Trailmeme

Core Team

Venkatesh Rao (Entrepreneur-in-Residence, @vgr)

Venkat started the Trails project with a small grant from the Xerox Technology Incubation Network (XTIN) in January 2007. He is an aerospace engineer, and a serious blogger at ribbonfarm.com. His personal frustrations with blogging technology provided part of the inspiration for this project. Venkat lives in Arlington, VA, with his wife and two cats, and works for the Xerox Research Center, Webster (XRCW), in the Rochester, NY area.

David Vandervort (irv, Chief Architect, @irvingprime)

irv is the lead architect of trailmeme.com, part time grad student (information assurance) and perpetual bad influence on his grandchildren. He lives with his wife near the frosty shores of Lake Ontario. He is an active member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and blogs at Chaos Program. He works for the Xerox Research Center, Webster, in the Rochester, NY area.

Jesse Silverstein (Product Manager, @jbsil01)

Is a weird hybrid of user-experience/usability guy and devoted PHP hacker. He is behind the Trailmeme for WordPress plugin, as well as the Flash-based Trail Map viewer that shows up in all Trailmeme products. Jesse works for the Xerox Research Center, Webster, in the Rochester, NY area.

Vicki Tuttle

Vicki is a 33 year Xerox veteran, 30 of which have been in the IT department of the Xerox Innovation Group. She began as a 3rd shift computer operator and has worked with many different OSes over the years. For the last two years, she has been specializing in Linux/Unix systems and cloud computing support for innovation projects. She works for the Xerox Research Center, Webster, in the Rochester, NY area.

Zahra Langford (@zahrala)

Zahra is the newest member of the Trails team. She is an Interaction Designer and will be responsible for evaluating and improving the user experience of the trails site and associated plug-ins. She blogs occasionally at zahrala.com and runs a chocolate company with her partner in her spare time: hedonistchocolates.com She works for the Xerox Research Center, Webster, in the Rochester, NY area.

Todd Sileo (@ToddSileo)

Todd is a customer development lead for trailmeme and brings a wide range of marketing experience to the team.

Xerox-HCL Innovation Team

Prince Gerald (@princegerald)

Prince is part of the Xerox-HCL Innovation team, and works from Chennai, India. He is the lead developer of the Trailmeme MediaWiki plugin.

Anoop Surendran (@pixelnoops)

Anoop is part of the Xerox-HCL Innovation team, and works from Chennai, India. He is the chief UI and graphic designer for the project. He is also an avid soccer player, and a huge Manchester United fan.

Arun Rajesh (@arunrajeshrl)

Arun is part of the Xerox-HCL Innovation team, and works from Chennai, India. He is the lead developer of the Trailmeme Firefox toolbar, and contributes elsewhere on the project wherever Javascript chops are required. He was a state-level competitive swimmer and enjoys outdoor adventures.

Rajaselvam Muthuvel

Rajaselvam is part of the Xerox-HCL Innovation team, and works from Chennai, India. He is an open source developer. He is passionate about movies, music and food.

Veerasundaravel Thirugnanasundaram

Veera is a RoR geek. He is a diehard fan of heavy metal bands Metallica and Rammstein. He is proud of being a nocturnal species and still bachelor.

Extended Team

Besides this core team, Trailmeme was made possible by strong management support and executive sponsorship within the Xerox Innovation Group.

In past years, Lichan Hong and Ed Chi of PARC have contributed the search engine component of Trailmeme, and Michael Allers, from the University of Michigan, contributed crucial early-stage creative input.

Among the individuals who have provided the most support are Naveen Sharma (Lab Manager, Scalable Computing and Web Technologies), Lisa Purvis (Lab Manager, Documents, Workflows and Services) and Mike Furst (Lab Manager, Optimal Systems).

Steve Hoover former Vice President, Xerox Research Center, Webster), Jim Larson (current Vice President, Xerox Research Center, Webster) and Sophie Vandebroek (CTO, Xerox, and President, Xerox Innovation Group) have provided/currently provide the executive sponsorship for this project.