Professional

Professional History

Since I was young, I have been extremely motivated academically and professionally. By following my intense passions, and listening to my heart, I have had the pleasure and great fortune to experience an incredibly intense, exciting, and diverse career, where I have had the chance to develop a high level of mastery in an unusually broad set of areas of expertise.

I started programming at 12, turned pro at 16, and have simultaneously both worked and studied almost non-stop since then. I got my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Berkeley, made a name for myself as an academic in my field of research, and started a company (GlobalCast Communications) based on this research. I had NO idea what I was getting myself in to when I wrote my first business plan in 1995, or the trial by fire I would simultaneously love and dread over the next four years of 90-hour weeks, as I learned the hard way how to be a venture-capital backed entrepreneur. Our company was acquired in 1999 by Talarian, where I became the Chief Scientist (i.e. Junior CTO) for the next four years, through an IPO, market crash, and acquisition by TIBCO Software in 2002. In those eight intense years I went from being an overconfident propeller-head who had no idea what I didn't know, to a seasoned high-tech executive with a gift for synthesizing ideas and communicating them to diverse audiences...and I *still* had no idea what I didn't know.

True to form for my hyper-achievement pattern of the time, I apparently decided to get my mid-life crisis out of the way a decade early. I took a sabbatical for two years (a major accomplishment in and of itself!) to work through a major personal and spiritual crisis by immersing myself in the most powerful personal and spiritual growth technologies I could find. Hundreds of books, dozens of seminars, and a world-class M.A. degree in Spiritual Psychology later, I find myself, much to my shock and surprise (my life has no shortage of irony in it!), in a place of inner peace, joy, and (relative) balance. For the first time in my life, I may have a pretty good clue as to just how vast the expanses are of what I don't know -- and I am thrilled to have such a never ending banquet of learning ahead of me!

Current Endeavors

That two year sabbatical turned into some new and delightfully expected career directions. For the last few years, I've been putting most of my career focus into Core Coaching. This includes coaching entrepreneurs, self-employed people, and executives in everything from EQ to fund-raising to leadership development to spiritual growth. My passion here is the intersection of business and spiritual psychology. I teach coaches and healers how to become successful from a place of purpose (www.sixfigurepractice.net) and business people how to bring more meaning in to their work. I have a number of books in the works...stay tuned!

Core Coaching is a life and executive coaching company that is particularly focused on technology executives who want to take their success to the next level and find greater meaning in their lives. The coaching focuses on assisting clients in discovering what they most want, in aligning their values with their investments, in discovering the core internal causes of their external challenges, and in learning the cutting edge intrapersonal and interpersonal skills necessary to turn these challenges in to catalysts for growth.

And I continue to be open to opportunities where I could provide exceptional value through technology consulting, by bringing together my wide range of skills.

The mission of the Whetten Consulting Group is to provide exceptional value to financial services and technology firms, by combining world-class strategic consulting with the highest levels of integrity and service. We inspire exceptional trust and satisfaction in our clients by relating as peers with both business executives and technologists, by facilitating communication and consensus building among diverse audiences, and by synthesizing solutions which span all necessary domains. We specialize in strategic challenges that require deep expertise in TIBCO SmartSockets products or require a broad combination of technology, business, and interpersonal skills. Clients include Barclays Capital and College Loan Corporation.

High-Tech Speaker Bio

Dr. Brian Whetten was most recently the Chief Scientist for Talarian Corporation. Previously, he was the principal founder, President and then CTO of GlobalCast Communications, which invented application layer multicast, pioneered commercial reliable multicast, and was acquired by Talarian in 1999. He is one of the foremost experts on reliable multicast protocols and real-time content distribution, and a regular author in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Dr. Whetten has written dozens of articles for industry and academic publications, has spoken at more than 40 conferences and seminars worldwide, and received the best keynote award for CDN 2001. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Publications

A bibliography of major publications provides a list of major articles and white papers. Most of the academic articles can be found under research, and there is also a partial list of press clippings and submitted articles that resulted from spokesperson roles at Talarian. Finally, a list of publicly available technical white papers is available.

Major Speeches

A list of my major speaking opportunities.

Resume