I am always proud to tell people that have taken five foreign language classes in my life: French I, French I, Finnish I, Finnish I, and Finnish I. I am without a doubt one of the worst language students ever to sit in the back of a classroom. I have a bad memory, and since many other subjects came easily to me, I never developed certain basic skills of learning a new language. Which in a roundabout way is why I co-founded a language education company.
David and I began collaborating on what would later become Linguru while I was studying and working in Helsinki, Finland. I went there to learn more about my mother's native country and to study business. In the four years since graduating in electrical engineering from Tennessee Technological University, I had been working in software development and product marketing jobs at Sonix, a small ultrasonic testing and data acquisition equipment manufacturer on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. The International Business Linkage Program at Helsinki University of Technology provided an excellent start to what would be a very pleasant four-year stay. When I found time to study, I worked on my MBA and Master's in industrial management, including a thesis for Sonera about new telecommunications service businesses: Complexity, Knowledge, and Strategy in Telecommunications Service Development and Transfer.
Sonera, formerly known as Telecom Finland, is the leading services company in one of the most advanced telecommunications markets in the world. Their innovations in Internet and mobile communications provided a string of extremely interesting projects while I worked in the corporate research, new business development, and new media units as a business analyst and business development manager. Participating in the early development of two internal ventures reinforced my interest in small companies. After thinking for a long time about what I really wanted from the Internet that I could not get already, I sent an e-mail to the best linguist I knew. I asked him if he was interested in quitting his job as a cashier and produce specialist at a food co-op to develop a new tool for learning foreign languages.
The result is before you. Since we were/are both marginally homeless, we relocated to Nashville, Tennessee and settled into long hours of work and conversation. Here we set up an advanced network in the proverbial garage and greenhouse of my father. We have spent the last two years (OK, we did leave the greenhouse occasionally during that time) developing the dictionary software and support business that you find presented on this site. We hope that it makes a positive difference to your learning experience. I particularly look forward to the release of the Finnish and French grammatical dictionaries so that I can continue to study without seeing the pained expression of my instructors.
My responsibilities in Linguru are as president and chief software architect. David and I designed the graphical user interface which you interact with when using the dictionary. I was then locked in a small room until I came back with a workable multi-threaded interface, integrated fault-tolerant zero maintenance database, stateless scalable network replication based on a distributed event model, and a sustainable and ethical way for Linguru to return a profit to investors. Meanwhile, David enjoyed getting married and finishing his Ph.D. But I'm not bitter. Really. I mean that.