Eric Hackathorn
Program Manager, Virtual Worlds, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Website | @hackshaven | Attendee Directory Profile

Eric Hackathorn started with his first computer before he learned to ride a bicycle. His father was kind enough to allocate him 100 KB of the family’s 10 MB hard drive: one of the first commercially available of its kind. Since that time, he has spent a majority of his time dabbling in all things computer related. After graduating from high school, he started working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. At the same time, he attended and then graduated from the University of Colorado majoring in electrical and computer engineering. He continues his work at NOAA today as a program manager.

Eric has taken a back seat to his much handsomer counterpart Hackshaven Harford. Hackshaven is Eric’s avatar (a virtual representation of himself) and exists only in the virtual world known as Second Life. Together they have been busy designing a public 3-D space to highlight the research NOAA performs. In addition, they recently formed a company “Maya Realities” to explore 3-D virtual world metrics. In essence, helping to gauge the return on investment for companies creating beach heads in virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Eric Hackathorn’s Specialties: web design, virtual worlds, graphics design, computer security, network administration, procurement, data visualization, web metrics, outreach, education, second life