Dr. Lee R. Nackman is vice president of product development and customer support for Rational Software, IBM Software Group, where his responsibilities include engineering, product management, and customer support for the Rational family of products. Lee came to this position after serving as CTO for the Rational brand, during which time he led the formation of Rational's technical strategy. He also led worldwide development of Rational’s desktop development tool products, including modeling tools, integrated development environments, automated software quality tools, and software development processes.

Previously, he was VP of Application Development Tools for WebSphere, where he led development of IBM's application development tool, compiler, and Java infrastructure products. He initiated the Eclipse open source tool platform and IBM’s WebSphere Studio tool products. He is a founding member of the Board of Stewards for eclipse.org. Prior to joining IBM Software Group in 1998, Lee held technical and management positions at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He has received an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award for research on programming environments and an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement award for research on CAD system architectures and automation languages, and was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology in 1998.

Lee holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He co-authored with John J. Barton the book "Scientific and Engineering C++: An Introduction with Advanced Techniques and Examples," (Addison-Wesley, 1994) and was for several years a regular columnist for C++ Report. He has published fifty papers and holds two patents; he is co-editor of the Addison-Wesley Eclipse series.

A Wet Start on Sunday

I arrived at the Swan and Dolphin hotels at Disney Sunday late afternoon. This is my third year attending RSDC as part of the Rational team and it is exciting to see so many familiar faces. In fact, as I walked in the front entrance of the Dolphin, I immediately bumped into Monica Grace Wells, from our Analyst Relations team, who was taking her baby for a stroll. It seems like lots of folks have brought their families down to see Mickey and friends, and it is a pleasure to meet some of my colleagues' families. The hotel lobby, which is centered around a large fountain, was full of both IBM colleagues and customers, with lots of energy in the air.

Speaking of which, the opening reception was held poolside, to the accompaniment of a good band and some off-in-the-distance dark clouds and lightning. Well, it started that way. After stopping to chat with Will Goddin and a few other folks from the ClearQuest team, running into Chris Jones, who leads the Clearcase and ClearQuest teams, and saying hello to a few customers, I picked up some food and a beer and sat down to eat. The lightning got closer and the thunder louder and conversation at the table turned to whether we would be rained out.

We were. The wind picked up, some potted plants blew over, and many folks started heading back to the building. That's when I realized just how many of us are here. It took quite a while for us all to file back into the building. I was among the fortunate ones who was fairly close to the building and didn't get very wet. But by the time the last folks straggled in they were drenched.

Despite the wet reception, it was energizing to see all of these folks in one place here to focus on Rational Software. More on that next time.

Categories : [   rationalconf2006  ]

Jun 06 2006, 02:44:35 AM EDT Permalink