I'm a software engineer, climate advocate, husband & father, who loves the great outdoors and making things.
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Employment
I'm currently the Chief Service Architect at IBM Quantum, making out Quantum Computers available to the world. I've been part of the IBM Quantum effort since 2019.
I've had a long and varied career in software, over nearly 3 decades. Prior to working on Quantum Computing, I was part of IBM's Developer Advocacy organization, HPE's Open Stack Group, Samsung's Open Source Group, and IBM's Linux Technology Center.
The first half of my software career was dominated by Open Source and Open Standards development. I've contributed to a wide range of Open Source projects over those years including: SystemImager, OpenHPI, Xen, OpenSim, NFS Ganesha, and OpenStack, where I was part of the Technical Committee for many years.
Open source is not just code, it's people. Projects thrive or die based on the people and community architecture as much as the software architecture. My focus over the years has been as much on the community organizing as the software architecture. Communities, software or other, are like gardens, and require some attention to grow in productive ways. It goes without saying that any opinions expressed here are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
Software
I'm a huge believer in Open Source Software, and have been an avid Linux user since 1999. I no longer do much open source at work, but from time to time I still get to poke around on ideas. Those are mostly focused on Home Automation with the Home Assistant project.
There really is only one Sean Dague on the internet right now (I feel bad if someone else pops up with the same name), so if you find my name in a software credits file, it's me. Over the years I've written reasonable projects in a myriad of languages. For side projects that I run myself I've moved everything to Github.
Climate
Our world has many societal challenges. The one I've chosen to spend time on is Climate Change. I jointed Citizens Climate Lobby in 2017, and lead the CCL Mid Hudson Chapter. I'm also one of the CCL NY State Coordinators, and rebooted out state action team a few years ago. Organizing open source communities helped me build the skills to be an effective organizer with CCL.
We have to get off fossil fuels to have a livable future. In our home we've done that, by replacing out oil heating system with geothermal, replacing our cars with EVs, and replacing all the other fossil fuel items in our house with electric equivalents. We have too many trees, so no solar on our roof, but we get community solar from a local array in Wappingers.
Community
I formed our local Linux Users Group in 2003, and ran it until 2018, when climate organizing took over my time. The group is not very active any more, as Covid really did a number on in person activities, but there is still an event or two from time to time.
I also previously volunteered with the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, helping them have a managed web platform for getting news and information out.
Education
For someone that has made a career of Software Engineering and Architecture, I got started in a pretty non traditional way, with a Bachelors degree in Physics from Wesleyan University in 1998. Physics fundamentally teaches you how to break complex problems into solvable ones, which is hugely beneficial in Software Engineering. I did go back to school part time and got a Masters of Science in Computer Science from Marist College in 2009 to round out my CS experience. I'm pretty sure that I'm done with getting any further degrees, though I'm a big fan of learning new things, so you never know.