Dusty Jones

Dusty’s introduction to computers began with a Commodore PET. This power house of a machine included a built-in five-inch monochromatic screen and a tape drive. It didn’t take long before his fourth grade teacher turned over responsibility of the machine to him, and tasked him with showing the other student’s in the class how to properly operate it. In high school he transitioned from simple BASIC programs to structured Turbo Pascal typed lovingly into an Apple IIe. Once again, his responsibilities in the class escalated and the instructor sent the other students to consult with Dusty for answers to their questions. Dusty always had a passion for science and technology and was often found with a screwdriver in hand disassembling household objects to determine how they worked. Perhaps predictably, Dusty pursued and received a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas.

He started his career at Lockheed Martin where he was paid to break F16 and F22 fighter parts. Having met his fill of being paid to be destructive, he joined Motorola as a process engineer, running several of their silicon chip lines at their Fab in Austin, Texas. While at Motorola, Dusty became convinced there was a better way for them to track their internal processes, and began developing tools to make their jobs easier. Before long, his tools were adopted by the company to provide better control of the engineering documentation process. After eleven years with Motorola (and their spin-off Freescale Semiconductor), Dusty joined Rackspace Hosting, where he created tools that helped Rackspace build better internal tools. Dusty left Rackspace after four years to join TeamSnap as a developer, as well as finish his Masters degree in Technology Commercialization at the University of Texas, Austin.