About

Socialized Software is a discussion about how technology and knowledge is produced and accumulated over the web. It is an evolution of over six years of blogging, which started as LuckyDog.org (Lucky Dog was a high school nickname) and was hosted on MamboCMS. Later  I started blogging for LinuxWorld and built my monthly readership to over 40,000 readers. I realized that I wanted to own my content and infrastructure so I created EncoreOpus.com (an anagram for Open Source) which I syndicated to LinuxWorld from the Joomla!, an open source content management server.

Finally, in fall of 2007, EncoreOpus was hacked due to a security flaw in my web hosting service so I migrated everything to a new domain that better reflected my content, Socialized Software is a discussion of how groups of people are producing technology and sharing information. Socialized Software is hosted on the free and open source WordPress blogging platform. 

 

About the Author

 

 

Digital Identity

The difficult thing about having a digital presence is proving who you are. Of course most people are like me at 6′4" tall with movie star good looks and an engaging personality but to make sure that’s really the case I have included the following information.

 
ClaimID is a service that provides a way to claim what things on the web area bout you and disavow information that isn’t related to you.

 

Here is my professional profile on LinkedIn. I don’t accept invites to other people’s networks unless I have had significant interaction with them.

I am the Vice President of Community at Zenoss Inc.

 I am the President and co-founder of the Open Management Consortium.

 

 

Professional Biography for Speaking Engagements

You may use the following text for speaking engagements, for a higher resolution head shot, right-click here and save the picture.

Mark Hinkle is the Vice President of Community at Zenoss Inc. is the maker of the open source application, server, and network management software. He also is a long-time open source expert and advocate. He is a co-founder of both the Open Source Management Consortium and the Desktop Linux Consortium.He has served as Editor-in-Chief for both LinuxWorld Magazine and Enterprise Open Source Magazine. Mr. Hinkle is also the author of the book, "Windows to Linux Business Desktop Migration." (Thomson, 2006)His blog on open source, technology, and new media can be found atwww.socializedsoftware.com. 

Resume

My background is varied. I have ran huge support operations centers and been an executive in a number of start-ups. My passion is for building companies that produce technology and adhere to I am always interested to discuss opportunities here.  

Personal Biography: A Short, uninteresting account of my time on the big blue marble. 

 

Early Years: I was Born in a Small Town

I was born in the small town of Hanover, Pennsylvania. At the age of five, we moved to the outskirts of the one-traffic-light town of East Berlin, PA. I grew up on a small farm with horses, cows, and the occasional chicken. I did things that probably would horrify today’s parents. I started driving farm tractors around eight years old. Mainly, so I could haul the manure spreader. At the age of 12, it was a big deal in my town because you get your hunting license. My father and I spent many winters hunting pheasants, squirrels, rabbits, and deer. I eventually realized I enjoyed being in the woods but didn’t have the ambition to really kill anything. Eventually, I graduated from Bermudian Springs High School where I played football, threw weights for track and field, and also was the first seat on the chess team. Somewhat of an odd mix. I was infamous for the Gettysburg chair throwing incident where I threw a chair over the head of my opponent after I caught him cheating. 

College Years: These Records Have Been Sealed to Protect the Guilty

After high school, I started my education at the University of Pittsburgh. I chose the University of Pittsburgh because I felt it was just far enough from home to have a little independence and close enough that I could get home easily for the holidays. I majored in engineering but soon found that while I was very good at math and physics, I didn’t have the ambition to follow that path. During my time at Pitt I was fortunate to witness a heyday in Pittsburgh professional sports with the Steelers, Penguins, and the Pirates all having successful campaigns. I also found out that I preferred playing rugby to football and was a founding father of the now nationally-ranked Pitt Rugby Football Club. Ten years earlier, the Pitt Rugby football club was disbanded by the university for an unsavory incident.

After my sophomore year, I made the decision to transfer to as smaller school closer to home and pursue a business degree. During my final school years, I financed my education by working full time in a variety of positions. I was a bartender, a butcher, a ski lift manager, a plumber, a paper mill worker, and a mason tender.  I am proud of the fact that I financed much of my education and learned the value and importance of working hard. I finished my education and received my Bachelor’s Degree from York College of Pennsylvania. During my final year of school, I interned and became a financial services representative. After a short stint selling financial products, I knew it was not for me and through an odd series of events, ended up in the technology field.

College Years: These Records Have Been Sealed to Protect the Guilty

After high school, I started my education at the University of Pittsburgh. I chose the University of Pittsburgh because I felt it was just far enough from home to have a little independence and close enough that I could get home easily for the holidays. I majored in engineering but soon found that while I was very good at math and physics, I didn’t have the ambition to follow that path. During my time at Pitt I was fortunate to witness a heyday in Pittsburgh professional sports with the Steelers, Penguins, and the Pirates all having successful campaigns. I also found out that I preferred playing rugby to football and was a founding father of the now nationally-ranked Pitt Rugby Football Club. Ten years earlier, the Pitt Rugby football club was disbanded by the university for an unsavory incident.

 

After my sophomore year, I made the decision to transfer to as smaller school closer to home and pursue a business degree. During my final school years, I financed my education by working full time in a variety of positions. I was a bartender, a butcher, a ski lift manager, a plumber, a paper mill worker, and a mason tender.  I am proud of the fact that I financed much of my education and learned the value and importance of working hard. I finished my education and received my Bachelor’s Degree from York College of Pennsylvania. During my final year of school, I interned and became a financial services representative. After a short stint selling financial products, I knew it was not for me and through an odd series of events, ended up in the technology field.

Adult Life: Boring, Married, and Losing My Hair

In 1995 I started what was the beginning of my professional career. I took a job for PSINet, one of the first national ISPs. During that time, I had a front row seat for the growth of the Internet. I lived in the small town of New Cumberland, PA where I started my technical career advising some of the earliest web sites as a technical support representative. During that time, I was a Netscape beta-tester. I remember the first days of  Yahoo! I also went through my first corporate merger and acquisition activity.  My division was soon acquired by Atlanta-based MindSpring. MindSpring was, without a doubt, one of the highlights of my career. MindSpring founder Charles Brewer came up with the his Core Values and Beliefs before he even knew what business he was going to start.   It was a pivotal moment in my life when I realized that you could have a successful business by emphasizing business practices dictated by a set of ethics. Probably one of my proudest accomplishments, I managed a 2500-person call center and was responsible for MindSpring winning a laundry list of industry accolades for support and service. In 2000, I left MindSpring during a  merger with Earthlink to move to Raleigh, NC to join a Linux ASP start-up. This is where I got involved in developing open source software. Though the start-up didn’t pan out, it did put me on the path which I am  on today. Currently, I work for Zenoss Inc. as the Vice President of Community, and I live with my wife in Cary,NC.

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