Richard Kilmer (born Hemet, California, 1969) is a technology

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

software programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

and

conference A conference is a meeting, often lasting a few days, which is organized on a particular subject, or to bring together people who have a common interest. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always d ...

host and speaker in the

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

community. He is an open-source contributor and developer of commercial software applications built in

Ruby Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...

and

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...

. His best known open-source software creation is of RubyGems, a

package manager A package manager or package management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals wi ...

for the

Ruby programming language Ruby is a general-purpose programming language. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object, including primitive data types. It was developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Mat ...

most commonly used in downloads and deployments of the

Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pa ...

web application framework A web framework (WF) or web application framework (WAF) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of web applications including web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks provide a standard way to build and ...

. He is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of CargoSense, Inc. In 2001, he co-founded both the non-profit corporation

Ruby Central Ruby Central, Inc., is a non-profit organization based in the United States, dedicated to support and advocacy for the Ruby programming language. Ruby Central is the parent organization of the annual International Ruby and Ruby on Rails Conferen ...

, Inc. dedicated to the promotion of the Ruby programming language, and the for-profit corporation InfoEther, Inc., created to focus on applying the Ruby computer language in business. He served as president and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of InfoEther until its acquisition by

LivingSocial LivingSocial is an online marketplace that allows its registered users to buy and share things to do in their city. Formerly headquartered in Washington, D.C., LivingSocial had roughly 70 million members around the world in 2013. The company shr ...

in March 2011.LivingSocial Acquires Ruby/Rails Consultancy InfoEther
/ref> At LivingSocial he was appointed a vice president working in roles in R&D, and led the software development of numerous projects in Merchant Services and mobile. After several years at LivingSocial, he left in 2013 to form his current company, CargoSense, Inc

a Software-as-a-Service (

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...

) company aimed at bringing innovation to the logistics supply chain in numerous industries using sensor technology in the

Internet of Things Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...

arena. Prior to 2001, he was the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for a leading-edge P2P software company where he was granted two U.S.

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s and co-wrote a massive

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

codebase. Between 2002 and 2005 his for-profit company performed work for

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

on both a massively multi-agent logistics software system and the

Semantic Web The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable. To enable the encoding o ...

project developing an early Ontological Web Language (OWL) library. Both projects drew on his expertise in

computer security Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and computer network, n ...

gained as a systems security manager while in the

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 ...

stationed at

The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...

. When an active board member in the non-profit Ruby Central, he played host to the annual international conferences put on by that organization for both Ruby and Ruby on Rails. By 2006, the Ruby on Rails conferences had become so large and popular that Ruby Central entered into an agreement with

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media, Inc. (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that provides technical and professional skills development courses via an online learning platform. O'Reilly also publishes b ...

to co-promote

Rails Rail or rails may refer to: Rail transport *Rail transport and related matters * Railway track or railway lines, the running surface of a railway Arts and media Film * ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini * ''Rail'' (1967 fi ...

events in both the U.S. and Europe. Previously Rich had spoken at numerous O'Reilly Media open-source conferences. He has also been a consistent contributor at the

Foo Camp Foo Camp is an annual hacker event hosted by publisher O'Reilly Media. Event O'Reilly describes it as "the wiki of conferences", where the program is developed by the attendees at the event, using big whiteboard schedule templates that can be re ...

events put on by O'Reilly Media and is a technology blogger.

References

External links

CargoSense, Inc.

Ruby Central, Inc.

Rails Conferences

Rich Kilmer video interview on the Power of Ruby
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kilmer, Richard 1969 births Living people Computer programmers American chief technology officers American technology chief executives