I'm excited to finally be able to announce that Jim Graham will be joining Scimatic Software this fall as a partner.
Along with this new addition, we will also be taking the company in a new direction. Starting in September we will be starting the transition from a services company to a products provider. I should be quite clear that we are not looking to stop developing software for our clients, we have great clients! The reason for adding a products branch to Scimatic is that we've targeted some areas where the current software offerings are abysmal and we know that we could do better.
Jim's main task will be to be the technical lead on a project that we won't be announcing until a later point in time. Actually since Jim is the lead on this project, we will have to wait to hear it from him.
Jim's vision for software development seems to meld perfectly with my own. We are both passionate about code quality and making the customer fully involved in the software development process.
We understand the the current state of scientific software is not good (here, here and here). We want to let you know that we hear you loud and clear. Our goal over the next little while is to meet with scientists in the areas that we're developing products for and get them to tell us what they need. I realize that the last line seems like a no brainer but it's amazing how many scientists in the world depend on software that was developed by programmers without any insight from the end users.
One way that we will change this mode is with Jim. Jim has a Ph.D in physics from the University of Chicago (Fermilab), so he is not your average programmer. In fact I've been searching for someone like Jim to join Scimatic for the past five years. The best part about this story is that I found Jim at an science event in Scimatic's own backyard.
It should be an interesting adventure over the next little while here at Scimatic Software. Welcome Jim, I hope that you enjoy the ride.
