows to other platforms.
Customer Support Manager

Microport Systems

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

1988 — 1989 (1 year )

SVr2 & SVr3 on 286 and 386 systems

John Plocher’s Education

University of Wisconsin-Madison

1981 — 1985
Wisconsin School of Electronics

ASEE , Electronics and Computer Engineering , 1980 — 1982
Sun Microsystems Six Sigma Green Belt