CEO Portrait

I went to Smooth Stone Inc.'s headquarters last Thursday to meet Barry Evans, CEO of the underdog chip maker. His company has been developing new chips that will do some really important things for those in the technology business mostly by decreasing the energy needed to operate devices that control servers remotely. You can read about it in this article in the Times. The just received some major funding from global companies to release a chip that will contend with the chip giant Intel. The name Smooth Stone is a nice way of making an analogy between their small office outfit to Intel's power house operation and the weapon David chose for his epic battle with Goliath.

The headquarters are based in a '70s building shell in North Austin that is run by a few companies and the University of Texas for research labs. It was an odd place that gave me the impression people who made movies like Office Space and even Tron found inspiration.

Barry was very open to my ideas for photography as we walked around the building to various locations scouting light, position and pre-historic security cameras that monitored a relatively empty parking lot.

Enjoy!