Phil Paxton
Doing his part to clog Indiana's "Brain Drain", Phil, a lifelong Hoosier, has never lived more than seventy-five miles from where he was born. He's a Taylor University graduate with a degree in Computer Science+Systems Analysis and significant coursework in pure mathematics, and was likened to his hero, Evariste Galois. His free time was spent playing on the soccer team, and continuing volunteer work as an EMT from his teens. As the first CS student professor, he held a popular distinction for addressing all levels of student proficiency, including providing special, additional class time for those with language barriers or missing prerequisite background skills. As part of the charter AI specialty track, he taught LISP (his first language).
In addition to working in the traditional technology sector, where he's worked with over a dozen operating systems and more than twice as many programming languages, he has nearly twenty years of Internet experience. He took advantage of this early exposure and timed jumping into publishing computer books where he was responsible for many of the earliest, best-reviewed, and best-selling Internet books. He was instrumental in creating the first all-Internet publishing imprint. His insights and ability to accurately forecast technology trends a minimum of 8-10 months in advance were reflected in whitepapers and proved to have uncanny accuracy. Resulting books were on the market at the regularly time and consistently were best-sellers within their subjects. His writing talent was frequently tapped when material was urgently needed. His mentoring skill enabled him quickly to teach fledgling authors how to write rather than rewriting submitted material or start over with a lesser expert.
An early adopter of Microsoft's IIS|ASP web technology, Phil developed multiple, popular, architectural and programming paradigms to encourage scalability, reduce error count, and maintain flexibility for future modifications. Microsoft flew him to Redmond as a result – a year prior to the first .Net beta, to participate in an exclusive .Net feedback group to incorporate new ideas during a week of open access to Microsoft resources.
He's known for avoiding exhaustive knowledge in a small number of topics. Instead, pursues a broad number of subjects. This permitted him to become the last-minute host of a live, half-hour, TV talk show to interview Cecil Adams (The Straight Dope). He's also known for finding challenges whenever possible, addicted to learning curves. One example was concurrent education in Japanese and Chinese - in order to read books for xiang-qi and shogi (Chinese and Japanese chess, respectively).
Although he's never written game software, he's in the process of developing a two player game based upon the wildly popular (Japan, UK) sudoku puzzles. He's an accomplished cribbage player and used his ambidexterity to accomplish juggling seven balls, five in one hand, along with fun props such as bowling balls, torches, and sharp things. While now unable to play soccer, he continues to coach kids' teams when recruited by friends and co-workers. His birthday is April Fool's Day. As a result, he has a wicked sense of humor.
Still feeling the bite of the startup bug, he continues to look for startups and has (finally) started to develop entries from the lengthy list he continues to accumulate in his idea journal", including two types of public-safety equipment, a cancer detection system, drug theft software for hospitals, and toy$. (Watch for "Created By" on TV shows in the future!)
Phil has been married to the love of his life, Holly, for nearly nineteen years. They have three "surrogate" children: Sabita, Pippi, and Cosmo.
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