HTG Blog

So you want to know a little more about HTG, Limited? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

History

In the summer of 2004, several students at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Engineering needed to choose a project for their senior design capstone. Past senior design projects were less than exciting, and we wanted to do something big. Ideas went around, back and forth for hours. Somewhere in list of bigger, and bigger ideas, we decided we need to harness the power of the electrical grid. While this was clearly not an option, we decided to keep the name “Harness The Grid” as the name of our team.

The project we choose was quite possibly the biggest project ever attempted by students in the recent history of the Electrical & Computer Engineering & Computer Science (ECECS) department. We decided to make a small scale version of a vehicle that could be entered into the DARPA Grand Challenge - a race by autonomous road vehicles through the desert. There were 8 team members - 3 electrical engineers, 4 computer scientists, and 1 computer engineer. With lofty goals, a little persuasion, and the first organization chart for a senior design project our advisor had ever seen, we were off.

Through no fault of any individual in the group, we were unable to complete the project. No one picked up the project the following year either, and as far as we know now, the project is in perpetual stasis. But that brings us to this point in time!

Who We Are

Following graduation, four of the original team members of HTG continued to work together on projects in our spare time. We met once a week to discuss various topics, technical, business, whatever we were thinking of at the time. All of us had websites either hosted, or run from servers in our own homes, and had experience with service providers. We discussed what we would do differently, or extra services we could easily set up that no one seemed to provide. Eventually we had convinced ourselves that we could possibly make a little profit, or at least have some fun trying!

So, in no particular order, here’s the team:

• Wyatt Neal
  Self-proclaimed CEO (only because he sent the paperwork in, though no one has challenged the title yet). Software engineer, security evangelist, and motorcycle enthusiast, Wyatt brings a uniquely palatable flavor humor to the team. Whether it’s accepting challenges of valor (such as climbing vending machines) or abusing software into obscure request of functionally, he’s always the one crazy enough to try it.

• Tim Mecklem
  Tim is currently on a leave of absence from HTG while he is transitioning to a new day job. We’re not quite the same without him!
  

• William Cirone
  CFO by a unanimous vote - Will managed our finances for the senior design, an did such a great job, we voted him to hold the money a while longer. As the only EE on the team, he’s waiting for some more hardware to play with!

• Joe Rocklin
  I’m a software guy who likes to stay on the backend side of things, writing libraries and lower-level systems. But, I feel at home writing reporting tools for front-end systems as well. I have my B.S. in Computer Science and am currently working on my M.S. in Computer Science or Computer Engineering (haven’t decided yet). In addition to being a dreamer in this world called entrepreneurship, I have a day-job as a software engineer as well!

Got questions? Send an email to devs@htglimited.com and we’ll get you an answer.