Meet Ric

Background

I am an American by birth but lived in Asia for over two decades. During that time I worked throughout the region — Korea, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. I hold a Juris Doctor degree and an undergraduate with honors in Music.

Tech

I built my first website in 1995 and began building sites professionally for others in 1999. My first web design company, Dots&Loops, operated in Hong Kong during the dotcom boom. The company was an early mover in the CMS field in Asia and the first Cold Fusion Premium Partner in the region.

After the dotcom meltdown, I moved to Bangkok where I served as the Creative Director & Head of Product Development at Inetasia where I lead the design and building of a proprietary CMS built on the .NET platform.

In 2003, I left Inetasia to start my second web dev company, water&stone. The inspiration for water&stone came from the rise of open source CMS products, like Mambo and the ‘Nuke family. After watching the open source space evolve over the years, I decided the products had reached a level of maturity that made it practical to offer them to clients in a professional fashion. That firm operated for more than decade in Bali, Indonesia.

Over the years I have worked on a number of major projects for clients, including BASF, Colgate-Palmolive, Tesco, FPDSavills, Sino Group, CBRichard Ellis, Amari Hotels, the University of North Carolina, Mercy Corps, and many others. I also served as the President of the Open Source Mambo Foundation in 2006.

In 2016, I shifted focus and began using my technology skills to deliver positive social impact via work with the humanitarian aid and development agency, Mercy Corps. I served as the agency’s Director of Emerging Technology and, together with my team, explored the humanitarian development potentials of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, 3D printing, virtual reality, big data analytics, and more.

In 2021 I returned full time to the commercial world, focusing on distributed ledger technologies and decentralized systems. At present, I work with Iqlusion (primarily in the Cosmos world), the Decentralized Cooperation Foundation (DCF), and on the L1 project the 0L.Network.

Publishing

I have been writing about technology since 1999. I worked as a columnist for That’s Shanghai from 1999 to 2001 and for the Bangkok Post from 2002 through 2006 and finally for ComputerWorld (Hong Kong), where I wrote the BackPage commentary column.

I began publishing tech books in 2006, with the publication of the Mambo Visual Blueprint for Wiley & Sons. In 2007, I released Drupal 5 Themes, the first of three books on Drupal theming for Packt Publishing. Over the years I have published nearly a dozen tech books for Wiley & Packt. It’s been a great relationship and we’ve made some wonderful books.

As the content of this site shows, the vast majority of my writing concerns technology. In addition, I have also been published on a variety of subjects, includin travel in Asia, legal research and theory, business management, and even (believe it or not!) literature. Below is a list of publications in which my work has appeared over the course of the years:

  • AsiaWeek
  • Bangkok Post
  • CIO (Asia)
  • ComputerWorld Hong Kong
  • Enterprise Open Source Journal
  • The Hong Kong Lawyer
  • Internet World
  • Linux Magazine (UK Edition)
  • The South China Morning Post
  • That’s Shanghai
  • Media
  • People Today
  • various local and regional business press
  • eCommerce Times
  • Forbes.com
  • Hoovers
  • IT Toolbox
  • Linux.org
  • Linux Insider
  • Linux Today
  • O’Reilly.com
  • Tech News World
  • MercyCorps.org
  • NetHope Solutions Center

Contacts & Materials

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