/bio
Turns out you usually sound like an arrogant SOB when you write your own bio. I’m not talking about your full-blown autobiography, but that little tossed-off, two-paragraph snippet you include on your website, or with your resume, or in your byline. So whurley asked me to write one for him, since I generally know whether a word’s a noun or a verb. The fact that I’m sitting here jockeying this keyboard ought to tell you something about him.
whurley’s 1997 Interview with Web Publisher Magazine
I think there’s some truth to what Eric Hoffer said, that “we are what other people say we are.” This is especially true for whurley, given the importance of his reputation and his credibility in the very social business he’s taken up. He’s been called an “open-source expert”, “advocate”, “activist”, and even “evangelist.” I’d say activist is pretty accurate–he’s too level headed and reasonable to be an evangelist. Mark Hinkle called him a “talent versed in the collaborative nature of open source.“ Brian Proffitt called him “a force of energy dressed in black and carrying a very large skateboard,” and added that he’s “a pretty good socializer and could conceivably kill you with his pinkie.”
I don’t know about that pinkie bit, but he’s so smooth he once waltzed into a Las Vegas Resort, through security into the executive offices, installed a wireless access point on the resort’s network, and spent two hours in the resort’s data center at the invitation of the head of IT, downloading sensitive information and burning it onto DVDs. Along the way he acquired four different security badges from two different resort employees. I’d say the man’s a kick-a$$ socializer.
He’s been called a “visionary systems theorist,” and the “BMC open source guru.” Todd Weiss wrote, “Hurley has a unique MO that makes him as comfortable in the boardroom as he is on the legendary long green skateboard he often uses to commute to work,” LinuxWorld magazine named him one of the “Top Leaders in Open Source Business” in 2008, and the Austin Chronicle named whurley “2008’s Best Evil Genius.”
I can’t substantiate the evil genius charge, but I can tell you he used to be a musician. Yep. He played the clubs, went on the road, rocked some gigs, the whole bit. Then one day he was in a bad car accident that scrambled his insides. While he was laid up, he started hacking MacroMind and Marcomedia odds and ends in an open source community and got his first collaborative high. Though he stills sits on the board of directors of a musical instrument manufacturer, he’s been an open innovation organizer ever since.
He’s worked in the research and development labs at Apple and IBM, where he received an IBM pervasive computing award and was named Master Inventor. He also received an Apple Design Award for openSIMS. He holds 11 patents, including #6,182,227, a “lightweight authentication system and method for validating a server access request,” and #6,605,120 and #6,128,655, “the distribution mechanism for filtering, formatting, and reusing web-based content,” filed years before the emergence of RSS.
His work in security systems was featured in Kevin Mitnick’s book “The Art of Intrusion” and the United Nations 2005 UNCTAD Information Economy Report. He’s influenced a bevvy of start-ups, including stints as the CTO and co-founder of Symbiot, Inc. and HireStorm, Inc., and as the CTO at Qlusters, Inc. Several of his open source projects have received awards, including a SourceForge project the month award for openQRM.
whurley’s 2008 Interview with ComputerWorld Magazine
He’s a frequent interviewee (BusinessWeek, Wired, Science Channel, New Scientist Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Computerworld, LinuxWorld, eWeek, InfoWorld, CBS News, the Associate Press) and charismatic public speaker. He’s been featured at numerous conferences including the 15th World Congress on Information Technology, the 7th Annual IEEE Engineering Management Conference, the Open Source Business Conference, LinuxWorld, SxSW Interactive, MIX, ApacheCon, Innotech, the renowned TTI/Vanguard Conference (Evolving Systems), and BIL (the open source version of TED). Heck, he’s on the program committee for LinuxWorld/Open Source World, and he’s founded or co-founded several unconferences: BarCampAustin (I, II, III, and IV), BarCampApache, iPhoneDevCamp (I, II), and preDevCamp.
Currently he’s the Chief Architect of Open Source Strategy at BMC Software, Inc. That’s right, proprietary ol’ BMC got hip to the new slang and hired whurley to create their open source, open innovation, and cloud computing strategies. He oversee BMC’s participation in various free and open source software communities and maintains relationships with the over 15,000 developers and 150 partners in their open-source development ecosystem.
When I stand back and look at this impressive body of work, the backbone I see holding this colorful career erect is whurley’s talent for encouraging collaboration. In his core, he believes that the whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts, and he’s spent his professional life promoting and shepherding vibrant, active, user-focused development communities. I’ll leave it to history to judge his success, but you could spend a little while just listing his accomplishments.
–Heath Huff, Colleague, Collaborator, and Friend
