About Cambia Research

Summary

Cambia Research is my blog and project site for Microsoft.NET software development. I started out writing articles for myself because I can rarely remember something when I need it. But I've enjoyed getting so many visitors and seeing that my articles have been helpful to others, too. Your visits and comments motivate me to continue sharing the tidbits I've found useful and the various thoughts I've had about software development.

Site History

I started Cambia Research in 2002 initially as my software and consulting company. I had just left Microsoft and moved back to Kansas City where I decided to freelance and attempt to build a software product that would make some money. I launched a little application for cleaning and manipulating text based data sets call CR Data Cleanser. It was a good little piece of software, but I only sold one copy. That was my introduction to the challenges of the business world.

At any rate, I continued to freelance for six years as a Microsoft.NET developer. During that time I added various content and articles to the Cambia Research website related to data cleansing and programming. At the end of 2006 I spent two months rewriting the site in ASP.NET and created my own web publishing application which I used to write and publish new articles to the site. Over time, the site traffic has continued to grow.

In 2011 I again did a full redesign and simplification of the site, bringing it up to .NET 4.0. The new site launched on October 30th.

Who is Steve Lautenschlager

While I usually go to a website or blog for the content, I find it useful and interesting to know who is behind the writing that I'm reading. I've been developing almost exclusively in the Microsoft.NET arena for over ten years. My first exposure to .NET was as a Microsoft employee in 2001 before its first official release. I worked in the web engineering end of things, but I got my hands on a copy of Visual Studio .NET 1.0. Having some familiarity with C languages and thanks to the brilliant invention called intellisense, I picked up the fundamentals of C# pretty quickly. I soon discovered that .NET was much easier and more powerful than other frameworks and languages I had used.

I have taken exactly one formal computer science class in my life--one semester of Pascal in college. My major was physics with minors in math and English. I went on to complete my Ph.D. in particle physics at Duke University where I picked up Fortran for my data analysis. During graduate school I spent over a year at CERN, the particle physics research center near Geneva. This is where, just four years earlier, the web itself was invented by Tim Berners-Lee. While at CERN I used Linux, C, Perl and some other programs to create web-based, automated testing tools which got written up in CERN's international magazine, The CERN Courier.

After graduate school I ended up working in L.A. for a large defense contractor doing analysis and software development. It was an interesting time--I especially remember the great L.A. swing dance scene and the many great friends I made there. (Anyone been to The Derby or the Satin Ballroom?). Soon, I got an opportunity to work for Microsoft and I jumped at the chance. I helped engineer global and local load balancing solutions for various Microsoft web properties including microsoft.com, Windows Update and msnbc.com.

I moved back to Kansas City several years ago. I freelanced for several years before taking a full-time position with a local company.

My path to professional software developer has not been typical, but many people have come to it from a variety of unique backgrounds. That diversity is one of the interesting things about working in this field.

In 2006 I gave a talk at Baylor University on the history and future of the web. When I asked my audience how many were using an online bill pay service to pay their bills, nearly 100% of the hands went up. A fairly tech-savvy crowd to be sure; but the web has quickly become a critical part of the fabric of our lives. Software developers are at the very heart of this unprecedented global transformation.