Who am I?

Resume: chuckhays.pdf | Twitter: @chuckhays | LinkedIn: chuckhays | GitHub: chuckhays

Quick Facts

• I am a software engineer located in the Minneapolis, MN.
• I currently work at Google as a Staff Software Engineer/Tech Lead on the Video communication team.
• Led the effort to combine Google Duo and Google Meet apps on the iOS platform.
• Currently building building Google Meet for iOS.
• Formerly building Google Duo for iOS, a cross platform audio/video calling app.
• I am a co-founder of a miniature robotics company named ReconRobotics.
• I studied computer science and robotics at the University of Minnesota.
• My graduate research work was done at the Center for Distributed Robotics, where I was awarded a Master of Science in Computer Science.
• I worked for Microsoft for 6.5 years as a Senior SDE (software development engineer), from 2008-2014. I worked on several projects:
  • SketchFlow
  • Blend - XAML design tools
  • Blend - HTML design tools
  • Visual Studio Designers - XAML & HTML design tools in Visual Studio
  • Azure AppPlat - Office 365 Video Service
• I’m an avid DIYer. In the past few years I’ve undertaken some major projects:
  • Three season screen porch
  • Finishing basement
  • Landscaping and gardening

ReconRobotics

ReconRobotics is a robotics company that designs and manufactures tactical micro-robot systems for law enforcement and military personnel that increase situational awareness in order to save lives. More than 4,700 robots have been deployed world wide.

The company was founded in 2006 by a group of graduate students and a professor from the University of Minnesota, with the backing of the University.

The company grew quickly and introduced new and improved products.

From the founding through 2008, I was responsible for various hardware and software engineering projects, as well as a variety of other tasks that need to be done in an early stage start up.

Some of the projects I worked on at Microsoft

SketchFlow

SketchFlow is a tool that enables you to quickly create and prototype new ideas and present them to stakeholders for rapid feedback and iteration. It allows you to create prototypes that include interactivity, with as much or as little depth and fidelity as you need.

Blend

Blend is the primary visual design tool for several Microsoft developer platforms:

• WPF
• Silverlight
• Windows Phone
• Windows 8 XAML
• Windows 8 HTML/js

I worked on several releases of Blend:

• Expression Studio/Blend 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0
• Blend for Visual Studio 2012 and 2013
• Visual Studio “14” preview releases

Visual Studio Designers

I worked on the visual design tools included inside Visual Studio. The designer tools were based on the same shared technology and codebase as the Blend products, but had unique user interface and historical requirements as part of Visual Studio.

Azure AppPlat - Office 365 Video Service

On the Azure AppPlat team, I worked on a team that was creating both an iOS client app and the backend for the new Office 365 Video feature. Office 365 Video is described in the Office 365 road map as:

Office 365 Video is a secure, company-wide destination for video upload, sharing and discovery, and smooth playback across devices - all powered by Windows Azure Media Services. Learn More

I worked on both the iOS client application as well as the Azure service backend. We created a service that was highly available, and globally distributed.

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