Eric Cloninger Resume
Dear Hiring Manager;
Thank you for taking the time to review my qualifications. If you would prefer a resume to this site, you can find a copy here, while my LinkedIn profile is here.
NOTE: As of April 2023, I’ve started a new role and I’m not looking for a new role.
I am interested in a position as a Senior Product Manager, Developer Relations Manager, or other roles requiring a technical background. I have more than 30 years of experience in the software industry and a history of delivering and supporting products in these roles.
For the past 15 years, I've been a Senior Product/Project Manager, focused on developer-focused products, developer relations, and mobile devices. During this time, I've been heavily involved in the Eclipse and Android open-source communities. I am a skilled communicator, having authored many technical articles and as a frequent presenter at developer conferences. These activities can be seen in the sections below.
Prior to Product Management, I developed software for 18 years. I am experienced at developing desktop and device software with C, C++, and Java. I am experienced in web server management, self-hosted and in the cloud as well as a solid understanding of web protocols. I've contributed to several popular O'Reilly technical books on Palm OS programming and Windows.
In addition to my professional work, I held elected office from 2002-2016 as a member of the local school district Board of Education. I held this post through 3 elections, serving several times as President of the Board. I've worked with community leaders on "get out the vote" campaigns to raise funds for three building projects totaling fifteen million dollars.
I live 1 hour from Oklahoma City, where I've worked as a remote employee since 2001. I am able to travel for work up to 33% of the time.
Regards
Eric Cloninger
Work History
| Dates | Role | Employer |
|---|---|---|
| 4/2023 - Present | Lead, Developer Docs and Resources | Analog Devices |
| 3/2018 - 4/2023 | Lead, Developer Relations | Samsung Electronics |
| 7/2017 - 2/2018 | Consultant | Oil & Gas Industry |
| 9/2015 - 4/2016 | Sr. Product Manager | Cigital, Inc. |
| 8/2014 - 8/2015 | Sr. Product Manager | Samsung Telecommunications |
| 4/2014 - 8/2014 | Product Marketing Manager | Coverity (Contractor) |
| 10/2012 - 3/2014 | Sr. Product Manager, Mobile and Embedded | Klocwork, Inc |
| 2/2008 - 10/2012 | Sr. Product Manager | Motorola Mobility |
| 6/2006 - 2/2008 | Sr. Product Manager | Wind River Systems |
| 10/2005 - 6/2006 | Sr. Engineer | Advanced Financial Solutions |
| 10/1999 - 7/2005 | Sr. Engineer | Palm/PalmSource |
| 5/1996 - 10/1999 | Sr. Engineer/Product Manager | Metrowerks |
| 3/1988 - 5/1996 | Software Developer | Miscellaneous Companies |
| 8/1986 - 5/1988 | Graduate Teaching Assistant | Oklahoma State University |
Open Source
Most of my open source work predates Github, although I will occasionally fork/pull/fix something I find that’s broken. My Github profile is ehcloninger.
| Project | Role | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Eclipse Andmore | Project Co-lead | Andmore was an Eclipse Foundation project to enable development of Android applications using the Eclipse IDE. This is a fork of the Google ADT plugins, the former MOTODEV plugins, and plugins created by the project members. |
| Eclipse for Mobile Developers | Creator/Maintainer | Eclipse for Mobile Developers was a pre-packaged set of tools for mobile developers. The package was the starting point for Android developers before Google began creating their own full Eclipse distribution. |
| Eclipse Sequoyah | Project Lead | Sequoyah was an Eclipse project to create a platform- and language-neutral set of development tools for mobile devices. Sequoyah pulled in several other projects under one project leadership and release process. Sequoyah had some success with Android development, but little adoption elsewhere. |
| EclipseCon Program Committee | Mobile and Embedded | Served on the Embedded and Mobile Sub-committee in 2010. Chaired the sub-committee in 2012. |
| Eclipse TmL | Project Lead | TmL was an Eclipse project to create a toolset for Mobile Linux. Motorola sponsored the project and appointed me as the project lead. The project was a participant in the first Eclipse Working Group called Pulsar. When Motorola adopted Android as a phone platform, some of the TmL project assets were deprecated. Other assets were moved into a new project named Sequoyah. |
| Android (AOSP) | Contibutor | I8af2e598 - Initial contribution of Motorola MOTODEV tools code. |
| Android (AOSP) | Contributor | I5e85c027 - Scripted build files for MOTODEV tools. |
Content
Presentations
| Year | Event | Representing | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | EclipseCon | Andmore Project | Andmore - The Eclipse Android Tooling Project |
| 2014 | Samsung Developer Conference | Samsung | Gear S Primer – What you Need to Know to Get Started |
| Online Tutorial | Samsung | Develop Samsung Gear and Android Apps with the Tizen IDE for Wearable | |
| Live Webinar | Klocwork | Secure and Robust Android Development using Static Code Analysis | |
| 2012 | EclipseCon | Eclipse Sequoyah Project | Android 101 |
| 2011 | EclipseCon | Motorola Mobility | Static analysis for quality mobile applications |
| On-demand Webinar | Motorola Mobility | Improving Enterprise App Quality with MOTODEV App Validator | |
| O’Reilly Android Open Conference | Eclipse Foundation | Eclipse For Android C/C++ Developers | |
| O’Reilly Android Open Conference | Motorola Mobility | Static Analysis For Improved Application Performance And Quality | |
| Big Android Barbeque | Motorola Mobility | Speaker/Booth | |
| Silicon Valley Android Developers | Motorola Mobility | Localizing Your Android App in 10 minutes (Lightning Talk) | |
| MOTODEV App Summits | Motorola Mobility | Building Quality Into Your Apps Through Testing | |
| AnDevCon I | Motorola Mobility | Beyond English: Make Your Android App a Global Success (Class #801) | |
| 2010 | Adobe MAX | Motorola Mobility | Power Tools for Android App developers |
| Big Android Barbeque | Motorola Mobility | Speaker/Booth | |
| Eclipse Day at Google | Eclipse Sequoyah Project | Eclipse Sequoyah for Android App Developers | |
| MOTODEV App Summits | Motorola Mobility | MOTODEV Studio Tools - Advanced Debugging Techniques | |
| EclipseCon | Eclipse Sequoyah Project | Eclipse for Mobile Application Development (Panel Lead) | |
| EclipseCon Program Committee | Eclipse TmL Project | Assisted with Embedded and Mobile device sessions | |
| 2009 | Chicago Android User Group | Motorola Mobility | MOTODEV Studio Tools, Unofficial DROID Launch |
| FITC Mobile | Motorola Mobility | Five Easy Steps to Creating Applications with MOTODEV Studio for Android | |
| CELF Embedded Linux Conference | Eclipse Foundation | Building an Embedded Tools Standard Using Eclipse | |
| EclipseCon | Eclipse TmL Project | Convergence in Device Software | |
| 2008 | LinuxWorld | Eclipse TmL Project | Creating an End-to-End Mobile Linux Development and Simulation Environment Using Eclipse/TmL |
| 2007 | Telelogic User Group | Wind River Systems | Integrating Wind River Workbench and Telelogic Rhapsody Projects |
| 2006 | FreeScale Technology Forum | Wind River Systems | Embedded Software Panel |
| 2005 | PalmSource Developer Conference | Palm Inc. | Layout, Debugging, and Design Tools topics (no information online) |
Books
| Title | Author | Publisher | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PalmPilot, The Ultimate Guide | David Pogue | O’Reilly Media | 1st Ed., 1998 | I wrote a 30 page chapter on programming the PalmPilot for the 1st edition of David Pogue’s book. The chapter was removed from the second edition after O’Reilly began publishing other Palm OS programming titles. |
| Windows XP Hacks | Preston Gralla | O’Reilly Media | 2004 | I wrote 8 of the 100 hacks, several of which were published later in the Big Book of Windows Hacks. |
| Windows XP Cookbook | Robbie Allen | O’Reilly Media | 2005 | I was a technical reviewer on this book. |
| Didaw’s Book | James Howard Cloninger | Self-published (Lulu.com) | 2006 | I collected 500+ pages of my grandfather’s notes and drawings into a book of family history with appendices of original genealogy research. |
Periodicals
| Title | Periodical | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Factory Floor: CodeWarrior for PalmPilot | MacTech Magazine | March 1998 | Discussing the latest release of CodeWarrior for PalmPilot |
| Factory Floor: A Palm Update, Part 1 | MacTech Magazine | September 1999 | With Phil Shoemaker of Palm, talking about the latest releases of the Palm SDK and CodeWarrior for Palm OS |
| Factory Floor: A Palm Update, Part 2 | MacTech Magazine | October 1999 | Using CodeWarrior for Palm OS to create an internationalized application |
White Papers
| Title | Customer | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sigma Cubed is Coverity Clean | Coverity, Inc | August 2014 | Sigma Cubed is a geo-services company in Houston, TX and a customer of Coverity. I wrote this case study from recorded interviews and content taken from a webinar using personal knowledge of the Oil and Gas industry. |
| Bally Delivers Better Products with Coverity | Coverity, Inc | June 2014 | I conducted two sets of interviews with senior managers and engineering team leaders at Bally from the US and India to get information for this case study in time for their annual conference. |
| Air France injects agility into software testing with Coverity | Coverity, Inc | June 2014 | I reworked an existing set of documents from an acquisition, with some quotes originally in French, to deliver this white paper. |
| Coverity Test Advisor – QA Edition | Coverity, Inc | June 2014 | Coverity acquired a company in May 2014 and rebranded that company’s product as Coverity Test Advisor - QA Edition. I created this data sheet from scratch along with several other pieces of collateral and a video showing how to install the tools. |
Blogs
I frequently author blog posts as a function of my work. These are some of the more relevant ones I’ve written at my employers. Please note that these are local copies of the content as many of these posts are no longer available at the original location.
Primary Job Duties
Analog Devices
Working remotely, traveling 1 or 2 times per month.
Delivering on the Future. The second hire for a new software-focused Developer Relations team at Analog Devices, a well-known semiconductor and sensor manufacturer. Tasked with creating content and experiences for a new audience segment that needs support throughout the tech stack.
Samsung Electronics
Working remotely, traveling 1 or 2 times per month (prior to COVID).
Delivering Relevant and Timely Content. Managing a team of internal and external content creators and developer advocates in maintaining a constant pipeline of useful information for subscribers. Utilizing analytic data to find optimal methods to deliver content, while engaging with audiences through social media, online events, and in-person events (prior to 2020).
Forward Facing. Led the effort to renovate the aging Samsung Developers site from one that had poor performance and fragmented responsibilities to one that utilizes modern development methods and revision-based content control with clearly defined roles for content creators. The resulting site was delivered in January 2020 and continues to improve.
Technical Program Management. Delivered a strategic web infrastructure overhaul on time and on budget. Project involved 5 external vendors and 4 internal teams in 6 time zones across 3 continents. This project required extensive cooperation, as each team had responsibilities that relied on each other. The timing and order of deployment occurred in a 6 hour window with coordination from a conference room in Mountain View, CA. Deployment occurred with minimal interruption to the user base and no loss of functionality in the migration.
Keep the Lights On. Managing server infrastructure for parts of the Samsung Developers and Samsung Developer Conference web sites. This involves tweaking system performance, monitoring system availability, configuring DNS and web server software, managing security processes, and other tasks necessary to keep a site with 350,000 monthly active users operating.
Self
Worked remotely, traveling to client site during project definition, milestones, and delivery. Customized an Android mobile app for oilfield operations.
Cigital, Inc.
Worked remotely, traveling as needed to corporate offices and customer sites.
Build a New Product Line. Worked with a team of developers in the US, UK, and India to create automated mobile security tools for medium to large enterprise customers. Engagements for mobile security were doubling every 4 months and Cigital needed automated processes to replace slow and inefficient manual testing. My role was to help the mobile technical team define the automation and logging tools that interacted with the customer portal, by designing the data elements and APIs needed to handle each test sequence.
Samsung Telecommunications
Worked remotely, traveled 1 or 2 times per month to corporate offices and development conferences.
Technical Product Management. Drove adoption of the Samsung Gear line of smartwatches by increasing ecosystem offerings. Recruit and educate third-party developers on the tools and practices used to create smartwatch apps. Returning community feedback to internal teams in a constructive manner in order to provide a better experience for developers and consumers.
Ensure Product Quality. Created Best Practices and release management requirements for internal teams that create tools and SDKs for external developers. The purpose was to improve the quality in releases from teams who might not understand what external developers require.
Improve Partner Support. Developed emulator-only Android system images based on Samsung hardware. These were used to allow internal teams to support partner developers in regions where local hardware isn’t available.
Empower Developers to Succeed. Developed self-help solutions for third-party developers targeting Samsung Android and Gear mobile devices. For this project, I evaluated cloud-based learning and support tools, such as MindTouch and Zendesk to incorporate them into a new developer portal. Created online content to address the highest priority issues facing developers in the Samsung developer ecosystem.
Coverity
Worked remotely as a contractor, traveled as necessary to trade shows and corporate offices in San Francisco, CA.
Product Marketing. Writing and updating white papers, competitor profiles, and case studies. Working at trade shows, answering technical questions for field Sales team.
Klocwork, Inc
Worked remotely, traveling 1 or 2 times per month to the corporate office in Ottawa and to client sites to support Enterprise Sales team.
Transitioned Engineering Organization to Agile. Throughout 2013, Product Management and the Engineering leaders converted the existing development processes from waterfall to a Scrum-based process. This process involved converting the internal bug-tracking process based on GNATS to use a modern tool. We chose JIRA after evaluating several alternatives. Then Product Management began the process of migrating 8 years of customer requests into prioritized queues, often relying on a Kanban wall of sticky notes. During this time, the Engineering teams were still delivering products on a 1 year schedule, but were using the Product Management priorities and were delivering internal releases aligned to 3-week sprints.
Competitive analysis of commercial and open-source products. As part of the ongoing need for information about our competitors, I set up a competitive analysis lab using VMWare ESX servers with Linux and Windows virtual machines for installing, testing, and analyzing products in a consistent manner. Focused on the primary commercial competitors of the company’s two products as well as open-source projects to give Account Managers information about how to sell when faced with a competitor at an account. Analyzed public information about competitors and updated competitive information as part of the product release activities.
Product Release activities. Worked on two product releases cycles for two different products. One was a new product, requiring new marketing content, sales tools and competitive analysis. The other release was a major update to Klocworks’ primary product–Insight that required updated marketing collateral and event support (webinars, trade shows).
Voice of the customer. In my role, I cultivated relationships with many of our customers. Two of these relationships were responsible for 10% of annual revenue, while others were smaller customers who pushed the boundaries of the products’ abilities. I built engineering requirements that would satisfy the needs of large and small customers, consistent with the company’s product strategy.
Motorola Mobility
Worked remotely, traveling quarterly to department offices in Sunnyvale, CA
Build and grow a product. I managed the creation, delivery, and launch activities for Motorola’s development tools on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. The primary product was a branded version of the Eclipse IDE, called MOTODEV Studio, that was focused on Android application developers. Announced in the Summer of 2009, the user base increased steadily, ending with over 40,000 unique downloads per month. MOTODEV Studio drove most of the traffic to the Motorola Developer site from 2010 through Q4 2012.
I worked to develop a profile of our users by reviewing server logs, Google Analytics, and annual surveys. I expanded the user base of the product by finding compatible distribution channels, such as the Eclipse Marketplace. Worked on advertising campaigns at popular developer sites to reach new audiences.
Leadership. Led an off-shore engineering team located primarily in Brazil with some contributors in China. I acted in the role of the product owner in an agile process. The development team delivered new releases every 3 to 4 months, never missing a delivery date.
Evangelize the product. I created and delivered 24 presentations on mobile development at 17 developer events between 2008 and 2012. Some of the topics were related to Motorola development tools and others related to the Eclipse Open-source projects that Motorola sponsored. At the events where Motorola was also an exhibitor or sponsor, I acted as our representative as well as worked in the booth.
Open-source leadership. I led several open source projects at the Eclipse Foundation that were focused on mobile application development. Motorola was a member of the Eclipse Pulsar Working Group and I handled many of the technical duties related to this group. I collaborated with developers from other companies, including several that were competitors, toward the goal of having a language- and platform-neutral toolset for application developers. As a project leader, I reviewed, organized, and presented talks on developing for mobile devices and embedded systems with the Eclipse IDE.
Manage the End-of-Life. Periodically, we had projects and products that were no longer relevant. I led end-of-life for several services and product teams. In some cases, this meant the redeployment or release of employees and contractors. My final project at Motorola was the shutdown of the entire Motorola Developer site–transferring IP to appropriate places, writing statements for partners and third-party developers, and ensuring that linked content from other sites would not get lost.
Wind River Systems
Worked remotely, traveling quarterly to company headqarters in Alameda, CA
Instrument of Change. Guided development of Wind River Workbench, a branded version of the Eclipse IDE, focused on embedded development. Taking input from customers, internal stakeholders, and open-source projects, I built requirements and negotiated their inclusion into the product.
Growing the Business. As part of a goal to move Wind River into strategic accounts with IBM, we entered into the Ready for Rational program. My part in this was to handle all the technical details of the certification process. My team and I worked to ensure that our product met the numerous quality and best practice requirements demanded by the IBM program. To satisfy the requirements for certification, I had to create new engineering requirements that were included in the next mid-year update.
Lead Cross-Functional Teams. The Chief Operating Officer was concerned about the unexpected growth in call-center incidents that required more qualified Customer Service staff. I was tasked to understand the nature of these incidents and then create a plan to address them. I surveyed several years of call center data and post-support surveys and identified a small number of situations that accounted for nearly 60% of all incidents. These issues were addressed in future releases, leading to reduced call volume and overall improvement in customer satisfaction.
Advanced Financial Solutions
Worked remotely and onsite, commuting to engineering office in Norman, OK
Address Product Defects. I reported to the CTO, handling improvement projects to the company’s product line–payment processing for banks. I performed a security audit and uncovered a serious login security flaw related to how account names and passwords were transmitted and stored.
Drive Organizational Change. I identified that many of the problems with the product had an underlying cause in the way engineering did its job. Developers would check in code with compiler warnings and without peer review. I argued that the first change should be to clean up all code to compile at the lint - 1 (/W3) and force developers to treat warnings as errors (/WX). The next step of formal code reviews before checkin occurred after I left.
Palm
Worked remotely from Austin, TX, traveling quarterly to company headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA
Build a Happy Customer. I was one of the leads on the Development Tools team, creating tools for the Palm SDK that were used by thousands of third-party developers to create their own apps for Palm OS. We created GUI and automated tools that ran on Windows and MacOS.
Resolve Internal Tools Needs. As new features were added to Palm OS, many needed to be exposed to external developers. Some were GUI widgets and others were configuration settings. I worked with the internal teams to adapt our tools for these needs. In one example, I discovered an inefficiency in the way binary resources were stored in our ROM that saved over 2K of ROM space. For a device with only 128K of ROM to begin with, this was a significant find.
See Beyond the Horizon. In 2002, we realized that Palm OS developers needed a better environment than those provided by the many non-standard IDEs and homegrown tools. We researched and advocated for Palm to become a member of what was to become the Eclipse Foundation. IBM had recently spun the Eclipse IDE out of their WebSphere team and Palm was one of the first mobile/embedded companies to build a new kind of development tool on the platform. Today, Eclipse is the de-facto standard for Java development and is widely used by embedded companies to provide a quality and consistent experience to their internal and third-party developers.
Growth and Responsibility. Palm had no presence in Austin, TX in
- I worked with managers at HQ to locate a facility and build it out for the employees we expected to hire in Austin. When a facility was located, I was the local manager who handled all the logistics. I also coordinated much of the hiring of engineering staff until a permanent local administrative assistant was hired.
Metrowerks
Pivot the Company. I started at Metrowerks as a developer who had deep technical experience with (classic) Mac development, Windows development, and the Microsoft Foundation Classes. At the time, the Metrowerks CodeWarrior tools were praised by Mac developers for helping them make the transition from the M68K chip to the PowerPC chip. Metrowerks wanted their products to run on Windows and MacOS at the same time. As part of a focused team, we built the Windows version of CodeWarrior that used the same code base as the Mac OS version and by the time we went to market, it was built with the CodeWarrior compiler instead of Visual C++. This was the beginning of a new chapter for Metrowerks in the mid-1990’s.
Build on New Foundations. Once CodeWarrior was working on Mac OS and Windows, the Company Leaders looked for opportunities to partner with semiconductor, operating system, and hardware manufacturers. The solution was to provide a turn-key solution for their internal and external developers. Metrowerks would work with the partner to create a product, which would then be sold for thousands of dollars less than competing products. I led teams focused on PDAs, which at the time there were several strong candidates–Palm OS, Windows CE, Psion (Symbian), and Magic Cap. We worked with partners on all these platforms. The most successful venture was with Palm Computing and I led this team. For several years, this product brought in $2-3 million per year on a budget of 3 or 4 developers.
Miscellaneous
Software development on Windows, DEC VMS, and Classic Mac OS using C, C++, and Pascal.
Oklahoma State University
Lectured undergraduate classes on Pascal, Unix, and C programming.