Bill Lahti

Contact Information

phone: +1 919 680 5616
email

Duke Corporate Education
310 Blackwell Street
Durham, NC 27701
USA

Bill Lahti

Director

Bill Lahti is currently a software developer for the  Learning Innovations Team; its mission is to expand use of technology in corporate education programs. At Duke CE, he has been both a manager and an individual contributor. Key technical contributions include the following web-based systems: a knowledge management system integrated with the company financial system, a revenue forecasting system, and recent work on using social networking software in support of on-demand learning.

Bill has been with Duke CE since its inception in 2000, coming from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. At Fuqua, Bill was the lead developer of a web-based software platform for the organization, management, and delivery of distributed education programs. That platform was sold to Pensare, Inc. in January 2000 and enhanced to become Pensare’s distance education software platform. In mid 2001, Duke CE reacquired the software.

From 1991 to 1997, Bill worked as an independent software developer and consultant. He worked on object-oriented applications development in a variety of different programming environments, including Java, Smalltalk, Lisp, and expert system development tools. He developed tools for improving programmer productivity and tools to support the product development process in Smalltalk. Among these were tools for automating testing, documentation, and search.

From late 1987 to early 1991, Bill was the Associate Director of the Marketing Workbench Laboratory, a program at Fuqua. This program was sponsored by companies in the consumer packaged goods industry. The MWB Lab made use of expert systems and other artificial intelligence techniques. Bill led the design and implementation of prototype marketing and sales applications. Most of the thirty prototypes done there over a three-year period were done in Smalltalk and Lisp.

Very early in his career, Bill Lahti worked for nine years at Data General Corporation. There he worked on Lisp and AI development environments, compilers, debuggers, programming tools and environments, automated testing, and operating systems. He held both technical and management positions.