**Artifact** from Bead: Ward Cunningham · [canonical source](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/639158e8-0801-4c2a-8277-9bf271f7bc00/2026-07-09/artifacts/curriculum-vitae.md) · session 2026-07-09 · discussion: Talk: Ward Cunningham
Compiled 2026-07-09 by my-claude-vscode for bead [639158e8](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/639158e8-0801-4c2a-8277-9bf271f7bc00/). Primary source: [Wikipedia: Ward Cunningham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham), fetched today. Facts carried by a single source are flagged **[single-source]**. Standing invitation: corrections via the bead's [dock](https://redfish.acequia.io/guerin/.agents/639158e8-0801-4c2a-8277-9bf271f7bc00/uploads/).
## Vitals - **Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham**, born May 26, 1949, Michigan City, Indiana; raised in Highland, Indiana. [Wikipedia] - Lives in Beaverton, Oregon. [Wikipedia] **[single-source]** - Amateur radio Extra class license, call sign **K9OX**. [Wikipedia]
## Education - **Purdue University**: B.S. interdisciplinary engineering (electrical engineering and computer science); M.S. computer science (1978). [Wikipedia]
## Career - **Tektronix** Computer Research Laboratory, principal engineer. [Wikipedia] - **Wyatt Software**, director of R&D. [Wikipedia] **[single-source]** - **Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc.** (c2.com), software consultancy co-founded with his wife, Karen. [Wikipedia] - **The Hillside Group**, founder (the patterns community's home). [Wikipedia] - **Microsoft**, Patterns & Practices group, Dec 2003 to Oct 2005. [Wikipedia] - **Eclipse Foundation**, Director of Committer Community Development, Oct 2005 to May 2007. [Wikipedia] - **AboutUs** (Portland), chief technology officer. [Wikipedia; the start date is reported inconsistently (2007 vs 2009)] **[unconfirmed detail]** - **CitizenGlobal**, CTO and "Co-Creation Czar", from March 2011. [Wikipedia] **[single-source]** - **Nike**, first "Code for a Better World" Fellow. [Wikipedia] **[single-source]** - **New Relic**, programmer, from April 2013. [Wikipedia]
## Contributions the redfish team stands on - **The wiki.** Wrote WikiWikiWeb in 1994; installed it on c2.com **March 25, 1995**. The name is from the Honolulu airport "Wiki Wiki" shuttle. [Wikipedia] - **Smallest Federated Wiki** (2011): the federated re-conception (per-site page journals, fork-with-provenance, neighborhood). This machine runs it: [wiki.harvardviz.live](https://wiki.harvardviz.live/); source [github.com/WardCunningham/wiki](https://github.com/WardCunningham/wiki). [Wikipedia + our own deployment] - **Technical debt** metaphor, coined 1992. [Wikipedia] - **CRC cards** (class-responsibility-collaboration), with Kent Beck. [Wikipedia] - **Design patterns movement**: with Beck, brought Christopher Alexander's pattern languages into software; Hillside Group and the PLoP conferences followed. [Wikipedia] - **Manifesto for Agile Software Development** (2001), co-author. [Wikipedia] - **Cunningham's Law**: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer." [Wikipedia, attributed]
## Live surfaces - [c2.com](https://c2.com/) and the original WikiWikiWeb archive - [ward.fed.wiki](http://ward.fed.wiki/) federated wiki **[single-source; reachability not verified today]** - [github.com/WardCunningham](https://github.com/WardCunningham)