Our mission is to create a new middle class of musicians with "Tools for Independence" that accelerate the current power shift going on in the music industry.

Management Team

Ron Suarez

CEO and President

Over 20 years experience managing software development. Ron founded (1988) and sold (1998) Arbor Intelligent Systems, Inc. for over $3M.

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Prabode Weebadde

Chief Technology Officer

More than 10 years experience in designing and implementing enterprise applications using Java, J2EE, Ruby and Python, Certified IBM Rational Software Architect.

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Carol Shepherd

VP, General Counsel

Business and corporate attorney with substantial experience in handling intellectual property (IP) and information technology (IT) transactions.

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Stephen Suarez

Product Manager

Stephen is in charge of User Experience for the Loud Feed product and consulting projects including user interface design and usability testing.

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Board of Advisors

Gary Himmelfarb

Founder RAS records

The founder of MyReggae.com, a site built by Loud Feed, which uses Loud Feed tools as the backend to manage digital music content and related metadata.

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Dick Huey

Founder Toolshed

Started Toolshed in 2001 to provide new media promotion, digital music service licensing, and online strategy services to a select list of clients.

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CEO and President

A continuous theme throughout projects that Ron manages has been to build technologies that enable people to work better, faster and cheaper by first studying the underlying business processes and then engineering flexible solutions. For example, when building a Macintosh Graphical User Interface for a process monitoring system at a coal fired electric power plant in 1989 (Dayton Power & Light), Ron realized that capturing all of the details of power plant operations such as start up and shut down and then encoding it into the software would take too much time and effort. So, instead Ron designed a system that enabled plant operators to scan in engineering diagrams of the plant and associate diagram elements using "drag and drop" for any of 10,000 values (voltages, temperature, etc.). Thus, years before web browsers existed, Ron gave plant operators with a high school education the ability to build their own "web like" interface to the power plant and thus create their own manuals for starting up and shutting down turbines. During 1992 - 1995, Ron managed a project that completely revolutionized how Ford Motor Company handled their design document versioning process for new automobiles. Working with a Mathematician and employing predicate calculus, Ron helped design a Feature Definition Language that limited descriptions of how auto parts connected by using only seven verbs in the requirements documentation stage, which greatly simplified a system still in use today at Ford by tens of thousands of employees worldwide.

• Over 20 years experience managing software development
• Founded (1988) and sold (1998) Arbor Intelligent Systems, Inc. for over $3M (software consulting in Power Industry, Manufacturing, Telecommunications, Banking & Finance)
• Managed large scale digital asset management (DAM) projects for JSTOR and Proquest (world’s largest online libraries)
• Founded MediaRica with a focus on syndicating (RSS) audio and video (rich media)
• First person to use podcasting for fans to preview music before a show by encoding event metadata into the MP3 - ID3 tags (May, 2005 Detroit Electronic Music Festival)
• Former Psychology Professor with expertise in usability, information architecture, user experience (UX), certified by IBM (Rational) in object oriented analysis and design for large scale projects
• DJ and Host for Network Downtown
• Elected to Ann Arbor City Council

Chief Technology Officer

More than 10 years experience in designing and implementing enterprise applications using Java, J2EE, Ruby and Python, Certified IBM Rational Software Architect, MBA and a BSc from University of Colombo. Recent Projects include (also see Object Insight Technical Experience below):

• Loudfeed - Application that provides Tools for Independence to sell, share and promote their assets using their own web sites and their affiliates web sites. Implemented using Ruby On Rails. Role played Architect, Development Team Manager and Developer.
• Tunecore - Developed "Petri Transporter". Petri Transporter handles the distribution of Tunecore customer albums to popular music stores. Implemented using Ruby, Amazon EC2 and S3. Roles played Architect and Developer,
• Chrysler Media Site - The PRESSTO: Chrysler uses this media site to distribute media materials to more than 10,000 journalists. The application is a CMS with many complex features such as document versioning, document authors can share the document with reviewers with limited access controls, document authors can share the document with co-authors, and a publishing workflow separates authoring and publishing. Publishing to many outlets including its own public interface and PR-NEWSWIRE. Implemented using Struts, Spring, Hibernate and Lucene, Roles played The Architect, Development Team Manager and Developer.
• Chrysler Media - Single Sign On Server - Registers journalists and allows access to several Chrysler media sites including media site, Chrysler's thefirehouse and a broadcast video site. Implemented using Spring and Acegi, Hibernate and JA-SIG CAS, Roles played Chief Architect, Development Team Manager and Developer.
• Chrysler Media - Video Broadcasting Site - Video broadcasting site plays and share media videos. Implemented using Ruby On Rails. Roles played Chief Architect, Development Team Manager and Developer.

VP of Business Development, General Counsel

Business and corporate attorney with substantial experience in handling intellectual property (IP) and information technology (IT) transactions from multiple roles and perspectives, including contract drafting and negotiation, intellectual property protection and portfolio management, legal compliance, and IP due diligence and chain of title analysis. Carol also has Fortune 500 business-side and management consulting experience in contracts management.

Product Manager

Graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelors degree in Industrial and Operations Engineering in 2004. This degree provided a solid basis for Human Factors in computing systems as well as the design of systems for optimal efficiency. After graduating, Stephen worked in the Intellectual Property department of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr LLP, a top tier New York law firm as a project assistant. He then moved on to Investment Technology Group, a technology based brokerage firm on Wall Street where he provided high level transaction cost analysis presentations to clients. Stephen also designed and oversaw the implementation of an automated system for the production and delivery of quarterly reports. As Product Manager for Loud Feed, Stephen defines our iterative incremental development process by creating milestones for the Loud Feed product. Stephen is also in charge of User Experience for the Loud Feed product and consulting projects including user interface design and usability testing. In addition, Stephen works with Google Analytics to report on user behavior at sites for our clients and thus improve conversion rates through the sales funnel.

Board of Advisors

The founder of MyReggae.com, a site built by Loud Feed, which uses Loud Feed tools as the backend to manage digital music content and related metadata. Gary founded RAS Records in 1979, which he recently sold to Sanctuary. He established a reputation as Doctor Dread, DJ for a major Washington DC radio station (WHFS), where the songs of Reggae greats like Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff first reached the airwaves. Gary is also a former Sound Exchange Board Member.

• Founder of MyReggae.com.

Board of Advisors

Started Toolshed in 2001 to provide new media promotion, digital music service licensing, and online strategy services to a select list of Media and Entertainment clients, as well as state-of-the-art digital promotion tools. Toolshed handles new media promotion for independent artists as diverse as Ani DiFranco, Spoon, XTC, The Chemical Brothers, Cat Power, and Sleater-Kinney, and for record labels representing the cream of the crop of worldwide independent music, including the Beggars Group, Matador Records, Touch and Go, Merge Records, Righteous Babe Records, Kill Rock Stars, Saddle Creek, and and many others. Prior to his creation of Toolshed, Huey started, and for five years developed and ran, the new media department at the Beggars Group (XL Recordings, Too Pure, Matador Records, Beggars Banquet, 4AD). Dick is a new media committee member for the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) headquartered in New York, as well as a legal committee member of the independent rights initiative MERLIN. Dick is also a Sound Exchange Board member, representing Matador Records, serving on the licensing, communications, and new business committees. Dick provides consulting services to a variety of international rights organizations, as well as to independent digital service provider Consolidated Independent, and the Playlouder MSP. Dick's latest initiative is Syndicated Planet, a distribution network for tastemaker independent music.

• Founder of Toolshed.