about me / contact

Thursday, Jul 14. 2005

[climbing mt. tam]

whoami Stephen Lau, or just plain stevel. i was born an Englishman, in Aldershot. i’m now living in silicon valley in the beautiful bay area, california. raised in los altos, i went to los altos high (surprise), before moving on and spending six great years in san diego, SoCal, getting my BS and MS degrees in computer science. my thesis research studied the usefulness of proxy communication threads in enabling overlap of communication with computation on multi-tier SMP machines. boring? maybe to you… but it was two and a half years of my life i’m never getting back, so it warrants a mention here.

whatdoido? i’m the developer advocate doing… guess what, developer relations/outreach/evangelism. i work at Pioneers of the Inevitable, a.k.a. Songbird. i’m trying to help build out a rockin’ open source developer community. i also meet and work with customers and partners to help them figure out what they can build on top of or with Songbird. part of my responsibilities also involve building cool extensions and add-ons to Songbird to help fulfill user-requested features and “be disruptive”. i’ve authored the mashTape, SHOUTcast, and Concert Ticketing add-ons to name a few. (click on any of those 3 links to see an exhaustive list of the add-ons i’ve developed)

i’m a huge open source advocate, and currently serve on the first openly-elected OGB (OpenSolaris Governing Board), the board elected to serve and lead the OpenSolaris Community. after my first term on the OGB, i was re-elected to serve a second term.

before Songbird, i worked at Sun Microsystems. specifically, i was part of the OpenSolaris engineering team facilitating the open-sourcing of Solaris. i also worked on kernel performance projects trying to ensure the Solaris kernel kicks butt as much as possible. prior to OpenSolaris, i spent 2 years with the Solaris kernel test development team learning to poke my way around Solaris.

outside of work, my main pleasures in life are playing with my beagle Char-siu (the other beagle in those photos was my older beagle, Isis, who passed away in March 2008), ultimate frisbee, rock climbing, snowboarding, and the occasional mountain biking.

i love watching FIFA football. i follow Manchester United, and the English national team with a passion.

privacy? i use GPG (GnuPG), a GPL implementation of the OpenPGP standard for signing, verifying, and encrypting data. you can request my public key from keyservers with the keyID 0x09E5CD21 or you can download it directly. if you don’t use it, you should think about starting. :)

ping?

Add to address book photo Stephen Lau ( Oakland, CA )

3 Trackbacks to “about me / contact”

  1. that’s whacked » where do i want to go today?
    August 25th, 2006 at 20:34
  2. News » OGB: Get The Vote Out
    March 15th, 2008 at 08:04
  3. bielicki
    March 30th, 2010 at 09:33

7 Comments to “about me / contact”

  1. Grazfather Says:
    January 19th, 2009 at 08:10

    so YOU’RE the guy who was so helpful on IRC :)

  2. Martin Bodilsen Says:
    February 15th, 2009 at 07:14

    Hi Stephen

    Sorry to disturb, but could you help me with the meaning of “Grommit”? I’m currently teaching a class at a locul Community College (for adults) here in Viborg, Denmark. We are reading an article which appeared in Time magazine 19 March 2001, called Warning. It’s about a school-shooting in Santee, California. In this article I came across the following: …..Aceven called Andy’s new friends the Grommits, aterm that eludes meaning even for her.” Now, is there any chance you might be able to help me trying to identify some meaning to this word?

    Many thanks

    Martin Bodilsen English teacher Viborg Denmark

    Also proprietor of a small business in special teaching materials and educational toys.

  3. Stephen Lau Says:
    February 16th, 2009 at 07:41

    Hi Martin, sorry – I’ve no idea why they would call people “Grommits”. As best I know, “grommit” is a rubber ring used to cover sharp holes cut in metal electrical boxes to prevent cables from fraying.

    Urban Dictionary has a few (inappropriate) definitions for grommit that might match what you’re looking for though:

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grommit

  4. Dan Mick Says:
    June 10th, 2009 at 20:14

    “Grommet” is the ring-shaped thing that is used, mostly, in my experience, to describe the metal protector rings around holes cut in cloth (like tarps and tents and stuff). “Grommit” is the dog from the Nick Park cartoons.

  5. Ted Ladd Says:
    November 30th, 2011 at 13:58

    SteveL, you have the time and desire to create new versions of ConnectIn and GestureLock for a wearable Android device based in your home town?

    Ted Ladd WIMM Labs

  6. Rob Savoie Says:
    December 5th, 2011 at 12:05

    Hi Stephen,

    Your background & experience are impressive, especially from Google and Rdio! I’d very much like to learn more about your interests as a developer. Trulia is about to launch a number of exciting and innovative projects and is looking for an ace Android Developer.

    Trulia offers users the Inside Scoop on Real Estate. We are a profitable, fast-moving company on an IPO path. Our mobile applications are experiencing 400% growth with over 6 million unique monthly users.

    Our engineering team is committed to innovation, launching innovative features like the gamification of our mobile apps and the beta of our new crime map:

    http://www.trulia.com/crime

    Please email your resume to rsavoie@trulia.com. Looking forward to speaking with you soon!

    Cheers, Rob Savoie

  7. Caitlin Lansang Says:
    February 7th, 2012 at 20:15

    damit habe ich nicht gerechnet. Bin nun aber schlauer und werde bestimmt das Richtige tun :) Danke vielmals

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