About Skip Walter

It’s the journey, not the destination.

I am a naturally curious person who loves to read, who is an addicted life long learner, who loves to get distracted on the Internet (thank you Cathy Davidson for researching the value of this activity), who loves to find interesting things, and finds great joy in sharing the discoveries with others.  Over the years, I find myself entering “On the Way to Somewhere Else” as the subject for many emails to colleagues, family and friends that are the fruits of my distractions.

I have started many different blogs (on wine, on extreme productivity, on human centered design, on the intersection of design and business) but lost energy by the separateness of these writings.  When I entered the title “On the Way to Somewhere Else” for this blog, I found it very freeing and a way to “organize” all of the different wonderful worlds I encounter on a daily basis.

I have over40 years of experience in executive management, executive consulting, software engineering, product development, high technology mergers and acquisitions, organizational development, joint venture development, designing, architecting, producing, and delivering software solutions for the legal industry, publishing industry, health care industry, multi-national Fortune 500 companies, high technology startups and wineries. Along the way I was the Vice President of Engineering for Aldus (now Adobe) Corporation known for PageMaker software and the Father of ALL-IN-1, Digital Equipment Corporation’s $1 billion per year integrated enterprise office automation system.

A lifetime of study and executive management experience led to the founding of Attenex where we achieved a cash flow positive state within three years.  Attenex was sold to FTI Consulting in 2008 for $91M.  In the process of being a serial entrepreneur, I raised more than $25 M in new venture funding for software companies in the office automation, medical, and legal industries.  The products we designed, created, and developed are used by over five million customers.   As part of my commitment to “pay it forward” to all of those who so graciously mentored me in my management juvenile period, I taught strategic design and product design planning at the Institute of Design (ID) of the Illinois Institute of technology for ten years and was a member of the ID Board of Overseers for two years.  I was selected for the Dean’s Advisory Council for the School of Informatics at Indiana University in 2005 serving for two years.   Currently, I serve as the Chairperson for the External Advisory Board for the Human Centered Design and Engineering Department at the University of Washington.

I am actively involved with Angel Investing for new business startups through the ZINO Society and mentor early stage startup CEOs and executive teams.  I consult with high tech companies to research, design and build the next two generations of visual analytics software along with having a great deal of fun with medium sized wineries consulting on direct to consumer and direct to trade marketing (including social media and social commerce).  My greatest joy comes from teaching design, technology commercialization, entrepreneuring, and designing for demand at UW in the HCDE and MBA programs.

“By letting go, it all gets done.

The world is won by those who let it go.

But when you try and try,

The world is beyond the winning.”

 

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