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Chris Verges

I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1982 to my parents, Melanie and Greg. My mother is an educator who started as a teacher and worked her way to become a very successful principal of several schools in the Greater New Orleans area. My father is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and runs a private consultation practice in Covington, Louisiana.

... And a Helluva Engineer

In 2000, I began the Georgia Institute of Technology as a computer engineering major. By the second semester, I switched into computer science and finished my degree in 2004. While at Tech, I was a Residential Technology Advisor (RTA) for Resnet, a Teaching Assistance (TA) for CS2340 "Object Oriented Programming," and an active member of the Linux Users Group at Georgia Tech.

Hobbies

My time at Georgia Tech was a huge explosion of interests and extracurricular activities. Far and away, my favorite hobby is hiking. There is something serene about strapping a 35 lbs. backpack on and heading out to see what there is to see. Each year at Tech, I took a 3-5 day trip with friends, a hobby that I have continued long past college.

I also took my love of photography to a new level while in college. I purchased my first SLR -- a Canon Rebel 35mm -- in 2001 and entered the world of light and shadow. Black and white photography really appeals to me for the amazing use of lines and shadows, and I have taken several classes on shooting and developing this media. In 2006, I went digital, converting over to the Canon EOS 20D and posting my pictures online.

Other activities which I enjoy are cooking, ultimate frisbee, amateur (ham) radio, biking, riflery, and taekwondo.

Cisco

After graduating from Tech, Cisco offered me a job in San Jose, California to develop automated quality assurance tests for the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). So I packed up and headed west!

Working at Cisco was a very educational experience on many levels. There was no shortage of technical knowledge to learn, and I felt privileged to have some of the best and brightest in the networking industry to teach me. Within six months of starting the job, I successfully passed my CCNA exam and was learning a tremendous level of detail about all of the core routing protocols: BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, IS-IS, etc.

In addition to writing half a dozen new scripts and maintaining almost sixteen legacy ones, I initiated a push to organize the test lab resources and develop an end-to-end solution for deploying a new testbed. The process added ownership at all levels of the team and reduced the total cost of lab operations by more than 25%.

Cyber Switching

In developing the lab standards for Cisco, I worked very closely with several vendors to pick products that would match our growth needs. One of the vendors who made our power distribution units was Cyber Switching.

As I came to know Cyber Switching's product line, I began to get excited at the possibilities for innovation and growth in the PDU industry. After 2.5 years with Cisco and experiencing business in large corporation, I decided to switch gears and work for a smaller startup-sized company.

I was hired as a Technical Sales Engineer to both assist the sales/marketing department with customer needs and the engineering department with product development. My unique background as a direct user of the products gave me an overarching view that I put into my first project: an enterprise-wide system to manage all Cyber Switching products.

Since many of the PHP frameworks were in their infancy, I developed one from the ground up in less than four months. This allowed us to meet customer requirements and keep our release schedule. Many large customers, including Cisco, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Equity Office and Legacy Office have deployed this software to help manage their power grids.

In addition to software development, I have come to work closely with both firmware and hardware engineers on the embedded product development team. I aid in mapping customer requirements to specific implementation details, ensuring that we give the customer what they want in the highest possible quality.

San Jose State

In 2006, while still working for Cisco full-time, I began a dual-degree program at San Jose State University with the objective of obtaining both an MBA and Masters of Science in Engineering (MSE). Though it is a structured program (one class every eight weeks), the class load is very intense with balancing a full-time job.

I am scheduled to graduated from SJSU in Summer 2009.