Mikel King

Mikel King is a technology innovator, veteran, author, entrepreneur, political activist, home brew aficionado and an ACTIVE member of the BSD community.

Mikel King has been a leader in the information technology services field for over 20 years. Currently he is serving as the VP of Systems Engineering for Walker Digital Table Systems. The company developed and patented a RFID-based intelligent Baccarat casino table. To date, the company has installations of this project in Macau, China and Genting, Malaysia. The casino table tracks real-time player statistics during game play.

An public speaker and author, King has given talks and written numerous articles on the subjects of social media, social networking like Twitter/LinkedIn, open source technology solutions like FreeBSD and leadership development. Mikel King makes numerous public speaking events throughout the year. In addition, he often lectures AbOUT the benefits of youth leadership groups such as the Boy Scout of America as well as the value of veterans serving in organizations like the American Legion.

He founded and served as the CEO of Olivent Technologies, a professional creative consulting services partnership in NY. Although a small company, Olivent has made a name for itself as a respectable and sincerely forthright IT solutions provider. Under his leadership, the company expanded by acquiring a small traditional graphic design studio thus expanding the company into the arena of web design, branding and marketing.

He is a strong believer in supporting community initiatives. King has organized numerous clothing, food and recycling drives throughout his local community. These efforts are general aimed at helping disabled veterans or homeless families.

Additionally he is currently serving as the Secretary of the BSD Certification group as well as a Senior Editor for the BSD News Network and an active blogger. In addition King has developed a considerable dedicated following on Twitter, regularly attending social media conferences and meetups. Finally he is served as Adjutant of his local American Legion Post and a Unit Commissioner in the Boy Scouts of America.

In late 2010, King innovated the first release of the bash library also known as blib. King authored the bash library as an extension of the current bash scripting language to facilitate features and methodologies that enhance the process of writing scripts. The library is progressing towards its 2.0 goal.

Career

Military

Mikel King launched his career in information technology while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. Serving from 1986 to 1997, he was assigned to various units in a computer programming or other technical capacity. It was during his 11 years of military service that he developed his trademark exceptional leadership style that has enabled him to establish himself as a leader in the industry. It was this same leadership that earned him several medals and awards while serving on active duty. Two of his most notable were the Commandants' Letter of Appreciation and the Coast Guard Achievement Medal. In addition, he often filled a position several grades higher than his rank. For instance, during the early days of U.S. Activities New York, King was assigned as Acting Electronics Material Officer for nearly three months prior to the arrival of his replacement.

Industry

He served as the Chief Information and Technology Officer for OCS/Tech Alliance for approximately 12 years. While in that role he successfully led the company through numerous infrastructure consolidations reducing overhead and [...] costs by nearly 50% each time. In addition he led the charge into virtual private server hosting and deployments further reducing the operating overhead by 30%. Finally he led the company to deploy open source FreeBSD-based servers replacing costly Microsoft products, improving operational stability by 85% allowing the company to meet or exceed contracted service level agreements (SLA).

In 2006 while serving as the CITO, King was offered a position writing for Daemon News (http://daemonnews.org) as well as the original BSD News (http://bsdnews.com), Eventually advancing to senior editor and was instrumental in sustaining The Two resources until the sites went offline in 2008 as a result of internal conflicts between the founding members. Later in 2009 Mr. King was fortunate enough to find that the domain name http://bsdnews.net was available and worked tirelessly to launch the 'BSD News Network' from the ashes of the former resources and set forth at filling the void they left behind.

Mr. King has been a regular columnist for BSD Magazine since its inception in 2008. He has provided numerous articles, news pieces as well as his regular column for the publication. In the October 2009 issue he produced two articles and one collaborative piece with Dru Lavigne current President of the BSD Certification Group.

Politics

In November 2008, King enter the political arena by entering his name in a bid for the junior senate seat of New York state. For an unknown he was able to rally over 1000 supporters across New York state who sent letters to Governor David Paterson voicing their support of his bid. Unlike the other interested parties who utilized the public media to bully the governor, Mr. King chose to ask the people to demonstrate his sincere interest in serving the citizens of New York. He drafted numerous conceptual proposals to explain his stance on critical issues. Mikel King is the author of the Individual Retirement And Health-care Savings Account (IRAHSA) proposal. A system aimed as improving and merging IRAs and HSAs into a single entity aimed at helping small businesses and the self-employed especially.

Mr. King is a centrist believing in fiscally conservation yet compassionately liberal politics. He believes that our local and state governments need to tighten their belts, reducing waste and overlapping offices. He has stated, "The government needs to make serious cuts in operating expenses before they consider raising taxes. Fiscal responsibility is of the utmost importance."

Personal

As a home brew aficionado, Mikel King has mad many different kinds of ales and lagers over the years. He has often stated that he prefers to make ale especially a Scottish Fraoch Ale. The URL http://twitpic.com/me4p7 leads to a picture of his latest lager.

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