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

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

, software programmer and conference host and speaker in the

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Ope ...

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

Ruby A 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 sapp ...

and 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 w ...

for the Ruby programming language most commonly used in downloads and deployments of the Ruby on Rails web application framework. He is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of CargoSense, Inc. In 2001, he co-founded both the non-profit corporation Ruby Central, 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 of InfoEther until its acquisition by LivingSocial 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) company aimed at bringing innovation to the logistics supply chain in numerous industries using sensor technology in the

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...

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 disclo ...

s and co-wrote a massive

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

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 Ad ...

on both a massively multi-agent logistics software system and the Semantic Web project developing an early Ontological Web Language (OWL) library. Both projects drew on his expertise in

computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, t ...

gained as a systems security manager while in the U.S. Air Force stationed at

The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metonym ...

. 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 to co-promote Rails 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 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