John L. Borowicz, one of our most interesting and enthusiastic alumni, has had a varied career in business, including being a founder of several technology companies. John actually started out in music, not computer science. After studying 20th century music composition and electronic music techniques with Dr. Eric Stokes at the U of M, he headed to the east coast and got involved with a company making electronic instruments. Soon he and a few colleagues left to found a new company, STAR Instruments, pioneering percussion synthesizers and the first mass audience synthesizers based on these "new devices" - microprocessors. Although the company did well, John decided that the future in music was in software, not hardware, and returned to the U to complete a B.S. in computer science, finishing in 1980. He then co-founded Passport Designs, Inc. which developed computer-based instruments and music software tools. During this time he was involved in defining and popularizing the music-computer communication protocol MIDI. In 1985, he left Passport Designs to concentrate on software to capture and print music. John made good use of his computer science education in the development of ENIGMA technology, software components that enable one to "print what you play", create a publisher-quality score, as well as, provide comprehensive editing, display, and playback capabilities. In 1988 the development was complete and Finale was released to the world by a company that became CODA Music Software. It was hailed as an important achievement in the music world. Finale has fundamentally changed the music publishing business. It is used by every major publisher in the world, major film and orchestral composers, music enthusiasts and educators. Finale also has the distinction of being the most honored and awarded music software package.
After leaving CODA, John got involved with pioneering geographic information systems (GIS), geographic data, data warehouses and data mining in the property and casualty insurance industry as V.P. of Operations at DataMap, which became VISTA Information Solutions after a merger. After nearly a decade in GIS, John set his sights on telecommunications and data visualization at OneLink where he was Chief Software Engineer designing and developing call transaction analysis software systems for the major telecom companies.
John is currently employed at Fallon | Worldwide, one of the top 10 advertising and public relations agencies, as Manager of Interactive Technology. Fallon is interested in exploiting the interactive possibilities of the World Wide Web. In addition to obvious benefits for Fallon's clients, developments in this area are far reaching and definitely useful in life-long learning and distance education initiatives.
In a long career of developing innovative software and disruptive technologies, hiring, coaching and managing other software developers, John has learned that it is vitally important for students to be well grounded in the principles and theory they learn in their computer science courses. These are central to developing the skills and learning the tools. The basics are the keys to growth including a knowledge of what happens at the machine/assembly level and the operating system level. They also need to be able to work in teams, understand and respect the processes, and understand "the business".
John believes in giving back and has been active in support of the University of Minnesota. His activities at the University of Minnesota include serving as a member, and recently the chair, of the Computer Science Associates, a group whose purpose is to get large and small information technology businesses involved in supporting the University and in particular, the Computer Science and Engineering department. He also served as President of the I.T. Alumni Society last year. The primary focus was scholarships and the mentor program. There are about 350 students being mentored through this program this year. John encourages more computer science students to become involved.
-Bobbie Othmer