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The resume, newest first
More than thirty years of IT, web and media work in Austin: systems administration, web development, social media, video production and live streaming. Before that, city planning. Somewhere in the middle, the Hotel San José. Dates are from his own resume; corrections welcome on the contact page.
Summary
Thirty-plus years in information technology, the Web and media. Ran PC support at the founding of Sematech, hand in hand with Robert Noyce. Wrote reviews for the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Software Review in the 1980s, which is where the Whole in WholeTech comes from. Founded The Spring, an Austin online community, in 1990 and has run its successors ever since. The original king of Twitter in 2007, per BuzzFeed News. Producer and question writer for Office Hours Global since its early days, 1,420-plus episodes. Today: the WholeTech network, about 198 domains and 534 sites.
Experience
- 2026 to now
WholeTech network
Founder and builder. About 198 registered domains and 534 public sites from one desk; the AME and AWE engines; small-business rebuilds; six tribute sites; the free AWE Concierge. Live April 1, 2026.
- early days to now
Office Hours Global (Alex Lindsay)
Producer; question and prompt writer. 1,420-plus episodes of the daily live show for 5,000-plus media and event professionals: crafts the questions and prompts, supports live production, helps coordinate panels.
- 2007 to now
AustinSpring.com (formerly Spring.net, Spring.com)
Senior web developer and consultant. 250-plus websites designed, built and run; austen.com reached more than 8 million hits a month.
- 2007 to now
TexasCoworking.com, Cedar Creek, Texas
Founder and managing member. A 5,000-square-foot live-work-cowork facility with six-plus kitchens, about six miles from SpaceX, The Boring Company and Starlink, serving the Silicon Hills tech community.
- 2008 to 2009
BHI / BuilderHomesite
Special projects consultant.
- 2006 to 2007
Hotel San José, South Congress, Austin
Video production and IT project manager; the IT guy. The IT guy at the Hotel San José on South Congress, working for its owner, Liz Lambert, the Austin hotelier behind the San José and the Bunkhouse hotels. He kept the hotel's wifi up, ran the reservation system, ran the point-of-sale systems for both Jo's Coffee locations (the famous South Congress stand and the one downtown), and looked after Liz Lambert's own Mac laptop and iPhone, a detail he is still proud of. Rock bands stayed at the hotel, the Talking Heads among them, and everything had to keep working for guests like them. He also ended up at parties with the cast of The L Word. His summary of the era: pretty wild.
- 2002 to 2007
WholeTech.com
Senior Unix systems administrator. Unix and Linux administration, Verity search, video production and uplinking for clients including Bloomberg News.
- 2000 to 2002
Various clients
Unix systems administration lead.
- 1998 to 2000
IBM / Tivoli, Austin
System administrator, User-Centered Design; webmaster; software verification engineer. On the Burnet Road campus, with complete autonomy to research whatever he pleased.
- 1997 to 1998
TradeWave Corporation
Contract SQA engineer. E-commerce security testing.
- 1996 to 1997
Haystack Labs
System administrator and SQA. Security products, including WebStalker and NetStalker.
- 1990 to 1996
International Computer Systems / The Spring
Technical support manager; ISP founder. Founded The Spring, a virtual community of 5,175 members; built the website and the dial-in server. It went onto the Web as spring.com in 1996.
- 1988 to 1991
Sematech, Austin
Manager, PC Support. Worked hand in hand with Robert Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit and Sematech's founding leader, to devise the hardware, software and network platform for 700-plus assignees from a dozen semiconductor companies: more than $10 million of equipment (IBM, Compaq, HP, NEC, Sun), the first Sun Microsystems dealership in Austin, a seven-technician service team. Sematech's fourteen original members held about 80 percent of U.S. semiconductor capacity; the goal was to help the American industry regain its edge. It did.
- 1987 to 1990
ComputerLand / Entre / MicroAge
Sales and consulting. More than $7 million in CAD and network sales. One of the calls was Sematech's.
- 1984 to 1985
Whole Earth Software Review and the Whole Earth Catalog (Stewart Brand)
Reviewer and contributor. Wrote reviews for the Whole Earth Catalog and its 1984 to 1985 offshoot for personal-computer software, the Whole Earth Software Review. The Whole in WholeTech traces to this ethos: access to tools, whole-systems thinking.
- 1977 to 1987
BPI Systems, Austin
Customer support and maintenance programmer. Accounting software. BPI was one of the early software companies to go public, in 1983.
- 1970 to 1979
City planning departments, Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota
Urban planner.
Education
Bachelor of Urban Planning, with honors. University of Illinois, Department of Computer Science and Urban Design, 1966 to 1969. Academic scholarship; Andrew Mellon Award; valedictorian. Coursework in computer graphics, Fortran and COBOL, statistical analysis and early GIS.
Skills
- Systems administration
- Linux (RHEL, Fedora), AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, Unix, Windows Server; TCP/IP, shell scripting, EMC and Veritas clustering.
- Web development
- LAMP, PHP, CSS, JavaScript, XHTML, XML, AJAX, Apache and IIS, e-commerce.
- Media production and live streaming
- Adobe Premiere, Vegas, Avid; Zoom broadcasting; question and prompt creation for live shows.
- Social media
- Early Twitter influencer (2007), podcasting, blogging.
- Also
- Software QA testing, hardware, technical writing, GIS and CAD.
Contact
walhus@gmail.com or terry@austinspring.com. 501.365.1001. @springnet. Austin and Cedar Creek, Texas.
Sematech and Robert Noyce are described from the public record; roles and dates are from Paul's own resume and account. Former colleagues are not named, on purpose. Family and personal history are kept off this site.