Andrew Michael Cohill, Ph.D.

Key accomplishments

• Consultant and advisor to more than 100 communities and organizations in the last decade on telecommunications and technology efforts. Cohill helps clients make wise technology investments by acting as an advocate for community/organizational needs when they are working with vendors. Typical services include workshops and seminars, technology assessment, RFP writing and evaluation, and development of long range technology master plans.
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  Director of the first community-wide network (the BEV) that was entirely Internet based. As part of that project, Cohill managed the first network in the world providing advanced high speed Internet services (Ethernet) to residential and small business customers. It was also the first network to provide Ethernet to every classroom in every school in the county.



• Architect of the MSAP (Multimedia Services Access Point), which was developed while Cohill was at Virginia Tech. The MSAP introduces a new community-based routing point in the traditional architecture of the Internet. The Blacksburg MSAP achieved dramatic, order of magnitude performance increases for local traffic. MSAPs position communities to take full advantage of broadband networks and next generation applications needed by business.



• Chief architect of Virginia Tech's first campus-wide information system (ERIS) that provided email, news, course catalog, personal file storage, and calendar services to all faculty, staff, and students. Originally designed in 1992, portions of the system were still in active use (email server, Web services) in 1999.
  
  
• In 1992, Cohill's group at Virginia Tech had one of the first 100 Web sites in existence, giving Cohill years more experience designing and managing Web sites than nearly all other developers in the world.
  
  
• Dynamic and lively teacher with years of speaking and teaching experience in industry and academia.
  
  
• Designed and wrote an entire windowing applications environment in DOS QuickBasic in 1987 for The Idea Machine.
  
  
• During his tenure at AT&T, he had extensive involvement (multiple projects, some national in scope) in work flow automation, telephone SCC (Switching Control Center) automation, and project management automation.
  
  
• While at AT&T Bell Labs, taught project management to AT&T staff and provided project management expertise to numerous AT&T projects, including some with budgets as large as a half billion dollars.
  
  
• Broad work and management experience in both large and small companies. Cohill has supervised factory floor manufacturing operations, A/R and A/P accounting groups, senior hardware and software engineering groups, specialty R&D software and networking groups, and retail service operations.
  
  
• Gifted technical writer who has written thousands of pages of technical and systems documentation using a broad range of page layout systems, including traditional manual layout systems, Unix-based typesetting (nroff and troff), numerous word processing systems, and modern desktop publishing systems like Pagemaker.
  
  

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  Education

  Ph.D.

  Environmental Design and Planning (architecture/design concentration), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, May, 1993
  Patternmakers and toolbuilders: The design of information tools for architects at work. Ph.D. dissertation, VPI&SU.

  M.I.S.

  Master's in Information Systems, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1981
  Information Presentation in Software HELP Systems, Unpublished Master's thesis, VPI&SU.

  B.S.

  Computer Science,Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1976
  
  

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  Technical expertise

  With nearly thirty years experience, Cohill has used a wide variety of systems, development tools, and databases. His broad knowledge of systems enables him to develop solutions that solve the problem at hand, rather than trying to change the problem to fit a limited knowledge of a few tools.

  Operating systems

  Windows; Macintosh; DOS; Unix (including AT&T V5, Digital Unix, BSD, and others); Multics; IBM OS/360/370/VM/IMS/CMS systems; Sperry Univac business systems; CP/M; OASIS.

  Languages

  PHP, AppleScript, C, Pascal, Basic, QuickBasic, PL/I, Smalltalk, Prolog, Prograph, LISP, COBOL, 8080/Z80 assembler, IBM 360 assembler, TI 9900 assembler

  Databases

  mySQL, Oracle, Informix, SQL, Ingres, Filemaker, ISAM, C-tree, and others.

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  Work experience

  Executive Director

  2002 - present  Executive Director of the Knowledge Democracy Center (KDC). The KDC is a collaboration between Cohill and Communities of the Future President Rick Smyre.

  Principal

  1995 - present  Principal and owner of Design Nine. Design Nine provides telecommunications, networking, and technology planning services to public and private customers..

  Director

  1993 - 2002  Virginia Tech Communications Network Services; Director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village; see Vita.

  Manager

  1991-1993 VPI&SU Computing Center. Responsible for the design and development of campus-wide, distributed information systems, including Eris. The Eris project was based on the notion that the distribution and delivery of information on campus should be convenient, effortless, and inexpensive.

  The Eris development team designed and wrote information tools to service the entire campus community-faculty, staff, and students-which comprised potentially 30,000 users. The tools were designed with particular attention to ergonomics and economy, and were in wide use; they were phased out after three years as the university moved to an all-Internet environment.

  Eris provided the university community with convenient, easy-to-use information tools on Macintoshes and Intel-based personal computers. The focus of the design effort was to concentrate on the structure of the information and the needs of the user, rather than to let technology drive the design.

  Systems analyst

  1990-1991 VPI&SU Computing Center. Responsible for the research and development of pc-based clients using the Z39.50 (NISO) protocol to transfer bibliographic and other data. Object-oriented development tools were used on both DOS and Mac computers to develop prototypes.

  Systems architect

  1987-1988 CyberQuest, Blacksburg, VA. Supervised the complete re-design and re-writing of the CyberQuest software. Designed and wrote a complete windowing architecture for the system; designed a custom database for the information stored in the system, and implemented coding and documentation standards.

  Department chief

  1984-1986 AT&T Technology Systems, Springfield, NJ. Supervisor of fifteen hardware and software engineers responsible for design, development, and evaluation of advanced telecommunications products and networking hardware and software.

  Active projects in the group included the design and manufacture of custom cabinetry for the AT&T Ariel laser disk/computer touch screen information kiosks. Personally provided product design consulting services to the AT&T Plasma Display group, including the design of a portable terminal. This effort included design sketches, early "concept" models, hand-built prototypes, and management of limited production (100 units).

  Database development work included a data collection and analysis system for AT&T manufacturing quality data, with sites in seventeen countries. The group was responsible for on-site quality inspection of the plants (Italy, Brazil, Singapore) where Olivetti products manufactured and labeled under the AT&T name were built.

  The group provided technical support and testing for all AT&T pc-based networking products; testing focused on both technical parameters and human factors considerations in installation and use. Provided testing and evaluation of UNIX and MS-DOS software products in AT&T Software Guide, which contained more than 400 products. I worked closely with both the product developers and AT&T product managers, providing technical evaluations of the software and design recommendations on interface issues and product packaging.

  Personally designed a comprehensive software evaluation system used company-wide to evaluate software; this system was one of the first in the industry to include human performance measures and environmental factors in the evaluation. This approach is now widely copied.

  Ergonomics consultant

  1982-1984 Modern Human Resources, Bridgewater, NJ. Provided a consultant variety of consulting services to AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey and other Bell Labs locations around the country, and to the former Bell Operating Companies, including New York Bell and South Central Bell.

  Activities included human factors design work for large computer systems that aided in the management of the AT&T telephone network. Typical work assignments involved some or all of the following: task analysis, computer display interface design, documentation design and development, and training design and development. Virtually all of the human factors design work required close contact with end users of the systems, especially on-site analyses and studies.

  Other work involved software project management consulting: teaching and advising AT&T managers how to design and run software development projects. Projects on which I provided consulting ranged in size from five people to a contract with the DoD worth half a billion dollars, involving 500 people from four different AT&T companies.

  Industrial designer

  1976-1980 Agrotec Inc., Pendleton, NC. Agrotec is a manufacturer of industrial and agricultural equipment distributed world-wide. Responsible for the design, development, and manufacture of all new products.

  This work included surveying customers for new product needs and ideas, development of hand-built prototypes, field testing, final design of the product, procurement of suppliers and parts, and design of the manufacturing processes for the item. Products varied in size, ranging from small hand-held chemical applicators and push-cart sprayers to large tandem-axle over the road trailers.

  Over a four year period I completely re-designed the agricultural product line, achieving significant reductions in production and inventory costs. This was accomplished by re-designing the steel frames to use more high-strength steel, which reduced fabrication complexity, and by standardizing sub-assemblies, which permitted using fewer parts across the product line.

  Designed and developed Agrotec's first comprehensive parts and equipment catalog, which was widely copied in style by competitors. Catalog work included format design and layout, typography selection and layout, graphics design, and liaison with printing production.