John Russell

(Mugshot) John is President of Geodyssey Limited.

John began his career many years ago with IBM Canada, soon becoming their first Senior Systems Engineer. While with IBM, John contributed to many firsts: first computers for Statistics Canada, Revenue Canada, Environment Canada, first IBM/360 outside the USA (National Research Council) and the first GIS anywhere (Roger Tomlinson's Canada Land Inventory System).

With two other IBMers, John co-founded Systems Dimensions Limited, a then-large-scale remote job entry computer center serving central and east coast United States and Canada (IBM/360/85). As VP Systems, he was responsible for the design of the center and its initial products and created the first repeatable multi-programming job accounting system (AccountPak). As a director of SDL he saw it grow to over 500 people with offices in New York, Boston and Washington as well as Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Quebec City.

Moving to Calgary in 1974, John was a systems consultant to Arctic Gas, a Calgary-based initiative to construct a large-scale natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope and Canada's Beaufort Sea to connect with existing Canadian and US carriers to the south.

In 1979, John and his family went sailing in their 50' cutter, visiting points along the west coast of the USA and Mexico, learning celestial navigation, diesel mechanics and ham radio along the way.

Returning to Calgary in 1982, John joined the Calgary Olympic Winter Games Organizing Committee. As VP Systems and Planning and later as VP Technology he had responsibility for the design and deployment of all computer systems, timing, scoreboard, telephone, radio and cable television technology.

Following the successful 1988 Calgary Olympics, John moved to New Zealand to provide NZ Telecom with overall project management of the deployment of their integrated customer management systems complex (AS/400's).

Returning again to Calgary in 1991, John joined with Hrvoje Lukatela to form Geodyssey Limited.

John is past national secretary of the Canadian Information Processing Society, past president and an honorary life member of the Ottawa Flying Club.