William F. Slater, III

William F. Slater, III is a consultant in information technology who lives and works in the Chicago area. He was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. After obtaining a B.S. in Engineering Technology degree in Computer Systems Technology from Memphis State University in May 1977, he entered active duty in the U.S. Air Force in July 1977 as a computer systems staff officer supporting command control applications for the Strategic Air Command Battle Staff in Offutt Air Force Base, NE.

After finishing his service in the U.S. Air Force, he began his civilian career in information technology, and continues working in software, networks, databases to this day. His career has taken him to places such as Houston, Chicago (twice), Colorado Springs, Nashua (NH), Cleveland, Singapore, and Manila.

In his present assignment, he works for Getronics, supporting the BP infrastructure support contract at the BP Naperville complex. There he is the Data Center Manager of a major hub on the BP Digital Infrastructure, and is also heavily involved with Change Management on an infrastructure that includes five business units, and hundreds of servers, and scores of routers and WAN circuits. In the evenings, after work he sometimes teaches topics such as programming in Java, networks and databases.

Mr. Slater lives in Chicago in an apartment home with his lovely Polish wife and soul mate, from Warsaw, whom he met on the Internet, with 37-networked computers and over 4000 computer books. Mr. Slater’s hobbies include reading, chess, learning new facets of and keeping up with information technology, music (listening, writing and playing), and writing. He is also a black belt and certified instructor in the Japanese sport and martial art of Kodokan Judo.

Mr. Slater is also co-founder and current president of the Chicago Chapter of the Internet Society. He joined the Internet Society in July 1998 and co-founded the Chicago Chapter of the Internet Society, along with John Owrey, Terry Felke, and John Detweiler in November 1998.

After a 23-year break, in January 2003, Mr. Slater returned to the world of academia in pursuit of a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems degree at the University of Phoenix Online program. After completing his first three classes in the UoP MS CIS program, he is on target to graduate in October 2004.

Among Mr. Slater’s passions are teaching, writing, and communicating. He has taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology (in their Internet Technology Webmaster Program), at the Wheaton School District Adult Continuing Education program (Intro to Internet, Intro to Web Development, and Intro to Building your own Home Network), and at Solex Academy in Wheeling (Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, Java Foundations and Enterprise Application Development.)

Mr. Slater believes strongly that for any professional (or aspiring professional) life-long learning and education, through both formal and informal means are the keys to success in any endeavor where knowledge and sharp skills are required.

One of Mr. Slater’s dreams is to open a school someday, where he can train young people from ages 5 to 20, in computers, music, and Judo, thereby fulfilling his passions to teach children and help make the world a better place. And since he has already taught young people in each of these areas, he knows that this is entirely possible, and probable.

More on Mr. Slater can be found at
slater@billslater.com
http://billslater.com, at http://billslater.com/internetlovestory.htm and at http://isoc-chicago.org .

What is the mission of the Internet Society?

The Internet Society’s mission is to assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world.