Joe Sam's primary background is the IBM midrange ( S/3x, AS/400, ) but also includes ten years' intermingled experience with PCs. He has developed professional applications in C, C++, PowerBuilder, RPG, the WinAPI, and has been serious about Java since early 1997.

His career has included positions at commercial software providers, as MIS analyst in a company of programmers, as a corporate technical manager and as a consultant for a wide variety of clients and projects, both as an employee and with his own services and development company, conceptGO. His involvement has generally begun with an initial idea and gone through implementation and training. The result has been an uncommon understanding of applied computing, cross platform issues, and needs from several perspectives.

Among his prized possessions are a Certificate of Participation signed by James Gosling, the Java Community Award received at JavaOne '98, a J2EE team briefcase, and four guitars, including a near mint 1978 Les Paul Deluxe. Professionally, Joe Sam is active on Java related mailing lists and forums, is on the judge's panel for JavaWorld's Code Masters Challenge series and a regular at several technical conferences. He has written for Dr. Dobb's Journal and other magazines, given presentations for various groups and is a director of the midrange user group in Jacksonville, Florida. He was also the Duke Dollars leader from August, 1997 through April, 1999 and wrote the JDBC 2.0 Fundamentals Short Course at the Java Developer Connection. His Next Big Project is a trademark commercial/community site aimed at developers ( in progress and coming RSN. )

Joe Sam has a BBA with emphasis in Economics and a Master of International Management from the American Graduate School of International Management ( "Thunderbird", ) in Glendale, Arizona.

For contact and other information, check this backgrounder.