Johan Särkinen, M.Sc.

Master of Science 
in Computer Science and Engineering

I started my first own company back in 1987 (during my studies at the university[1]) and have handled quite a few, both smaller and larger projects, since then. One of the first was a bed booking system used in the Twelve Championship Races in Luleå (1988).

In September 1989, I was employed by Ericsson Components in Kungens Kurva, Stockholm [2], and worked for about one year with Ericsson EnergyMaster, a system for control and supervision of power for telephone exchanges.

After this year, almost "mandatory" time for all swedish engineers (to work some time in any of the larger Swedish companies) I was quickly and very efficiently recruted to the consultancy and education company Memtek Development.

The first years included quite a lot of different tasks, e.g. teaching assembler programming on PC's, about 1 1/2 year as developer and interface coordinator in SJ-Data's PETRA-project. I also developed and held courses in C and C++ software development at Ellemtel, the core research- and development company within the Ericsson group.

Aside as working as a consultant and teacher for Memtek, I was working with several internal tasks such as security and backup routines, development of tools for creating courses, keeping track on document and software revisions. But also as part owner, personnel, economy, strategic planning, et cetera - all sorts of management that occurs in any (smaller) company.

Around April 1993, I started spending quite a lot of my time as consultant at Ericsson Components (back again, but now as consultant). Working with software development and technical coordination for the new workstation-based generation of Ericsson EnergyMaster: EMAS, Energy Management Application Software. In Fall of 1996 I was recruited by Ericsson in the position as Product Manager Energy Management & Services in Dallas, USA.

We - me and my wife - moved to Dallas, Texas in March 1997. Initially recruited and employed as Product Manager, tasks soon included much more: development, project leader, IS/IT planning and implementation, support... Planned, started, hired people, and ran the EEM Design Center in Dallas. In April 2000 Ericssons sold Energy Systems to Emerson Electric and the new company's named Emerson Energy Systems Inc. (US operations).

In my spare time I like target shooting (handguns and rifles), playing squash and really likes to spend time in the archipelago of Åland (between Finland and Sweden, havspaviljongen.com) or Liden, 45 km north of Sundsvall, Sweden [2] (especially during the moose hunting season in September).
A couple of weeks skiing, the faster the better, each year is not completely wrong either...