Michael McLay (HZ)
Michael McLay is an advisor to senior government IT staff on best practices for using FOSS (Free and Open Software Systems), and a founding Member of the Python Software Foundation. He is a long time contributor and volunteer to the Python language community and has been using Linux on his desktop since 1998. (HV)
Michael Mclay began using computers as a Cooperative Education Student at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, then known as the National Bureau of Standards) in 1981. He wrote robot workcell control software in the Automated Manufacturing Research Facility and participated in the debugging of the first factory floor computer network. Michael also helped design, construct, and program a data gathering and analysis instrument for measuring surface properties of machined parts. (I0)
Upon graduation from George Washington University with an Electronics Engineering/Computer Science degree in 1985, Michael joined Fairchild Space Company (FSC). At FSC Michael learned the art of systems engineering as a member of Lou Sprott's multi-mission modular satellite team. Michael served on a manufacturing policy committee at FSC and established an interactive 3-D satellite deployment simulation facility for FSC. (I1)
Michael returned to NIST in 1989 where he set up several computer laboratories for testing product data exchange standards for industry. As a research staff member at NIST, Michael consulted with industry and government organizations on the development of free and open source software (FOSS), product data standards, and eCommerce standards. Michael was the chief architect for the IPC-25XX series of eCommerce standards. As a standards architect, Michael helped the IPC become an early adopter of XML as a business information exchange format. He won the 1999 IPC President's Award for his leadership in the development of the IPC-2511 (GenCAM) standard and the 2001 Distinguished Technical Committee Service Award. (I2)