F. Randall Farmer

Current

• Social Media Strategy Consulting, WikiAnwers at Answers.com
• Associate at MSB Associates (California)
• Consulting Community Analyst at F. Randall Farmer Social Media/Online Community Consulting (Self-employed)

• Advisor, Interactive Games & Media Industrial and Academic Advisory Board at Rochester Institute of Technology
• Advisor, Board of Advisors at MetaPlace.com

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2 more...

Past

• Director, Community Strategy Analyst at Yahoo!
• User Experience Design Consultant at Linden Lab
• Live Producer, Maxis, The Sims Online at Electronic Arts

• Sr. Product Engineer, State Application Framework at State Software
• Principal Engineer, Metaverse Project at 3DO
• Founder, Chief World Builder, and VP Services at Communities.com
• Sr. Software Engineer at The American Information Exchange (AMiX)
• Software Engineer at Lucasfilm Games

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5 more...

Education

• University of San Francisco
• MCCC
• HF II

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Recommended

28 people have recommended F. Randall

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

• My RSS feed

F. Randall Farmer’s Summary

Some of my associated products listed by Ship or Beta date:

2008: Yahoo Open Strategy [Strategist and co-creator]
2007: Reputation platform deployed to multiple groups [CCare, mail, answers]
2006: Nexus [Next Generation Groups, under development]
2006: Yahoo! Mixd [Mobile]
2005: Yahoo! 360 Degrees [Social Network]
2003: Second Life
2003: The Sims Online
2002: The State Application Framework
2001: Communities.com’s Passport
1998: The Palace (acquisition)
1997: (Beta) EC Habitats (AKA Microcosm)
1996: (Japan) Fujitsu Habitat II (AKA J-Chat)
1995: WorldsAway [AKA Vzones]
1993: AMiX, The American Information Exchange (Pre-web E-commerce)
1990: (Japan) Fujitsu Habitat I
1988: Q-Link’s Club Caribe (AKA Lucasfilm’s Habitat)
1984: Koronis Rift: Real-time 3D fractals on Apple II
1976: SPB: A text-only 3D multi-user space battle game (non-professional)

Author of a dozen widely sited papers on virtual communities and avatars.

F. Randall Farmer’s Specialties:

Reputation Systems, Social Software, Virtual Communities. Virtual Economies, Virtual Worlds, Online Identity, Distributed Objects, Capability Systems, Open Social

F. Randall Farmer’s Experience

• Social Media Strategy Consulting, WikiAnwers

  Answers.com

  (Public Company; ANSW; Internet industry)

  March 2009 — Present (5 months)

  I am working part-time as a consultant focused on helpng them grow WikiAnswers to become the number one destination for answers to people's burning questions. This entails planning for, and incentivizing significant community and content growth while increasing the quality of it's 100% user generated content. Reputation systems, community moderation, and effective social product design are the areas I am currently contributing the most value.

• Associate

  MSB Associates (California)

  (Computer Software industry)

  2008 — Present (1 year)

• Consulting Community Analyst

  F. Randall Farmer Social Media/Online Community Consulting (Self-employed)

  (Self-Employed; Myself Only; Internet industry)

  April 2008 — Present (1 year 4 months)

  Professionally, I serve many roles simultaneously – Product Innovator, Community Consultant, External Evangelist, and Scout.
  
  I have published numerous papers and articles and co-author a blog on online communities and games. My comprehensive experience with the entire social media field provides ample opportunity to speak to the public as well as to the press as a no-nonsense voice on these technologies and their best practices.
  
  My widely recognized reputation in the field also provides me special access to emerging technologies and invitation-only conferences and meetings that have been critical to my employer's positioning as a thought-leader. For example, for Yahoo! I was instrumental in both the Flickr acquisition and the OpenID initiative.

• Advisor, Interactive Games & Media Industrial and Academic Advisory Board

  Rochester Institute of Technology

  (Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

  February 2008 — Present (1 year 6 months)

• Advisor, Board of Advisors

  MetaPlace.com

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Games industry)

  November 2006 — Present (2 years 9 months)

• Director, Community Strategy Analyst

  Yahoo!

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

  September 2003 — February 2008 (4 years 6 months)

  - Co-creator of the YOS: Yahoo Open Strategy, being implemented now to socialize and open the Yahoo! front-doors (and client) experience. I was the strategist in charge of the Social Platforms components.
  
  - Expert on the design and deployment of reputation systems for community management. Designed the following deployed external and internal reputation systems: email spam senders, Y!Answers community moderation, content uploader, message-boards quality.
  
  - Internal and External Evangelist about online communities best practices and technologies.
  
  - Active in communities strategy including related M&A activity. Strong voice in Flickr aquisition.
  
  - Co-designer of next generation community products, including Yahoo! 360-Degrees.

• User Experience Design Consultant

  Linden Lab

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

  May 2003 — July 2003 (3 months)

  -Produced detailed platform neutral “consumer” interface design for Linden’s Second Life user-extensible virtual world service. Specifically addressed in-world object design methodologies, interface primitives, and navigation schemes.
  
  -Provided expert consulting on virtual world design issues.

• Live Producer, Maxis, The Sims Online

  Electronic Arts

  (Public Company; 501-1000 employees; ERTS; Computer Software industry)

  January 2003 — April 2003 (4 months)

  - Joined the TSO one month after product launch.
  
  - Managed Online Community Relations, coordinated remote three-tier CRMD organization, facilitated international community changes, and represented the project to EA.Com publication/subscription services. Set and implented operational policies for the service.
  
  - Lead efforts to specify and create critical missing tools for operational staff; reviewed all in-pipeline features and designs for compatibility with online play; drove exploits and customer features through the ERT and production process.

• Sr. Product Engineer, State Application Framework

  State Software

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

  November 2001 — January 2003 (1 year 3 months)

  - Served multiple roles on a tiny, 4-engineer team: product manager (SAF Solo and SAF Ensemble), server programmer, object designer, tools author, buildmeister, test suite designer, QA coordinator, and mentor to junior programmers.
  
  - Created a portable JavaScript-based testing platform and test suite for regression and large-scale tests of a distributed computing platform, which was employed at Sun
  
  - Developed, from scratch, corporate build environment, including special tools to auto-generate print documentation from source code.
  
  - Designed, authored, documented, and packaged several extensions to the State Application Framework, including Web Services and email.

• Principal Engineer, Metaverse Project

  3DO

  (Public Company; 51-200 employees; THDO; Computer Software industry)

  July 2001 — November 2001 (5 months)

  - Co-architect in charge of attempting to implement the multi-faceted digital trading object concept defined in U.S. Patent no. 6,009,458 (referred to as the Metaverse Project.) The original design was determined to be unimplementable as described in the patent, so we redesigned the system until it was both implementable, and marketable, while preserving the intention of the patent authors. A new patent application (or amendment) was being considered at the time of project cancellation due to dire company finances.
  
  - Built proof-of-concept Metaverse object market user interface using dynamically updating web pages.
  
  - Reviewed pending external vendor project proposals for Metaverse implementation, resulting in speedy termination of contracts, saving the company millions of dollars. (The proposals were incomplete and unachievable.)

• Founder, Chief World Builder, and VP Services

  Communities.com

  (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

  January 1993 — March 2001 (8 years 3 months)

  - Provided leadership for several teams of top tier engineers to design and create the Internet's only secure fully distributed 3D multi-user application platform for the web, leading to more than a half-dozen patents
  
  - Co-architect of two complete novel platforms, built from scratch
  
  - Managed the Communities Group and end-user Customer Support Department through net-based product testing cycles and on through extended product lifetimes
  
  - Designed and directed the creation of dozens of net-based multi-user experiences and implemented the distributed object model architecture
  
  - Acted as interim head of Operations, Engineering, and QA during staff turnover
  
  - Headed the development team that created WorldsAway for Fujitsu Cultural Technologies. Acted as project architect, producer, designer, evangelist, manager, and lead object coder.

• Sr. Software Engineer

  The American Information Exchange (AMiX)

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

  July 1988 — December 1992 (4 years 6 months)

  - Lead AMiX’s PC client software design and implementation team
  
  - Designed and implemented the worlds first email-based consulting system, a platform independent user interface, and automated testing frameworks

• Software Engineer

  Lucasfilm Games

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

  June 1984 — June 1988 (4 years 1 month)

  - Designed and implemented the Lucasfilm’s Habitat/Q-Link’s Club Caribe client software (excluding the rendering engine)
  
  - Managed the world’s first “cyberspace” (AKA Avatar world) during it’s initial 3 year beta test
  
  - Designed, created, implemented, and operationally tested the first multiuser graphical adventures (using Habitat)

F. Randall Farmer’s Education

• University of San Francisco

  BS, inc. , Instructional Psychology , 1980 — 1982

• MCCC

  Certificate , Software Engineering , 1977 — 1980

  [Overlapped with H.S.]

• HF II

Additional Information

F. Randall Farmer’s Websites:

• My RSS feed

F. Randall Farmer’s Groups:

•    silk-list
•    Yahoo Alums
•    Association of Virtual Worlds
•    Yahoo 360
•    Yahoo Employees and Alumni Group
•    Online Community and Social Media Managers
•    Communities.com alumni
•    VirtualWorlds
•    Community-Management
•    Kids Online (un)conference
•    Lucasfilm Computer Division, Alumni
•    Game Payments

F. Randall Farmer’s Honors:

Awarded the inaugural Game Developer’s Choice Awards’ “First Penguin Award” in March 2001 for pioneering the field of multi-user graphical games

Named a “Tomorrow Maker” by NetGuide Magazine, January 1995

Patents

with Morningstar; Chip:
6006280 Distributed instantiation system and method
6145013 Distributed instantiation system and method
6476830 Virtual objects for building a community in a virtual world*
6229533 Ghost object for a virtual world*

With Hull, Mark & Perelman, Ellen:
7269590 Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user
20050171799 Method and system for seeding online social network contacts
20050171832 Method and system for sharing portal subscriber information in an online social network
20050171954 Selective electronic messaging within an online social network for SPAM detection
20050171955 System and method of information filtering using measures of affinity of a relationship

& more in-process.