Hello World, I'm Coté.

Nice to meet you. I’ve been involved professionally in software for over ten years, mostly on the development side of the shop. As the son of a (former) IBM employee, I’ve been personally involved in computers all my life. While I spent most of those years coding during the day, when I wasn’t programming I was glued to my screen watching, commenting on, and involved in the evolution of the tech world as the net became part of that world’s DNA.

In that sense, I’m part of the first generation to consider a networked world as the normal, expected, and necessary state of affairs. Indeed, as the very fact that I’m posting to this weblog as the first RedMonk employee proves, the net directly effects our everyday lives.

For the past 6+ years, I’ve chronicled my experiences along those lines in my weblog, DrunkAndRetired.com. Recently, I’ve added podcasting to the medium-mix as well.

Thanks to my new bosses, James and Steve, I’ve been given the chance to flip my night-life into my day-life. I’ve been infatuated with software and technology in general since my father put me in front of his IBM XT many years ago, and nothing professionally thrills me more than being able to cover, advise, and get closely involved with the people of the tech-world.

As the title of this blog suggests, my firm belief is that it’s people who drive successful technology. Without innovative developers, marketers, sales people, customers, and users, any technology would just be vapor-ware.

I’ll be seeing you soon here, in email, IM, on the phone, or through whatever medium comes along. Pardon any mess you encounter as I get things setup.

In the mean time, here’s a short bio:

Coté is an analyst at RedMonk covering enterprise software, specializing
in systems management, application development, collaborative, and
social software.

Before Redmonk, Coté worked at BMC developing the BMC Performance
Manager family of enterprise systems management products. As a senior
member of the team, Coté constantly balanced customer need and
desire, innovative development, and shipping quality product on time.

Prior to BMC, Coté worked at a wide variety of tech companies and
startups such as The Cobalt Group, Coral Technologies, and one of the
first, and still thriving, online banking companies, FundsXpress.

In addition to focusing on shipping product, Coté spent much of his
time at previous organizations specifying and improving development
and collaborative processes. At each company, he quickly became a
thought leader in not only the product’s development, but also the use
of technologies such as wikis, weblogs, RSS, search, and other
collaborative and social ideas and software. He has shared much of his
experience on his weblog, www.drunkandretired.com and in his
weekly podcasts.

I’ll have more meaty, interesting posts up soon. And I promise I’ll keep from talking about myself in the third person as much as possible ;>

My contact info is:

• Email: [email protected].
• IM: [email protected].
• Skype: bushwald.
• Phone: I’m still workin’ on it ;> 512-663-7507.

Update: I’m based in Austin, Texas, so I’m in the CST/-6 time zone.