Bill Swan:
CLASS OF 1970
Midland High SchoolClass of 1970
Midland, MI
University of CaliforniaClass of 1976
Santa barbara, CA
Foothill CollegeClass of 1974
Los altos hills, CA
Bill's Story
Workplace (updated 8/03/2010)
Work history (that's what they're asking). What to say that's not boring?
Got my start as a work-experience student at NASA Ames Research Center working on the Space Shuttle project; taught myself programming in defense against the mind-numbing paper-pushing I was doing. Soon the researchers had me writing little programs to plot data, and before I knew it I was writing software for and running the runtime data analysis computers for wind-tunnel tests. When my year was up they contracted me back. Though I worked on the Space Shuttle, I never even saw a fullsize mockup until 2005 in Orlando! (I returned 3/2006 and saw a real Shuttle.)
After NASA it was off to college. The money ran out a quarter before graduation (BSEE), but I found a job as an engineer for a small company designing infrared pyrometers. That (underpaid) job made my Master's program (MSEE/CS) possible.
For many years I worked as an embedded hardware designer (with some occasional software), designing logic analyzers, networked computers, automated test equipment and radio repeater systems (with one stint as a manager and OEM liaison to a former employer), and doing contract embedded software on the side.
When the radio repeater company went bust in '94, I got a position writing software for commercial building air-conditioning control systems. These are a whole bunch of small computers talking with each other -- messages like "Hey! I need more cold air in this office!" or "Synchronize your clocks, the current time is..."
And that's when the real fun began.
Within a year (1996) I was representing the company on two technical standards committees, one of them under the International Standards Organization. Immediately, as one of the three ANSI-approved "U.S. experts" in computer communications protocols used for "building automation," I became secretary of the ISO committee (ISO/TC 205/WG 3, "Building Control Systems Design") and learned the joy of staying awake and keeping minutes despite being horribly jet-lagged, and trying to understand the accents of our "international" colleagues to boot.
Now 2010 (March) and it has been an adventure what with annual meetings in the UK, Berlin, Brussels, Canberra, Tromso (Norway), Lyon, Copenhagen, Key West, Seoul, Paris, Cairo. For various reasons I will have missed Delft, Osaka and Sydney, but will resume in Tempe or wherever in the U.S.. (Paris was wonderful -- my wife Kathy speaks a dozen languages, with American English and Parisian French as her native tongues. And a couple weeks a...Expand for more
go we were back, I for meetings, she to tour.)
In 2000 I became vice-chair of the other committee (ASHRAE/SSPC 135), having become known to the industry for a number of magazine articles I'd written about this communications protocol, called BACnet. Immediately I was invited to speak to the Chinese "Committee of Intelligent Building Experts" in Beijing, and spent 10 fascinating days in China.
In 2008 my term as chair of that committee ended, but not my involvement with all sorts of committees. I am now vice-president of BIG-EU -- the American member of a European manufacturer's association!
But this much involvement meant I could not write software anymore; I'm sure software engineers will sympathize when I say, "MY development platforms are Microsoft Word and Powerpoint." But speaking engagements are rolling in (lots of travel ahead), nationally and internationally -- including Vienna, New Delhi, Bangalore and Helsinki and Frankfurt (4/2010) and... who knows? Quite a change from the college student whose two biggest fears were having to write anything at all, and public speaking!
But now I'm also deep into the world of corporate acquisitions. In 2003 my employer was bought (for the BACnet technology) by a UK-based corporation. More travel -- to the UK and Germany. In 2005 that corporation was bought by Honeywell, a company four times the size of the Midland I knew.
And in late 2009 my employer tagged me to become part of the congressionally-mandated NIST team designing the Smart Grid. Talk about travel... this is sending it through the roof!
If you're still reading this, I'm known in the industry as "BACnet Bill" and you can find me online that way. If we knew each other back at MHS (or UCSB), drop me a line.
And if you're MHS Class of 70 google amidlanderreturns
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Odd. Originally I was prompted to write work history, but not on visits to this page anymore.
Non-incidentals: Married in 1979 to Kathy (we just passed 30 years), a polyglot with about a dozen languages (she grew up overseas, a GM brat). She says after three they come pretty easily, but I learned Scottish Gaelic more easily than she. Gaelic? Well, I play(ed) Highland pipes and she Celtic harps (and guitar, and organ, and...); two groups of musicians that didn't get along very well in bonnie auld Scotland. But since we were always surrounded by Gaelic names and terminology, and we are both of Scottish extraction, why not?
Two daughters - Beth, a mechanical engineer (MSME), married, and Heather, studying to be a software engineer with a Japanese minor.
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