24C People

Principal

David Maulsby, PhD

David holds a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, and completed post-doctoral fellowships at the MIT Media Lab and the Stanford University Knowledge Systems Laboratory. His research, sponsored by Apple Computer, focused on user interfaces that learn from the user. He created a system called “Find & Do” that learns attribute-based search patterns with generalizations (e.g. regular expressions) and sequences of conditional actions. During his academic career, he was a frequent presenter at SIGGRAPH and CHI, he published over 40 journal and conference papers, and co-authored the book Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration.

In 1998, David co-founded 24C Group. In 2001, he took on the position of VP Research & Development at Guest-Tek, where he fostered both intellectual rigor and a customer-oriented R&D culture that led to highly-productive collaborations between R&D and operations groups. A key member of the executive team that boot-strapped Guest-Tek through a rapid growth curve on minimal resources to an IPO. He continues consulting to the Company.

Since 2005, David has enjoyed learning about various businesses and technologies through consulting engagements. He has been incubating zendu.org, an initiative that cannot quite decide whether to become a company or a charity, whose mission is to enable trainers in body-mind practices to develop and deliver multimedia instructional content for their clients.

A generalist with a mind both analytical and artistic, David readily sees underlying patterns and abstractions, enabling him to create surprisingly simple yet powerful designs.

David is a gifted communicator. As a listener, his calm, attentive presence inherently encourages interviewees to be forthright and direct, enabling him to get at facts and opinions. As a speaker, his affable manner encourages objective listening and intelligent discussion. As a writer and draftsman, he knows how to keep it simple while avoiding ambiguity.

Associates

Valerio Franceshin, MMath

Valerio holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo. After a short stint as a research programmer, he became involved in start-ups, first as lone-developer/CTO, and later as a development team leader. Over the years he scaled up to ever-larger enterprises, including Shaw Communications and Forzani Group.

Valerio’s passion is bridging from technology strategy to development process to operational implementation. He is currently on contract as a solutions architect for the City of Calgary.

Vince Mullan, BSc

Vince holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Calgary. He has over 20 years’ experience writing code and architecting systems, and has worked in a large enterprise (Chevron) and start-ups (Burnt Sand, Preo). He is currently Operations Manager at Coraspec.

Brent Krawchuk, BSc

Brent holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, where he became an undergraduate research assistant in the Knowledge Science Lab, specializing in reasoning systems. Brent worked as a product manager for Hitachi in Silicon Valley. Most recently, he designed and developed the collaborative work site for 24C's zendu project.

Alumni

Daniel Levinson, PhD

Danny holds a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, where he specialized in speech synthesis. As co-founder of 24C, his role was lead developer. His calm, quiet leadership style inspires other programmers to never give up, and ask for help when they need it. Danny is currently a senior scientist at Yahoo!.

Hongwen Zhang, PhD

Hongwen received his MSc in Computer Engineering from the Institute of Computer Technology - Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), and a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Calgary. As a co-founder of 24C, Hongwen helped design the digital receipts infrastructure and invented TrustedSite.

He took 24C’s agile approach to software development with him as principal of Servidium Inc., now ThoughtWorks Canada Inc., a global leader in agile development methodology.

With Husam Kinawi, he co-founded and is now CEO of Wedge Networks, a leader in network security appliances. Hongwen holds several patents in computing and networking.

Istvan Hernadi, MSc

Istvan received a Master’s in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology. He was an avid programmer, but his first love has always been the wilderness. He was among the first “death-race” runners, for which his training regimen was to run up and down mountains in the Alberta Rockies. He and his wife Nancy are now retired and travel the world seeking adventure.

Tamara Lee, BSc

Tamara holds a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Calgary. While at university, she developed a strong affinity for computers and the people who program them. A gifted listener and writer, she made a career of technical writing. She also had a passion for business-building, which she brought to 24C, and which has since found application in charitable and community work.