Meet the Team: David Shoemaker

Written by Tom Nugent on Sunday, August 26th, 2007

Next in our “Meet the Team” series of posts is David Shoemaker.

I’ve known David Shoemaker for a few years, because we were both involved in LiftPort, where he worked building space elevator climber concept prototypes. He did principal design, construction and programming for nearly 20 different models over 3 years, in addition to his day job at Microsoft. David agreed to join the LaserMotive team last fall, and as I mentioned before, he helped bring Carsten Erickson onto the team. David has been developing our vehicle control system and telemetry, and is working with Steve Beland on another part of our control system.

David was interested in computers from a very young age, and wound up teaching himself more than available school courses could offer. He sold his first piece of software as a junior in high school, to a local comic book shop. He opened his own computer/software store at age 20, and then parlayed that experience into a job as a programmer contracted to the Navy.

Back in 1994, David got into coin-op arcade game collecting, and he opened a service business doing repairs (down to the board level), restorations, and sales on the side. For better or worse, other projects have sidelined much of the coin-op work.

Following the Navy, David has worked at Microsoft in various departments. For the last six years, he’s been with the WinCE group doing embedded software development.

Once the competition is over, I imagine David will be happy to have a bit of free time to get back to working on his house. Until then, though, he’s rocking out on controls!