Mark,his name is Jerry Fiddler. I believe thats what the prior post questioned.
He is quite an interesting man with a great deal of talent in several areas.He recently recorded his first jazz album, in addition to all his other accomplishments.He has joined us on this thread in the past and still monitors it ,I believe.
Meet him thru his biography:
Jerry Fiddler
Having a real time at Wind River
Jerry Fiddler, AB'74, MS'77, is founder and Chairman of the Board of Wind River Systems, a leading
embedded systems company. He is also a professional musician.
Jerry Fiddler is an active musician and expert in the design and implementation of real-time systems. His broad
range of interests and talents led him to follow an unconventional and sometimes serendiptitous path to where
he is now, Chairman of the Board of Wind River Systems, in Alameda, California. "I started life as a child,"
Fiddler began. He grew up in the northern Chicago suburb of Wilmette, and he developed a liking for the
university during visits to a cousin who was a student there.
Fiddler started at U of I in 1969 with the idea of studying chemistry. Then his interest in art and photography led
him to major in graphic design. After a year, he left the university and went to the Art Institute of Chicago to study
photography. Another year later, he became a professional photographer, doing catalog and studio work.
Restless once again, he turned to oceanography. Money prevented him from attending some of the west
coast's oceanography schools, so he returned once more to U of I, this time in geology. After a semester, it was
music.
Fiddler was working as a musician at the time, so studying music made sense. He played guitar in a band
called Afterbirth (later known as Mosaic) and composed and played for the dance department and a local
dance troupe. Fiddler eventually went to the Individual Plans of Study (IPS) office and asked, "How do I put this
all together and graduate someday?"
Fiddler had been reading the work of Henri Cartier Bresson, a photographer and artist concerned with what is
known as the decisive moment. Fiddler proposed to explore this concept as approached by both the arts and
the sciences. This also tied in with his interest in photography, something which records a moment, and in jazz
improvisation, something which occurs in a moment. Fiddler's proposed plan of study was approved, and he
plunged into coursework, taking guitar and studying composition with Professor Herbert Brun, who recalled
Fiddler as "cheerful, always floating away, very bright and enterprising." Fiddler also spent a lot of time in the
electronic music studio and doing studio work as a guitarist. Even as a music and arts student, Fiddler took
hard-core science courses, like the physics and math sequences for majors. "My brain seemed to need that
kind of thing," he explained. After graduating, Fiddler continued to hang out in Urbana. An RA position as a
resident composer for the dance department caught his eye, but it required that he be a registered student.
Following yet another path, Fiddler poked around the course catalog and thought CS looked interesting.
During this period, Fiddler was listening to computer music, reading Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, and
Computer Lib-Dream Machines by Theodor Nelson. Fiddler felt his life transform. He started doing computer
graphics, producing wall-sized posters on the plotter in CSL, and burning up unused computer accounts for fun.
He began to sense that computers represented "the next stage of how humans were going to evolve. I certainly
didn't think it'd be my life's work, though!" Fiddler never got that dance RA, but he did get into the CS graduate
program. The professor in charge of admissions, Bill Kubitz, was very impressed with his background and
recognized his talent. "It was a very, very spur of the moment thing," said Fiddler.
When Fiddler started grad school, he had to take a lot of CS courses to catch up so that he could take
upper-level classes. Because he had been working part-time at Hal Communications, he did have a strong
background in logic design. (His Hal job was just one of a number of assorted jobs Fiddler held as a student,
including mopping the floors at Ruby Gulch, a Green Street watering hole.) Fiddler landed an RA on the Illiac III
project. Professor Sylvian Ray was Fiddler's adviser. "I remember Jerry as the very independent personality
you associate with creative, inventive people," said Ray. "I remember that his MS project was self-selected,
and it included hardware and software items, which correlated with his desire to learn a wide range of concepts
and techniques." Fiddler explained: "I wrote my MS thesis on the Text Wizard Electronic Deviceªthe TWEED. I
bought a tweed suitcase from the Salvation Army for a dollar and was going to build a portable terminal in it. It
had an 8008 microprocessor and 4K ROM, and I programmed it using an assembler. Then I printed it out in hex
code, walked it to a building with a PROM programmer and keyed in the hex by hand. Then I took it back and
plugged it into the board. I got it working, actually." This project would portend Fiddler's eventual forte; the
terminal he created was really a real-time, embedded problem.
Fiddler spent the summer working on PLATO and wrote a lesson called "photolens," which taught photography
students how to use camera lenses. When he finished the MS, in 1977, he still did not expect to get a job
working with computers. He hung around town, once again, and once again, decided to leave: "It was time."
Fiddler left town in a colorful way. He bought an old pop-top Dodge van, and with a friend, decided to embark
on a cross-country journey. During this trip, he read the book Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin and got the
urge to go to California. Finding he liked the California environment, he picked up an employment ad for
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. They were looking for someone with a humanities and computer background
for some human interface work with the real-time systems group. This group was doing things like writing
interfaces for scientists to talk to linear accelerators. Fiddler applied, they wanted him, but the job started in a
week. This unexpected news caught Fiddler off guard. Here he was in the middle of a cross-country adventure,
no proper clothes, not in a work frame of mind, totally unprepared to start work so soon. So, he turned the offer
down and continued with his travels. When he returned to his home in Chicago, there was letter waiting for him
with another job offer from LBL.
Fiddler borrowed $1,000, went to Europe for a month for one last vacation, and then took off from Chicago in
his van for LBL in the dead of winter. The van blew up (it ran out of oil) 75 miles shy of Berkeley, but he made it.
It was 1978, and he worked for LBL for three years. He gave two reasons for giving up on government work.
The first was the frustration. "I worked really hard on some really interesting problems. It was a productive time.
We got great results and made great systems. But they were only used by three scientists who really wanted a
knob instead of a computer." Fiddler, on the other hand, was a composer. "I wanted to work for a big
audience," he said. The second was the election of Reagan. Fiddler had no interest in working on defense and
weapons projects, and it turned out that half of LBL was laid off within a year. He finished his project and left.
Fiddler started his own thing, which grew to become Wind River Systems. As a consultant, he started by
developing a software architecture for use with touch panels. He helped Lucasfilm build video editors and wrote
scientific papers. He worked literally out of his garage. In so doing, he became something of carpenter, from
hanging sheet rock to electrical wiring. Tom Noggle, BS EE/CS'71, joined him in the venture. Noggle had an
old PDP 11 and a synthesizer, and he and Fiddler decided to do computer music. Noggle provided the
equipment, and Fiddler provided the space and wrote an interface for the synthesizer and computer. "You could
still do software as a cottage industry at that time," said Fiddler, "and there was no competition. Now, with
venture capitalists running around, it's almost harder to start something now than it was then."
Sometime that summer, two big things happened. Fiddler was evicted from his house, and hence the garage,
and his girlfriend, Melissa Alden (now Fiddler's wife), was laid off. Having no ties, he and Alden decided to
travel around the world on a shoestring. There was just one consulting contract that Fiddler did not want to give
up, so he managed to get David Wilner of LBL to take over for the ten months he was gone. When Fiddler
returned, this turned into a partnership, and he and Wilner incorporated the company. Fiddler was its president.
The first document ever created at Wind River Systems, named after the Wyoming mountain range that Fiddler
had spent time in, was a coding conventions document. "Even though I was the only person there, I wanted it
written down. I wanted to build systems, figure out how to reuse them, and build a tool kit. So we would think of
abstract pieces that could be reusable and built up a bunch of pieces into a product. And it turned out to be a
pretty good product." Soon, they were producing real-time and video-related projects for the NFL and people
like Francis Ford Coppola. Soon, Fiddler abandoned his consulting work and devoted himself to real-time
systems, and things rocketed skyward from there. Sales increased exponentially from $300K in 1981 to $44 M
this yearªquite a feat for a private company with no venture capital. In April 1993, Wind River went public, and
growth shows no signs of slowing down.
Wind River now provides software tools for people to make embedded systems. This includes the operating
system inside printers and engines, a set of highly specialized development tools to put together an application,
and consulting and service. Wind River's customers include Hewlett Packard, Siemens, Hitachi, AT&T, and just
about every company in telecommunications. They also include automotive companies like Toyota, General
Motors, and Sony Car Navigation Systems. They will make GM's engine controllers starting with model year
1998. One can find Wind River technology in HP printers and in network products from Newbridge, Cisco, and
PBX. Wind River technology is in the robot that went into a volcano in Alaska, the smart, robotic vehicle
scheduled to land on Mars on July 4, 1997, and the Keck telescope in Hawaii.
Any advice for current CS students? "The skill most important in business," Fiddler said, "is being a good writer
and clear communicator. The ability to write well and communicate clearly is more important than computer
training. In fact, I learned more about computer science in Herbert Brun's [music] composition classes than in
any other. He really taught me to think. People have been composing music for thousands of years. There are
the real abstract problems that are extraordinarily useful. Music is the best mental training there is. It involves
discipline, concentration, spatial reasoning, linear thinking, so many different things. Plus it's fun and enriches
lives. You shouldn't be one-sided; everyone should be multidimensional."
In March 1994, a new CEO, Ronald Abelmann, was brought on board and Fiddler is now Chairman of the
Board, which allows him to spend more time with his music and his family. His band, the Jazzamaticians, is
releasing a CD later this year, described by Fiddler as "jazz with influence from everywhere." On it, Fiddler
plays with Rich Nosek, BS Math'71, MS Math'73, and Joe Pinzarrone, BM'70, MMusic'72. Fiddler's wife,
Melissa Alden, with whom he traveled around the world, teaches technology and runs a computer lab for Title 1
children in a middle school. She also runs a statewide computer teachers conference for CUE
(Computer-Using Educators, the oldest and largest organization in the U.S. dedicated to learning, teaching,
and technology, and an affiliate of the International Society for Technology in Education). Jerry and Melissa
have three children, ages 8, 6, and 2.
Mitch |
