Jan Vandenbos
Jan Vandenbos
Chief Technology Officer
Hometown: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Current location: Pacific Northwest
How long have you been with CX? 16 months.
What is your typical day like? I spend a lot of the day with a phone glued to my ear (need an implant) talking to customers, partners, other industry members and the CX team about the cloud, cloud-related technologies, our products and the direction we’re taking at CX. My role also dictates that I spend a lot of time in aircraft flying around to meet with these interested parties and between our development offices (we’re a very virtual/distributed team). Although I do a fair bit of technical advising internally, I don’t get to code much these days, but am very happy that we’ve been able to hire an awesome team to build our product.
Why does working in the cloud sharing field interest you? I think the cloud is revolutionizing the way we interact – both personally and in business. Today, we are connected (and connecting) with family, friends and colleagues in ways we have never been able to and working together in extremely powerful ways empowered by these same technologies. I love being on the cutting-edge, and these technologies are changing everything!
What do you use CX for? I use CX exclusively for all of my internal sharing of content at CX and for a good portion of my sharing with partners and the community as a whole. I’m a huge proponent of our asynchronous collaboration technology (chat) and love using this to keep an eye on the tone of the of the organization.
What’s your favorite part about working at CX? Definitely my team. I’m a huge believer that companies, especially startups, survive based on the quality — and connectedness — of their teams. We’ve been very lucky here to assemble a world-class team that has allowed us to build our products in record time. Where others have taken years to build the kind of stuff we’re doing, we’re able to execute on some of our ideas in timeframes measured in months, weeks, or even days!
What’s your favorite food? Boston royale raspberry creme-filled donuts!
What’s your favorite band or musician? A toss-up — Blue Rodeo, The Tragically Hip or Cowboy Junkies. I also love a lot of the Daft Punk, Nox Arcana, and a lot of the remix genre.
What’s your favorite movie? So many to choose from! Recently, Prometheus was really good. Loved the Matrix series (they’re probably my favorite). The Princess Bride definitely up there, too. The Star Wars series. Stargate’s up there.
What are three of your favorite websites to visit, and why do you visit each one? Reddit.com – some of the recent stuff Redditors have been doing to raise money for people in need has been amazing! Slashdot.org – the power of people amplified by the cloud/net. News.ycombinator.com because I love to stay plugged in.
What’s something people would be surprised to learn about you? I grew up in tech from a very early age, but I also have another parallel career. Completely opposite the tech field in terms of duties and activities, but extremely rewarding and exciting. Can anyone figure out what is is?
