Hi, I'm Richard Griffith and here is a brief history of me.

I've lived in lots of places in the USA, and have landed recently in a small town in Iowa, where the challenges of a more than a century old house became a temporary full time job. Spoiling my granddaughter also keeps me busy.

I studied Computer Science in college, and spent more than 2 decades inside a Fortune 100 company as a contractor and consultant. Over the years I have programmed everything from handhelds to mainframes, using whatever languages were needed, and held roles and responsibilities ranging through project development, change management, database administration and many others. My favorite role was always the programmer analyst; there I got to identify the problem, define how software could help and then build a solution.

While there were lots of valuable lessons learned in that environment, it was obvious that real growth and innovation occurs in smaller, more agile environments. Sifting out the most valuable lessons from the large conservative corporation approaches and deploying that value as an asset in smaller organizations became my focus.

I was very attracted to XOOPS when I was first introduced to it many years ago. The module structure really appealed to my view of how things should work. Over time, I've offered up many solutions based on XOOPS or some of its derivatives. While I continued my endeavors for the benefit of existing clients, I was eagerly awaiting some much needed modernization. Conversations with the XOOPS evangelist you know as Mamba led me to realize I was not alone in wanting a powerful, modern web application platform based on the XOOPS model. I agreed to a more direct involvement, and one thing led to another. I was scared, humbled and honored as we entered into the discussions that lead us to this point.

I hope that XOOPS can benefit from my experiences in the same way XOOPS has benefited me. Together I think we can create a powerful platform that exceeds our dreams and still retains that character that makes us XOOPS.