Alumni Profile: John L. Borowicz

B.S. (1980)


Current Address

655 Trails End Road
Minnetrista, MN 55364

Personal Information

Mr. Borowicz is a member of several professional organizations [ACM, IEEE, MHTA] and serves on several advisory boards [ITAS, CSA]. He received a B.S. in Computer Science from the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota in 1980. He and wife, Jackie, have three children and two grandchildren. John and Jackie and their ‘fourth child’, Steve - an 8 year old yellow lab and borzoi mix, live in the wilds of Minnetrista. When time permits, the grandkids have left and the muse has struck, John dabbles in writing music, poetry, telescripts and screenplays. He and his collaborator won the Barry Morrow Fellowship in screenwriting in 2000. He is involved with the local arts center and crafts community developing skills in stone carving and glass fusing and slumping.

Professional Information

John L. Borowicz is currently employed by Business Information Technologies, Inc. (BITI) as the Chief Software Engineer developing data warehouse and business software systems that “mine” and analyze spatial and demographic data from the Census 2000, USPS, and TIGER digital road base files. Before joining BITI, John was Manager of Interactive Technology at Fallon, one of the most creative and honored advertising agencies in the world. Prior to Fallon, John L. Borowicz was Director of Development/Chief Software Engineer at OneLink where he designed and developed a call transaction analysis and reporting system targeted for business accounts of the large Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs). And before that, John was Vice President of Technology for VISTA Information Solutions, Inc., a geographic information company.

Geographic information systems and demographics were not always John’s software speciality. He spent 17 years in the music industry. The most important years for Borowicz were as the founding Director of Research and Development and subsequently President of CODA Music Software, a developer and publisher of state-of-the-art music software. Mr. Borowicz conceived and lead the team that completed ENIGMA, a software technology that enables a musician to "play and print" a publisher-quality score, as well as having complete editing, display, and playback capabilities. The ENIGMA technology and the music software packages based on this technology, notably Finale™, have won literally dozens of computer and music awards and continue to win "Best of..." categories to this day. Mr. Borowicz’s efforts and that of his colleagues resulted in three patents, including the very first for music software. At the end of 2003, the ENIGMA technology had "spawned" a half dozen products, provided employment for over 75 people and generated [aggregate] revenues > $75,000,000.

Before founding CODA (now known as MakeMusic [Nasdaq - MMUS]), Mr. Borowicz co-founded and served as Vice President of Marketing and then VP of Research and Development at Passport Designs, Inc. Passport pioneered the "music software" category in the 1980’s and nurtured it into a sizable industry and a market leader for over 15 years in the design and development of computer-based instruments and music software tools.