I’m John Powers, and I’m the CEO of Digipede Technologies. I am an entrepreneur with experience leading software and consulting firms. I’m convinced that grid computing is a Next Big Thing, and you’ll hear plenty about that in various upcoming entries.
Prior to starting Digipede, I spent about 15 years as an energy industry technology entrepreneur (of which there are all too few). I was Senior VP of Quantum Consulting, where I spent 11 years. Quantum was an extraordinary place — rapid growth, high energy, phenomenal talent. We took pride in giving some of Berkeley’s best students their first “real jobs,” with lots of technical challenges and client responsibilities; many of those early Quanta now populate technical management positions throughout the Bay Area.
I was then the president and CEO of Energy Interactive, which my partners Nathan Trueblood, Robert Anderson and I founded as a pseudo-spinoff of Quantum Consulting. At EI, we helped introduce the electric utility industry to the Internet; that was fun. My partners and I first became interested in distributed computing while building large enterprise software systems at EI.
EI was purchased by ABB in 2000, and I worked at ABB until 2002. At ABB, I learned a lot about international work (which was good), worked off a good chunk of my earn-out (which was good), and discovered I’m not really a Giant European Conglomerate kind of guy (ok, I knew that already).
I have spoken at more than 100 industry events in the past decade on topics from metering and billing to transmission market manipulation. In 2002-2003, I provided technical work and expert testimony that helped untangle the manipulation of the California electricity market in 2000-2001.
I’m married with three kids; my daughter is in high school and my twin boys are in fifth grade.
I got my B. A. from Reed College, and my M. A. from UC Berkeley — both in Economics.