I currently work for libraries in several boroughs, this also includes some work with local government. I’m business side, not front line/ on desk staff.
My daughter was about 3 months old when my music contract ran out. With no job my wife went back to teaching and I stayed home with the baby.
I’m Vice President for Cloud Services at Tivo. Been here for over fifteen years, back when we shipped the first DVR. Now my job is to figure out what our next products will be… Recommendations, integration with social, network DVR, streaming, etc.
I was recently promoted for this new role. Before, I was in charge of all Tivo deployments outside off the US (UK, Spain, Sweden.)
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It’s a long story. Every time I try to make it brief, I fail. It really is just a long story of chance and seizing opportunities. The shortest possible version: I always kept acquiring new skills with each job I worked, and in the subsequent job, I built on the previously “weaker” skills. What was once a fairly weak skill in web development became a cornerstone of my skill set and the company I work for recognized it and offered me the dev role. 
You and I have a lot in common I think! Well done capitalizing on the crazy.
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that sounds pretty fun man. i used to drum here and there but it was my friends drum set and when he moved it all came to a hault, and jazz music is something im always gonna love,enjoy swing/bigband music as well, its always a bit americana spirited which makes it alil nostalgic even if you werent born in the 40’s and 50’s.
whoa, you seem to be a pretty iportant person in that company XD. crazy that you have the time to chat on here with us, thats pretty darn cool man. i bet you pull in some moohlah with that type of work. i dont think ive ever met anybody that was a vice president of anything. Ive never even had tivo nor a DVR n my life.
Honestly, I had no idea TiVo still existed. I figured the generic cable company DVRs had taken over that market.
Actually TiVo has been doing really well internationally. We’re the major DVR solution in the UK, Sweden and Spain.
In the US, we’re mostly in second tier cable markets. TimeWarner, Comcast and DIRECTV tend to build their own generic solutions, but if you’re served by RCN, Suddenlink, Grande, Cable One, etc… then you probably have a TiVo.
Jason
Have we finally found some one who understands the cloud?
Oh, the cloud is easy now. Nobody delivered on the original promise of the cloud, so we still have the same old datacenters with hosted solutions and virtual machines. Turns out nothing changed except the name and the ability to buy storage and CPU that doesn’t map 1:1 with a real “machine” out there.
When most companies say “the cloud”, they mean a proprietary system of computing power, whether it’s the one owned by Microsoft (Azure) or the one(s) owned by Amazon or the iCloud (aka, “remote storage that capitalizes on the word ‘cloud’”).
In the original vision of “the cloud”, it was all be very nebulous and non-proprietary. But it was doomed from the start… what company would contribute their hardware to an effort without clear monetary return? Not going to happen.
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Well said Greg.
I actually don’t usually use the term “Cloud Service”, but if I say “TiVo Service” then it doesn’t really make sense to people not in the video industry. Most people think of TiVo as just a DVR (physical box), but we’ve shifted our focus to all of the things that are provided by the backoffice service infrastructure: Recommendations, Search, metadata ingestion, Predictions, Network DVR, etc.
Jason
I love TiVo, but ours is so old the fast forward is jumpy, sometimes the audio cuts out, but other than that TiVo rocks.
Sounds like you got your fair share of diaper doodie duty! While I did enjoy my children’s infancy, it was exhausting! The conversations make a little more sense now as well.
Has your dad taught you any programming yet?
My stepdad was an EE and he helped me code my first program when I was 7 on a tiny screen that had 2 colors (black and green). He knew he had to satisfy my curiosity otherwise I would end up taking another expensive piece of equipment apart. The whoopings weren’t enough of a deterrent. ;D
Oh, I still ended up taking his stuff apart anyway. 
EDIT: The program was a simple hello world so nothing to get excited about
I sure did have diaper duty, but as I said earlier, it was one of the best duties of my life.
I’m an apprentice electrician
I work part time for a … well, let’s just call him a freelance buccaneer … named Roberts. Dread P. Roberts.
I’m also under contract as a model for a publication called GQ.
When I’m not busy with those pursuits, I’m a professor at a liberal arts college.
You mean to tell me that Dread P. Roberts is still alive? Inconceivable.
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Sounds like a great life.
I heard the real Dread P. Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.
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