I’m an software engineer / entrepreneur / activist who splits time between Seattle and San Francisco. I’m currently Senior Vice President of Products at Accellion, a profitable and fast-growing startup that enables secure, anytime, anywhere access to information.
Previous work includes leading the Ad Astra (Analysis and Development of Awesome STRAtegies) project as General Manger for Strategy Development in Microsoft’s Online Services Group; creating the static analysis tools PREfix and PREfast as founder and CTO of startup Intrinsa (acquired by Microsoft in 1999 for $60M) and then at Microsoft Research; security planning with the Windows Security Push and XPSP2 task forces; co-founding Qworky, a Seattle-area startup developing an intelligent platform for “meetings that don’t suck”, with Mikal Lewis and Sally Abolrous. and the National Academies/CSTB software dependability panel Sufficient Evidence?
My research agenda is based on re-imagining computer science as a social science. Some of the social science approaches embodied in Qworky and Ad Astra include asset-based thinking, narratology, cognitive diversity, intersectionality, standpoint theories and situated knowledges, oppression theory, action research, and hot pink beanbag chairs. Sarah Blankinship and I have applied this to computer security in a succession of papers and presentations. Guys talking to guys who talk about guys looks at diversity-oriented business strategies, communication, innovation, and software experience.
With my activist hat on, I’m a board member with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. My focus has been on social network activism, including being one of the organizers of Get FISA Right; working with Baratunde Thurston and Tracy Viselli on the Voter Suppression Wiki; and starting #p2 (the largest progressive hashtag on Twitter) with Tracy. Cognitive evolution and revolution (from the opening plenary at Politics Online 2009), and Social network activism and the future of civil liberties (originally published on Pam’s House Blend) are good starting places; my recent writings on activism page has a lot more links. In 2010 I chaired the ACM conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in a Network Society, where we developed a social network users’ bill of rights.
As a writer, I’m currently collaborating with Deborah Pierce on Change the World and Make Friends Doing It, a non-fiction book on social networks. I’m also in the midst of editing my first novel, g0ddesses.net.
I blog sporadically about all of these topics as well as entrepeneurship, poetry, static analysis, psytrance, and whatever else crosses my mind at Liminal States and occasionally elsewhere. With my professional hat on, you can contact me via LinkedIn or jon.pincus {at} accellion {dot} com via email; for personal purposes, try me via Twitter, Google+, Diaspora *, Facebook, free-association, or jon {at} achangeiscoming {dot} net.