Jeffrey Cooper CV - Running Thoughts

Technology, Business & Concept Development

As a System Architect and generalized Technologist, I am adept at developing concepts that are original, flexible and forward looking. I pay close attention to the User Experience, whether it’s more traditional applications, to IoT solutions that integrate the user with the space around them- what I call a “volumetric user experience.”

My interest in User Experience has developed over the years from being on the front lines of the smartphone revolution, continuing to wearables and smarthomes, and the proliferation of poorly-thought-out application designs and user experiences. This reshaped my thinking into user-centric approaches, which begin on Day 1 of any concept development and has a deep impact on the architecture of such systems. There can be many user types of a system as well, and all users are important, be they end-consumers, enterprises, and administrators that have to maintain systems. They are all important.

I strive for future-proofing designs. This does not have to take enormous amounts of time, but during the requirements phase (yes, that is important), you should spend some time imagining what your solution might do- what you might want it to do, post-launch and how you see that it might evolve. This includes the potential for white-labeling your entire platform, if applicable. Therefore, as part of this future-proofing, I strive for platform-independence from any single provider of infrastructure or data services you might use. This requires some levels of abstraction and isolation of external interfaces. It also includes design for future technological improvements- AI will get cheaper and better, and what might be uneconomical today, will be affordable and potentially a key differentiator for you in the future.

My skills have developed through my work at Texas Instruments, Nokia, Samsung and multiple startups and smaller companies. I have a large network of partners that I can bring in for problem solving and creating new products.

My experience includes a decade of speaking about technology at conferences and generating visual presentations and simulations, including all content and artwork on this site.

Skills Profile

Areas of Expertise & Experience

Innovation

The articles on this website and the portfolio demonstrate an innovative approach. My passion is to advance the state of the art to the boundaries of what is possible. However, I also understand that it needs to be broken down into implementable steps, with the ROI each step will bring. As such, my solutions are generally modular. My background in software architecture forms the basis for this modular innovation.

I look across the industry to find partners, sometimes several, that can work together to create a better, more innovative solution. I work with industry bodies to champion these and present them in public forums.
I work in innovative, sometimes non-standard ways. I am skilled at looking for ways around logjams and less-than-obvious ideas. I am motivated to try new methods and tools to capture thoughts and ideas more rapidly, clearly, at any time and place, and I am experienced at POC and prototyping to design and implementation
Results include new application concepts, original thinking to differentiate from the competition (ShutterPro), resourceful workarounds, and creative additions to current concepts to take them to the next level of utility. For IoT and Smart Home with McCormick Spices and SmartThings, meshed sensors, RFID and data fusion as logical endpoint in the Connected Home talk.

Technical Background

Prior to partnerships, I developed analog and digital boards at TI, developed software at TI and early days at Nokia. I understand sensors, radio protocols, software architecture, and systems at a level that informs concepts and solutions that I develop. I keep current on technology and look down the road to imagine how these technologies will develop.

At Nokia, I managed both individual teams and at a group level, with multiple projects consisting of cellular protocol teams, and later the Audio software group within the Symbian OS team.

Recently, I have worked at smaller companies leading technology efforts as a vice president and architect.

Business Experience

Following the earlier technical period of my career, I began working in Business Development. My BusDev work, however, was always underpinned by my technical background. I’ve engaged with companies of every size, from a few people to some of the biggest.

I have also developed a broad network with each endeavor, from a web of partners to industry bodies, such as IHRSA, who represents the fitness industry. This provides an avenue for socializing ideas and developing them further.

Work History

RT Consulting,
Santa Cruz, CA

Principal

Mar 2020 – Present

2020- Present

Founded RunningThoughts website in Dec 2019 to form the basis for RT Consulting. RT Consulting was activated upon leaving Samsung in March 2020. Work includes development of multiple simulators, and technical advising and consulting to both enterprise companies and in the wearable space, as well as language learning and other areas. Details are broken out below for select projects.

Currently consulting with a stealth start-up in the Music Tech space that is in a pre-funding state. Technologies include blockchain, dApps and AI.

Sweatworks

VP of Business Transformation

Nov 2022-Jun 2024

System Architect, Research, Product Development

Designed a new billing system architecture for a healthcare client as part of their migration from an on-premises data center to AWS. The original billing system was spaghettied together together over 15 years and involved a lot of manual work due to the poor original design that was not made for additional business models. Rethought the entire billing process end-to-end to simplify it and designed a rules engine to enable Finance to create new rules as new business opportunities arise. This was done by listing all the different types of billable items and parameters related to billing, then expanding on future possibilities in a more abstract way, to allow for a much more flexible mix-and-match ability to create new business models.

Another project involved a very deep dive market research for one of the world’s largest medical companies, including market analysis of the nutritional supplement markets, wearable blood sensors for glucose, lactate and keto, and application of those in collegiate athletics, and in the fitness industry, with a particular focus on higher end clubs that offer medical services.

(Stealth)
Jerusalem, San Jose

CTO/Consultant

July 2022-Nov 2022

System Architecture, Product Strategy, Corporate Philosophy

Developed high-level architecture, product shaping, competitive analysis, start-up plan, corporate philosophy. Designed the underpinnings for a new type of language-learning application, incorporating (but not limited to) LLM integration, user adaptation, multi-modal and contextual learning incorporating 6 out of 8 language-learning modalities (Duolingo at most uses 2 modalities). Incorporated AI beyond the LLM aspect, and contextual information and unique approach of focusing on utilitarian conversations and conversations that the user would actually be engaging in, when fluent- based on personal interests and their own life. The philosophy behind this is we spend much of our conversational time talking about things important to us, so language learning should reflect that and not solely focus on hypothetical situations, of which only a portion are useful.

HYGEAR
Tel Aviv, Los Angeles

VP Product, Architect

Aug 2021-Jul 2022

Connected Fitness Products, Mobile Application, Content Management System

Architected new version of mobile application, backend content management system, incorporating support for streaming, video-on-demand and readiness for live, tagged content. Contextual application. Managed internal software team and product from the software side. (The company’s connected produce hardware was managed by the hardware manager.)

Samsung, Mt View, CA

Senior Manager Business Development

Apr 2013 – Mar 2020

2015-2020
Fitness, Health, Wearables, IoT,
Partner Ecosystem

Mainly focused on Wearable category. Worked across various types of applications, but quickly began to focus on what Smart Watches could do well. Just as smart phones were not mini-laptops, smart watches were not mini-phones. Apps needed to be appropriately scoped to make sense on a small form factor. Fitness and Health is a natural fit, and the killer use case for wearables.

I started at IHRSA, the Fitness Industry trade show in 2015 and did a deep dive in that industry. During 2015, I looked at mobile fitness apps that could have a wearable component, and began exploring some uses in health care, particularly senior health and patient discharge.

In 2016, ideas began to coalesce around a more immersive approach, interacting with the environment to add context. That effort resulted in the The Connected Gym, for which there is a collection of articles on this website. This was a holistic concept designed to capture all aspects of working out, but with the goal of starting small, and expanding later. Later that year, these were presented as keynotes at Motionsoft Technology Conference and Club Industry’s CEO Summit.

IN 2017 I began working with FitnessSF on a long term plan to implement portions of this system. I matched them up with Pear Sports, who was best placed to begin the project. In late 2017, I was invited to present the concept at IHRSA’s European Conference in London, in the CEO Track.

2018 and 2019 involved a combination of more traditional application partners and continuing work on the Connected Gym effort. Traditional partners involved were Strava, Swim.com, C25K, FITIV, and Lifesum as well as non-fitness apps that worked well on wearables, such as App In The Air.

I continued to present at IHRSA in both years to talk about Connected Gym and Wearables. The Connected Gym partially rolled out at FitnessSF, minus the indoor location (for now). The application, developed by Pear Sports, which fully supported Samsung and Apple watches, was connected to the Personal Trainers. In addition to virtual training, the Trainer themselves could direct workouts through the watch and phone between sessions and see the results.

2020 saw major changes in the organization and the resulting pivot was greatly reducing my involvement in wearables. However, I was to present at IHRSA 2020 prior to cancellation due to COVID-19.

The presentations from these public talks can be found in my Portfolio.

During this time period, I also worked with companies involved in healthcare. Explored with partners how wearables could improve the lot of patients discharged from the hospital and reduce the probability of readmission. Also worked closely with a senior healthcare partner focused on quality of life improvement for aging in place and seniors in various living arrangements.

2014
IoT, Smart Home, Partner Ecosystem

In the summer of 2014, I began to take interest in IoT and Smart Homes. My group started the Samsung Developer Conference in 2013, and was set to host their 2nd conference in 2014. I was able to create my own panel discussion, called Smart Home of the Future, to tackle what I felt were poor and fragmented experiences in the Smart Home products at that time.

Early in the development, Samsung acquired Smart Things. I purchased a system, which helped immerse my head in the Smart Home space. I decided to look 10 years into the future to imagine what a fully evolved, easy-to-use Smart Home would look like. I drew up a scenario of a house that understood its occupants habits, schedule and moods. This was broadly described, but needed a deep dive to demonstrate how such as system should work.

I chose the kitchen for the deep dive. Besides the already-conceived of Smart Fridge, I developed the idea of a Connected Pantry, since food is split between the fridge and pantry. As I began to assemble my panel, I reached out internally to Dr Luc Julia, who was one of several people behind Siri, and was developing a voice-interface system, to be on the panel. I also reached out to McCormick Spices, to have someone from outside. I felt it important to have an external perspective on this. The logic was that spices are the highest margin product in your kitchen, and would be early adopters of RFID, a key element in the Smart Pantry. Jerry Wolf, CIO at that time, agreed to be on the panel. Indeed, McCormick had already explored a similar scenario.

Finally, a VP from Smart Things and at Big Data expert from Korea rounded out the panel. For more details, there is a video of that panel discussion on YouTube.

2013
Partner Ecosystem

During my first year at Samsung, our group focused on a wide variety of partners to find key uses for Samsung’s differentiating features, such as S-Pen and services. There was no focus on any particular vertical.

Nokia, Irving, TX

Senior Manager Business Development

2005 – 2013

Imaging, Symbian, Windows Phone, Enterprise

During 2008-2013, I worked on Mobile Symbian partnerships with key app developers. Initially, this was broadly focused with a specialty in Enterprise Applications. There was a lot of “chasing Apple” by 2009, and in summer 2010, I came up with a new concept for several camera applications.

iPhone camera apps at that time were fragmented. Each type of photo had a special app from a different maker- HDR, 3D, Lomo effect, etc… I developed two apps- ShutterPro and VideoPro. This was pitched and $250k of funding was provided. BLStream developed ShutterPro first, and we decided to launch both at the Cinequest Film Festival’s Innovator Forum, in San Jose, in 2011. I convinced Nokia to sponsor the event, and the result was “Nokia Day”, in which we had a 90-minute session in the main theater. As my first public presentation, I chose a panel discussion, which followed a short mobile-produced short movie and presentation.

The panel discussion included speakers from related industries to represent the workflow of a filmmaker. BLStream, on capture technology, Kari Nevil, an independent filmmaker, the CEO of Ultimatte (green screen technology inventors) representing special effects, William Mutual from Live Cast, PortNexus for workflow, and a mobile marketing company for marketing and distribution. Additionally, Pocketbooth was there to represent still image taking.

Ultimately, Symbian as a platform was retired, but ShutterPro survived and was ported to Windows Phone.

Enterprise, Symbian

From 2005-2008, my focus was strictly on enterprise applications on the Symbian platform. This ran the gamut from email (SEVEN) to a large cross section of enterprise applications, including Security, CRM and VOIP.

Nokia, Irving, TX

Group Manager

1997 – 2004

Group Manager, Symbian

From 2002-2004, I managed team of 50 people in the Symbian Audio group, that consisted of many smaller teams.

Group Manager,
Team Manager
Data Protocols,
Line Management

Managed multiple teams developing data stacks for TDMA, EDGE, and TCP/IP in early mobile data deployments.

During that time period, I established myself globally as an influencer of the Series 40 platform, that eventually evolved into Asha.

During this time period, I was also line manager of a larger group that included the data development team as well as others.

Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX

Hardware and Software Engineer

Before 1997

Software Engineer

Developed software ranging from microcode to Ada, some desktop and some embedded. Worked in the defense industry.

Hardware Engineer

Developed both analog and digital boards for image processing and gimbal control. Built the Launch Control Station for the early phase of the Javelin anti-tank missile. Launched the first Javelin ever (called AAWS-M at the time).