The seed for Family Photoloom
was planted back in 1995, when our family returned home from a 3000-mile, five-week Family History road-trip. We'd had taken a one-gigabyte hard-drive and a scanner with
us, and by the time we got home, Scott had the hard-drive loaded and overflowing onto backup tapes, filled with hundreds of images – family photographs and heirloom documents shared by scores of distant relatives.
Eager to organize our photographic treasure trove, Scott soon realized that our computer was no more than a large electronic shoebox, and provided little more organization for my digital photos than had they been stored in a real shoebox.
"What I needed was an easy way to tag and attach my family photographs to my genealogical data. But I wanted much more than that... I wanted a way for my children’s Great-Grandma Lucy to tell her own story – so Lucy Jane would be more than just a name on a chart or a picture on a screen; but a real little girl with hopes and hungers and ten brothers and sisters living on a Texas pan-handle dirt farm – someone that our children, and someday their children, would know and care about."
So, drawing on two decades of software development experience, Scott began designing on paper the architecture and databases that were needed to organize Photo-history around Family-history.
Then he began imagining all of the things that could be done with such a database - and realized that the possibilities were astonishing.
Our Photoloom Family Scott Huskey – Founder & President,
Photoloom LLC
Scott, a graduate of the
University of Portland, is the heart and soul of our technical development
team. A pioneer in the micro-computer field: Scott began avidly
programming his home-built 8080 computer in 1976, and went on to found
Huskey Engineering in the early 1980’s. As a sophomore in college, Scott
created the animated strategy computer game "FLIP-OUT," produced for the
Apple II computer in 1983, and soon after created, developed and programmed
"SHOOT THE MOON” – the first retail “True 3-D” full-color computer game for
the Atari ST. A veteran of Intel, Scott notes that one of the most
important lessons he learned in his (19!) years as a Program Manager was to value the
customer, and to strive to develop product solutions based what the user
actually wants and needs.
Scott caught the family history bug more
than 15 years ago, and has since dedicated generously of his time, talent
and energy to creating and teaching more effective ways to gather, organize
and preserve family history.
Renee Huskey – Co-founder & Vice-President
Let's drop the third-person pretence for this
blurb, shall we? It's me - Renee - here, writing this, and I
head up the "Words & Web" department at Photoloom. As webmaster,
writer, and all 'round communications guru, if it's associated with
Photoloom and has words in it, then I have something to do with it.
Like Scott, I graduated from the University of Portland, and
although my major was in Elementary & Special Education, I've spent the
better part of the last two decades as a freelance writer and editor (when I
wasn't chasing our five daughters around). In addition to keeping up
Photoloom's website and blog
humming along, I
also maintain The White Shield Project, and Sock Monkey,
(Just in case you're wondering, that's us up there in the middle of
the page header, surrounded by our beautiful family.)
Board of Advisors
Dave Andersen – Mr. Andersen is a
principal engineer with Intel Corporation, where he currently leads a team
chartered with exploring new opportunities for Intel's Digital Home business
unit. In his 15-year career at Intel, Mr. Andersen has led efforts to
establish new communications standards, founded a new business unit,
developed new, consumer-oriented products, and worked extensively in
business development. Prior to joining Intel, Mr. Andersen directed software
development teams creating highly specialized reconnaissance systems for
firms in the defense electronics sector. He holds 12 patents, and received
his MS in Electrical Engineering from Brigham Young University in 1981.
Tyler Leishman – Mr. Leishman is a seasoned finance
professional in high tech manufacturing companies. He has a B.S. in
Economics and an MBA with an emphasis in finance and marketing. He has held
positions of increasing responsibility through his 20-year career, and has a
particularly strong background in product and market cost, and profitability
analysis and business planning. He has spent time outside of finance in a
manufacturing line position focused on product forecasting. He currently
serves as Director of Operations Finance at Electro Scientific Industries
(ESIO) with responsibility for financial planning and analysis, product
profitability, and cost accounting.
K.W. Norris –
Mr. Norris is a co-founder and owner of Technology Consultants Inc., an
Oregon Corporation providing software and IT support for a national client
base including Motorola, Laboratory Corporation of America and McKesson. As
Vice President of Sales and Marketing and minority owner at Creative Data
Corporation, he increased sales revenue from $1 to $7 Million annually.
Prior to CDC, Mr. Norris was IT Manager for Willamette S&L (Portland, OR),
Manager of Systems Development for Texas American Bank, independent
consultant on large banking and retail implementation projects and software
developer . Mr. Norris earned a BS in Computer Science from Brigham Young
University in 1972 and has worked in information technology since 1968
