John Sloan

John Sloan

Some Guy on the Internet

Greater Denver Area

Current
  • Consulting Technologist at Digital Aggregates Corporation
Past

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1 more...

Education
  • Wright State University
  • Wright State University
Recommended
John has 28 recommendations 28 people have recommended John
Connections
360 connections
Industry
Computer Software
Websites

John Sloan’s Summary

John Sloan specializes in real-time and highly concurrent systems: the very small (embedded), the very large (high performance computing), the very spread out (distributed), and the bleeding edge (multi-core). Since 1976, John has worked in research, product development, and information technology. At Wright State University, he led a systems administration and network engineering group, introducing the campus to UNIX and the Internet. While at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, he was the head of the section responsible for that national lab’s supercomputers, mass storage system, and server farm. While at Bell Laboratories and later Avaya Labs, John worked as a firmware and software engineer on teams to develop and ship six different successful commercial products and major features, working on some for as many as six release cycles. John has published an article in the Proceedings of the IEEE, an entry in the Encyclopedia of Computer Science, and many conference papers and technical reports. He is the inventor of two patents. John has served on both industry and academic advisory panels, has been an invited speaker and panelist, and has served as a visiting scientist and consultant domestically and internationally. He has worked with development groups in such exotic locales as China, India, Australia, Scotland, Ireland, and New Jersey. He has taught university courses in real-time and embedded software design at the undergraduate and graduate level. He has masters and bachelors degrees in Computer Science from Wright State University in Dayton Ohio, where he was named the College of Engineering Alumnus of the Year in 2008. He entertains his friends by blogging under the pen name Chip Overclock. John is currently a consulting technologist with the Digital Aggregates Corporation, a firm he founded in 1995. Due perhaps to his broad skill set, he has been described by former managers as "a renaissance man" and as "unfocused".

John Sloan’s Specialties:

SOA, EDA, ESB, telecomm, ATM, ISDN, VOIP, web services, HPC, MSS. real-time, embedded, distributed, IPC, multithreading, device drivers. Java, C++, C, GCC, SAS, Perl, Forth, assembler. Linux, VxWorks, PSX, C-Executive, pSOS, CMX, POSIX, UNIX, BSD, System V, Solaris, AIX, AIX/370, IRIX, OSF-1, UNICOS, MVS; sockets, pthreads, STL, ASN.1, DOM, wsdl4j, XMLBeans, JAX-B, ServiceMix, JNI, XML, WSDL, JBI, Asterisk, ZPL. Eclipse, IAR EWB, cscope. IA-32, PPC, ARM.

John Sloan’s Experience

  • Consulting Technologist

    Digital Aggregates Corporation

    (Computer Software industry)

    November 1995 — Present (14 years 1 month)

    Developed portions of protocol stack for cellular base transceiver station. Wrote board support package, configured, built and hacked Linux kernel and file systems, and developed device drivers, daemons and applications for custom embedded target. Taught course in embedded development specific to customer's code base. Reverse-engineered competitive product and developed firmware emulation. Designed and developed Java framework for web services business orchestration product. Consulted on requirements and architecture for Fibre Channel optical switching product. Consulted with foreign government on purchase of supercomputer and other data processing systems.

  • Member of the Technical Staff

    Avaya Inc.

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

    February 2000 — August 2006 (6 years 7 months)

    (This company was spun off from Lucent Technologies.) Technical lead for service-oriented architecture/event-driven middleware platform using Java Business Integration enterprise service bus for business process automation product (CPM). Designed and developed C software under Linux for high-availability/survivability feature for PBX product under ISO 9001 conformant processes at SEI CMM 3 (CM ESS). Architect and technical lead of a team developing reusable library of C++ classes based on POSIX threads for embedded Linux and VxWorks applications. Designer and lead developer of error recovery subsystem, trap generation, alarm management, and other embedded software in C++ under VxWorks for VOIP media gateway product (G700). Routinely dealt directly with customers, both on-site and remotely, for troubleshooting, site support.

  • Member of the Technical Staff

    Lucent Technologies Inc./Bell Laboratories

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; LU; Telecommunications industry)

    December 1996 — February 2000 (3 years 3 months)

    Designed and implemented hard real-time software in Java and device software and drivers in C, implementing analog station and trunk applications, CODEC and SLIC interfaces, and related infrastructure under C-Executive for VOIP access concentrator product (R300). Designed and implemented traffic shaping, survivability, error recovery, power-on self-test, and other embedded and device software in C++ and assembler under VxWorks for ATM network interface card product (TN2305). Designed and implemented several connection admission control algorithms in C under pSOS for ATM switch product (A500). Performed troubleshooting of ATM network issues on-site for Fortune 500 customers.

  • Section Head, Software Engineer V

    University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

    (Non-Profit; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

    July 1989 — December 1996 (7 years 6 months)

    Managed section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research responsible for multi-terabyte mainframe-based mass storage system, several supercomputers, file servers, and other UNIX-based distributed systems. Developed mass storage architecture, benchmarks, and simulation software in C, SAS, Perl under UNIX, publishing several papers on this work (MSS). Developed user interface, task control, file management, and graphical imaging software in C for distributed Solaris-based film and fiche output production system (TAGS). Developed portable UNIX-based software tool libraries in C, ported across many platforms, and reused in several projects by other developers (LIBTOOLS).

  • Senior Computer Systems Engineer, Senior Systems Programmer, Instructor

    Wright State University

    (Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry)

    March 1976 — July 1989 (13 years 5 months)

    Technical lead and manager of developers, systems programmers, network engineers, and system administrators. Introduced the campus to UNIX and the Internet. Taught undergraduate/graduate-level ten-week course in real-time/embedded software design. IT manager; system administrator; network engineer; mainframe systems programmer. Developed mainframe-based systems code in IBM assembler, including I/O channel programming.

John Sloan’s Education

  • Wright State University

    M.S. , Computer Science , 1980 — 1983

    During my graduate student career in the Computer Science Department at Wright State University, I was fortunate enough to have been part of the FLITE research group. The group did research into programming language and operating system architectures for massively parallel systems. My education and experience with fellow members Bob Dixon, Al and Ruth Sanders, David Hemmendinger, Dale Courte, and many others, remains one of the shining memories of both my personal and professional life. My thesis was the implementation of a single-assignment attribute grammar language. It featured efficient tail recursion and arbitrary precision arithmetic. Another graduate student implemented a Prolog interpreter using my software.

  • Wright State University

    B.S. , Computer Science , 1974 — 1980

    The highlight of my entire undergraduate career was learning real-time and concurrent software design from Professor Robert Dixon (retired). My education and experience with Bob, who became my mentor, and the other faculty and students at Wright State University, has informed my professional career for the past thirty years. As a graduate student, I went on to teach the same course. Alas, CS431/CEG431, traditionally a "flunk out course" with a 50% attrition rate, does not appear to exist in the curriculum any more, a victim of the current times.

Additional Information

John Sloan’s Websites:

John Sloan’s Interests:

My Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnlsloan/sets/ My Vita: http://www.diag.com/people/jsloan/Vita.doc

John Sloan’s Groups:

IEEE, ACM, ACLU, NRA, AMA

  •    Communications Technology Professionals
  •    Telecom Professionals
  •    Service Oriented Architecture Special Interest Group
  •    Bell Labs Alumni
  •    Embedded
  •    Avaya DevConnect
  •    Technology Professionals of Colorado
  •    Science Fiction readers, writers, and collectors
  •    Avaya Professionals
  •    Wright State University Alumni
  •    Telephony
  •    Wireless Telecommunications Worldwide
  •    Linux Expert
  •    Avaya Engineers
  •    Telecom & Embedded
  •    Lucent Alumni
  •    Avaya Alumni Network
  •    Lucent Technologies Alumni Group
  •    Ex-Bell Labs
  •    Embedded Systems Group
  •    Avaya Employees and Users
  •    AVAYA CONNECTIONS
  •    ARM Based Group
  •    High Performance Computing (HPC).
  •    Embedded Linux
  •    Embedded Technologies
  •    Denizens of Doom
  •    High Performance & Super Computing
  •    Embedded Systems Professionals
  •    Lucent Technologies Alumni Network
  •    Embedded Designers
  •    C++ Professionals
  •    Real-Time Embedded Engineering
  •    High Performance Computing Group
  •    Embedded Software/Firmware PROs
  •    Spagthorpe Enthusiasts
  •    Real-Time Software Design Course
  •    Multi-Core and MPP User Group
  •    Embedded Systems Design
  •    Just US Embedded Consultants
  •    Wright State University College of Engineering And Computer Science
  •    VxWorks Users Group
  •    Wright State University Faculty and Staff
  •    National Center for Atmospheric Research - Alumni
  •    Kernel
  •    IEEE Denver Section

John Sloan’s Honors:

U. S. patent 5,566,331 (1996).

Lucent G.R.O.W.S. Award for extraordinary customer field support efforts (1998).

U. S. patent 6,457,036 (2002).

Wright State University College of Engineering Outstanding Alumni Award (2008).

John Sloan’s Contact Settings

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