Picture 141 199x300 aboutHi!  And welcome to my little piece of cyberspace.

My name is Kate Matsudaira. I live and work in Bellevue, WA (just outside Seattle).

My background is in technology and computer science.  Although I have spent the last few years on the management side of things.  I specialize in building and operating large-scale web applications/sites (and wrote a chapter on this topic in the second version of the AOSA book).  More recently my focus has been with SaaS (software as a service) applications and cloud computing (and as it pains me to say it – big data).  I have extensive experience building and managing high performance teams that create really amazing technology to solve important problems.  While I don’t believe there is a one-size-fits-all development process I am a fan of some aspects agile development practices and the lean startup movement (especially as it applies to software process), but have experience and opinions on lots of other methods.

I spend my days working on my startup, and hopefully it will be more than a placeholder in the next couple of months (and if you are interested you can sign up to be on my launch email list – there are lot more personal updates about me and my product there.

In the past, I have worked at several great companies including Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and Amazon.com.  More recently I have tended to veer towards the start-up world where 1 year is like 5 years in big company time.  I have worked on large-scale platforms (most recently in online video and search) but have also helped build smaller high traffic e-commerce sites.   I have held roles as developer, project manager, product manager, and people manager.  Although the last 7 years I have been a VPE/CTO for companies like SEOmoz, Decide, and prior to that Delve Networks (acquired by Limelight).

Thanks to my accomplishments I am fortunate enough to work with lots of technology companies (both locally in Seattle, and in other areas of the US) and am invited to speak at various industry events.

Outside of tech I love beaches, glitter, cupcakes and cotton candy.  Oh and of course my puppies.  You will seldom find me without my high heels, giant handbags, and iPhone .  Besides my love of all things glamorous, I am still a geek at heart (ask me to tell you some math jokes or raid with you in a game of WoW).

I also help curate the Technology and Leadership Newsletter (TLN) which is super awesome and contains all of the great stuff on technology and leadership each week.

To learn more about me, you can read my blog or follow me on twitter, or drop me a note via email!

Below is more information on interesting press some of the past events I have attended….

Video Coverage & Awards

Past Speaking Engagements

Writing

 

Future engagements

If you are interested in having me speak, teach, or write for your website/team/conference/organization/book – feel free to check out my services page for more information.  You can also get a taste from some of my work by clicking on the links above.  Until then, here are the list of places I plan to be:

  • Don’t Believe in Magic at Fluent Conference, May 28-30 2013
  • If you don’t know people, you don’t know ops at Velocity Conference, June 18-20th 2013

 
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[both of the above banners are affiliate links - that being said, I think they will be awesome conferences and would love for you to attend - if you plan to go, let me know and we can meet for coffee or drinks! icon smile about ]

Disclaimers

The opinions and views expressed on this website are entirely my own. They do not represent the thoughts or ideas of my employer, my coworkers, my husband, or anyone else.  For the most part the articles and views presented on this site do not represent real people or events, and are only reflections from my experiences and opinions.

 Links

I recently removed my links from the sidebar, but they can be found here at the moment.  I am going to improve them and add a bunch more at some point soon though icon smile about