Who I am...
Robert Allan Jakobson (the guy with the gray hair and grumpy expression to the left).... is a mid-40s Program Manager, Software Developer and Designer and reluctant sometime author.
[It even says so on my business cards and so it must be true right? And no... I'm not always grumpy... I just take lousy photos.]
What I've been up to...
| Work and things that keep me out of trouble... |
| 2010-Present | Program Manager at Microsoft |
2009-2010 | Product Sustainment Analyst / Regional Support Manager AT&T Wireless working on tools and software for eCommerce and Enterprise systems. |
2007-2008/2009 | Program Manager at Microsoft working on the conversion of Windows XP for Netbooks and Minicomputing devices. (See OLPC work.) |
| 2006-2007 | Program Manager for Microsoft working on Localization Tools and software |
Currently at....
Microsoft...
Global Networking Services ... Currently on assignment, so NDA and no web info up yet. :( Sorry.
Previously...
Microsoft.... Windows PC3 / COSD / Windows Unlimited Potential Program:
I was a Program Manager working on getting the OLPC to work with Windows... which was BEYOND cool. Much of the work we did had global impacts. In fact it's pretty safe to say if you've ever seen a Netbook - what we did there either affected it very directly, or indirectly. Extremely cool.
Read about that here...
Windows Localization Team:
How often do you get a chance to make software that works for 95% of the known world? The Windows Loc Teams at Microsoft are really cool, really amazing people. ...
AT&T
Premier Portal - eCommerce
I'd just gotten off the OLPC project and I needed something to do. Working on the OLPC got my designer and pm fix - but working so closely with so many dev's I realised how much my core coding skills had fallen back. (Two years in IT is 9 years in technology.) So ... took this job in part to get back to my development and customer skills roots. Even though the "title" of my job was not development - I actually did a lot of coding and working with eCommerce customers to get their ERP systems to talk to AT&T's systems and get people cell phones. I also coded a tool or two for validating, analysing and testing cXML and OCI eCommerce systems (which you can read about the open-source versions of this here ).
You can read about some of the public versions of the tools I've created and been working on - even a few screen shots of the public versions here .
IBM
IBM eCommerce National Practice
IBM Global Services
While at GS I worked on some of the largest and most difficult accounts they had, creating tools for severs, web and auditing.
Contacting me...
You can contact me by email at rajakobson@comcast.net,
Or .. you could try contacting me by telepathy. I don't recommend this method - but hey new technology is new technology if you have it use it!
Or... you can check out any of several profiles and blog pages... I have several out there
You can also contact me via my LinkedIn Profile here: