Dr. Dennis Govoni of IBM Speaks at VT's ACM Meeting

Dr. Dennis Govoni, of IBM, spoke to Virginia Tech's Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) meeting this past Tuesday evening.  Dennis did a GREAT job as he always does.  I asked Dennis if he would like to speak at VT and he agreed.  My oldest son, John, is a CS Major and President of the ACM for VT.  John is currently finishing up his BS and working on his Masters in Computer Science specializing in computer security.

Dennis and I have been long time friends from our days at Sun Microsystems.  Dennis and I were one of three individuals promoted to the level of Technical Director when the position was first created.  Technical Director was the same as a Distinguished Engineer but customer facing.  Dennis and I were somewhat [in]famous for our practical jokes and spirited discussions :-)

The students asked many insightful questions during and after his hour plus presentation.  I paid for pizza and soft drinks, which went quickly :-)  Afterwards, we took a few of them to a local restaurant where we discussed the computer industry and we offered our advice on careers.

Below is the description of the evening's event:

The world is becoming flatter, more complex, more instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent. Dr. Govoni of IBM will discuss these challenges as well as the leading-edge thought coming out of the IBM Research Labs. 

Dr. Govoni will share with the VT students a global technology outlook. IBM refers to this global technology outlook as "The Smarter Planet". "The Smarter Planet" is about taking on these global challenges all while be socially responsible. To meet these challenges, the world will be using innovation in technology, and virtual teamwork. 

The challenge for the CS students at VT is how will YOU solve these monumental problems?

Come learn, discuss and challenge Dr. Govoni all while enjoying free sodas and pizza this Tuesday, February 2nd, at 7:30pm in MCB 126. 

Bio: Dr. Dennis Govoni Executive IT architect, National Security and Justice, IBM Federal
Education: B.S. Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio M.S. Ohio University, Athens, Ohio Ph.D University of Nebraska, Lincoln. 

Dr. Govoni have been working with computer technology since 1967. His early work involved plant populations analysis through computerized numerical approaches for which a number of papers were published on this.   Following this research, he became Associate Professor of Biology at Virginia Wesleyan College in 1973 where he introduced timesharing computing into both the business and academic areas of the college. During his 10 year tenure at VWC, he received a number of grants to write computer assisted instruction programs for students. 

After leaving VWC in 1983 to work full-time in the computer industry, he joined Prime Computer, Inc. where he became the Networking and OS specialist for the Mid-Atlantic Area. Responsibilities were in both the government and commercial worlds. Upon leaving Prime, he joined Tandem Computers, Inc. in the Telco District as a Senior Analyst supporting the new fault tolerant Integrity UNIX line. His main responsibility was pre- and post-sales activity with Sprint, MCI, Bell Atlantic and Nynex in implementing fault-tolerant solutions. 

In 1992 he joined the Federal Area of Sun Microsystem Computer Company as a network specialist. He has worked with many Government agencies on implementing solutions in support of agency missions. 

In 2009, Dr. Govoni joined IBM Federal as an Executive IT Architect with responsibilities to help customers understand and implement IBM technologies to solve National Security problems. 

Below is a picture of the students who hung around for more time with Dr. Govoni.  Over 40 students attended this event, which was especially impressive because the weather was very nasty and it was snowing all day in Blacksburg.

Below is a picture of my oldest John and Dennis after the presentation/Q&A.

Govassic Park - Sun April Fools Prank 1997

As I mentioned, I will point you to some of the contributions to Sun that a few of us made over the years that made it to this site, specifically some April Fool's Pranks :-)
  

Govassic Park

John Meyer wrote the text below for TheNetworkIsTheComputer.COM:

Dr. Dennis Govoni was the Sun Southern Area’s senior network engineer (later Chief Technologist for Sun Federal) and one of the most satisfying people in the world to torture. Dave Edstrom, Southern Area Systems Engineer, Neil Pierson, Federal Region systems engineer and multimedia ambassador, and yours truly, John Meyer, Federal Region systems engineer and technical systems ambassador, hatched a plan for April Fool’s Day 1997 when we found out Dennis would be in California for two weeks starting March 31st.

Dennis has his Ph.D. in Botany and our first thought was to turn his office into a miniature rain forest, complete with flora, fauna, waterfalls, and so forth. But the expense and difficulty in locating appropriate materials for the goof ruled this out. Then we hit on the idea: let’s use a Jurassic Park theme. This was just what we wanted. It was cheap, easy, and fun. Dave and Neil had five boys under the age of eight between them, so stocking the office with dinosaurs, Jurassic Park paraphernalia, and toys was certainly no problem.  I spent most of Easter Sunday preparing a “Govassic Park” logo and web page, while Dave collected toy dinosaurs and Neil set up two live video feeds on Sun’s world-wide internal network that would tie into our web page. This meant that anyone in Sun could see a real-time picture of Dennis’ office and anyone who walked into it for two whole weeks and there was nothing Dennis could do about it. Remember, this was 1997: real-time video on the Internet (let alone Sun’s wide-area network) was unheard of at the time.

When all was in place around 9 AM on the 1st, we sent out an e-mail to just about every Sun employee in the world, inviting each and every one of them to visit our web page.    Meanwhile, Neil collected some very interesting statistics on who visited, when they saw the page, and where they were from.


See the pictures and reminisce at http://www.wspot.net/sun/goofs/govassic/fool.html

Thank You and Farewell Dr. Dennis Govoni

Scott McNealy has said on many occasions, that a big part of Sun Microsystems overall historical success is the tremendous talent and passion of Sun's pre-sales technical contributors.

Today, Wednesday November 19th, 2008, we say farewell and best of luck to one of the best there ever was -- Dr. Dennis Govoni.

I have been here at Sun a long time (21 1/2 years), and I can say that without question there is *no one* who has had more positive and long lasting impact on the technical community in the DC area for Sun Microsystems than Dr. Dennis Govoni.

For those of you who have not had the privilege of working with Dennis, let me give you a little background.

Dennis Govoni has been working with computer technology since 1967. He became Associate Professor of biology at Virginia Wesleyan College (VWC) in 1973, and introduced timesharing computing into both the business and academic areas of the college. He also received a National Science Foundation grant to develop a generative CAI program to help students understand Mendelian genetics.

After leaving VWC in 1983 to work full-time in the computer industry, he joined Prime Computer, Inc. as a Networking and OS specialist. Responsibilities were in both the government and commercial worlds. Upon leaving Prime, he joined Tandem Computers, Inc. in the Telco District as a senior analyst supporting the new fault-tolerant Integrity UNIX line.

In 1992, he joined the Sun Microsystem as a network architect and specialist. While serving in this capacity, he developed the Networking Survival Kit, a Web site devoted to providing information and teaching materials for system engineers around the world as related to networking and Java technologies. This effort resulted in his being named network ambassador of the year for 1995.

In January 1999, Dennis Govoni worked with Astronaut Sally Ride on EarthKAM: NASA, the Internet, and Education Working Together.

In 2002, Dennis was one of the first three Technical Directors selected from the *entire* global pre-sales technical community. Dennis was one of the creators and leaders in the Southern Area Technology Facility (now the Solution Center), an author for Sun Journal, SE-Times, The Technocrat, mentors for many SEs, creator of the Sun New Hire program that the rest of Sun embraced, the SATC, the Worldwide Technical Readiness Council with industry thought leaders such as Hal Stern and Dan Berg, Technology At Sun Group, Java Evangelist, Java Realtime expert, security expert, networking expert, and countless other committees and councils, the list just goes on and on....

I have worked worked with Dennis on literally countless technical and business opportunities both inside Sun and outside with Sun's partners and customers. If the problem was extremely complex, Dennis was always the first one consulted. Dennis would bend over backwards to help out anyone who asked.

Both Dennis and I had the privilege of jointly working for three great SE Directors - Joy Warfield, Brad Kirley and Sue Walls who all showed great leadership and courage. Most importantly, Joy, Brad and Sue firmly believed in the Sun mantra "work hard and play hard". In the "play hard" vein, Dennis and I have pulled countless pranks on each other and have teamed up with others on some very memorable April Fools Goofs as well. There is not enough space on all the sundc servers to talk about all of those. We were very fortunate that during that time we had the best HR person of all time in John Gardner. John clearly understood the importance of office chemistry and its affect on employee productivity and morale.

My all time favorite April Fools Day was Govassic Park on April 1st, 1997 when John Meyer, Neil Pierson and I turned Dennis's office into a version of Jurassic Park called "Govassic Park".

My personal favorite memory of Govassic Park was when Barb Govoni was upset when she saw we had dinosaurs eating her only two grandchildren :-)

My all time favorite customer visit was when Bill Joy's office called and asked Dennis, Conrad Geiger and me to visit a company in Chicago. This company claimed to have *invented* a storage device using sub-atomic particles and aspects of quantum mechanics. We all made the trip out there on a very cold winter day. Let's just say, that this "company" clearly did *not* invent anything. Makes for great memories though... Dennis, Conrad and I laughed all the way back to the airport :-)

Dennis, we all want to thank you for your tremendous contributions over the past 16+ years at Sun and wish you nothing but the best.

Dennis, you can *NOT* be replaced....

You can reach Dennis at dngovoni@verizon.net or you can leave a comment here at my blog.