I’m excited to announce that Wendy Hagenmaier has accepted the role of Software Preservation Program Manager. Wendy will be starting in the role at the end of August and will be working remotely from the EST time zone. Wendy will be able to hit the ground running with extensive existing experience with emulation, legacy technology and EaaSI itself.
Wendy is coming to us from Georgia Tech where she founded their “retroTECH” lab which “provides access to vintage technologies to inspire a culture of long-term thinking”. While at Georgia Tech Wendy conducted an assessment of stakeholder needs for emulation services through a campus-wide survey and interviews with expert practitioners. Based on the findings, she designed requirements for a
prototype emulation service and supervised a graduate research assistant to create retroTECH’s “Emulation Time Machine,” a workstation dedicated to emulating the operating systems and video games also accessible in the lab via original hardware and software.
From 2018-2020, Wendy managed Georgia Tech’s project within the Fostering a Community of Practice (FCoP) cohort which used the EaaSI software, resulting in a proof-of-concept for retroTECH Online, a web presence through which patrons could utilize software collections for teaching and learning. her team used oral histories and EaaSI-powered emulation to tell the stories of several software innovations created by community members–from the simulation that won Atlanta’s 1996 Olympics bid to Game Boy Advance games coded by current students.
After the conclusion of FCoP, Wendy embraced the opportunity to become part of the EaaSI Node Network community, witnessing the evolution of the EaaSI platform and continuing to investigate how EaaSI could be used to expand access to research software and born-digital architectural collections.
Alongside this software preservation and emulation work, Wendy has been deeply engaged in the Software Preservation Network since its origins in 2016, serving as coordinator and co-PI with the Research-in-Practice Working Group, co-chair with Seth Anderson of the Steering Committee’s Membership and Executive Subcommittee, and current Strategic Coordinator for the Coordinating Committee.
Wendy has also been working on a MBA degree which she is due to complete in 2024 and which should be particularly useful as we work to ensure EaaSI is self-sustaining over time.
With all of her extensive experience the whole EaaSI team is really looking forward to Wendy coming on board at the end of August and we’re very happy to welcome her to the team!