Chuq Von Rospach
Birds 🦅 Landscapes 📷 Nature
2916 NW Bucklin Hill Rd #119, Silverdale, WA 98383
Where to Find me
Stay updated by subscribing to my 6FPS email newsletter
Mastodon (@chuqvr@fosstodon.org)
American Birding Association Community
Subscribe via RSS
Resume (but… why? I’m retired)
Twitter (turned off. thanks, Elon)
I am an avid bird photographer and birder. I write about (and poke at) technology and other things that interest me. I have a long history with online communities and social media going back to the 1980s.
I am a long-time veteran of high tech in Silicon Valley, having moved here from Southern California in 1982. We lived in Santa Clara County, within shouting distance of the new Apple Spaceship campus, until 2021, when we relocated to Kitsap County in Washington. We currently share our home with two feral rescue cats, Buster and Hunter, and an Umbrella Cockatoo, Tatiana. All three of them are highly intelligent and attitudinal. Coincidentally, this house is never boring.
Please note: As of July, 2023 I have officially retired, and I’ve left DomainTools so I am no longer working for them (or anyone).
My Backstory
In previous roles I've done technical community management (aka developer evangelist or "speaker to developers"), social media content and administration and webmastering. At Apple I built many of their large email delivery systems. My technical background includes writing Perl, PHP, C and Python, and I'm decent at CSS and pretty rusty in Javascript. I've built social systems with Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Confluence, Jive, vBulletin, and a number of other social tools. My first and still love is email and the mailing list, and I was once part of the Mailman open source list server project as a contributor and architect.
Professionally I've worked at various jobs in high tech since I left college in the 1980's. I moved to Silicon Valley in 1982, which means I've been here longer than I lived in Southern California where I was born. Companies I've worked for include a number of startups you've never heard of (because they died), National Semiconductor, Sun Microsystems, Apple Computer (17 years, somehow), Palm (the WebOS reboot attempt), Infoblox and Cisco.
I have an e-mail newsletter, 6FPS, which comes out once a month. It’s where I keep people updated about what’s going on and what I’ve found that might be interesting to you. Think of it as the conversation I’d have with you if we had the time to meet face to face once a month for coffee.
Organizations I support
Beyond my volunteer work, I financially support these organizations, and recommend that you consider doing so as well:
My local Audubon chapters, Kitsap Audubon and Seattle Audubon. I also continue to support my former local chapter, Santa Clara Valley Audubon. Local chapters get little funding from the national organization, and they both deserve support, with the National and State organization focusing on lobbying and advocacy on the large issues of today, and the local chapter working on the issues that affect the area around us and helping to support and educate our local birding community. I no longer support Audubon National (see why).
The San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory (SFBBO) works on improving conditions of San Francisco bay and managing habitats along the bay to help keep it and the birds that depend on it healthy and thriving.
The Nature Conservancy works to buy and manage open space and critical habitat worldwide to protect sensitive lands and endangered species.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology works on research and education about birds in North America and beyond, and manages the essential eBird system birders rely on.
The Kitsap Humane Society also gets my support.
So does the West Sound Wildlife Shelter.
And the Central Kitsap Food Bank.
And Habitat for Humanity.
More Things You Might Be Interested In
Many years ago I wrote Science Fiction and Fantasy, and I actually sold a few stories.
In the 1980’s I published one of the first online Science Fiction Fanzines, called OtherRealms, which was nominated for two Hugos during its run and actually finished above No Award!
For many years I ran the South Bay Birds mailing list for birders in Santa Clara County, now managed by Santa Clara Valley Audubon. I still host many of the old archives for this list.