James Duncan Davidson is an American software developer and photographer. He's currently the Technology Advisor to

Tobias Lütke Tobias "Tobi" Lütke is the billionaire founder and CEO of Shopify, an e-commerce company based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He has been part of the core team of the Ruby on Rails framework and has created open source libraries such as Active M ...

, CEO of

Shopify Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online ret ...

. While a software engineer at Sun Microsystems (1997–2001), Davidson created

Tomcat Tomcat may refer to: Animals * A sexually mature male cat * Paederus, known as in Indonesia Science and technology * Apache Tomcat, an implementation of Java web-server technologies * Beretta 3032 Tomcat, a pistol * Grumman F-14 Tomcat, a f ...

, a

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

-based webserver application and the

Ant Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of ...

Java-based build tool. Davidson is the author or co-author of several books on both using and writing software, including ''Learning Cocoa with Objective-C'', ''Cocoa in a Nutshell'', ''Running Mac OS X Panther'', and ''Mac OS X Panther Hacks'', all published by

O’Reilly Media O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of a ...

. He also contributed to ''Agile Web Development with Rails'', published by The Pragmatic Programmers. He was raised in Oklahoma and

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, and is a resident of

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

. Before he joined Shopify, he was a Principal Software Engineer and CTO in Residence a
Microsoft for Startups
His work was to provide advice for startup founders and CTOs and help them prioritize, focus, and think through their work. Starting in 2005, Duncan added photography to his other professional focuses. He has served as the primary event photographer at several high-profile technology conferences. From 2009 to 2016 he was the main stage photographer for TED conferences, photographing every TED and

TEDGlobal TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sa ...

event. In 2010, Duncan was the photographer for the Mission Blue Voyage in the Galapagos Islands and led the TEDxOilSpill Expedition in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

. Davidson is also known for his artistic travel photos, often with an eye for architectural details, a clear reference to his university studies in architecture. He was the co-founder and co-owner (along with Greg Koenig) of Luma Labs, a small company based in

Portland, OR Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous coun ...

focused on making high quality camera accessories.

References

External links

Personal web site

O'Reilly Author page; articles, links to books on Rails, Cocoa and Mac OS X

Luma Labs

Mission Blue
at TED
TEDxOilSpill Expedition
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davidson, James Duncan Living people People from Lubbock, Texas Photographers from Oregon American computer programmers Sun Microsystems people Photographers from Berlin Microsoft people American expatriates in Germany Year of birth missing (living people)