Howard Rose

President, Customer Relations, Designer, Developer, Multi-faceted Hatrack

As a founding partner, Firsthand's reigning president and full-time janitor, Howard wears many hats around here. On the business side Howard takes charge of building strong relationships with our clients, assessing their needs and crafting solutions with a flair. Howard's strong suit is transforming complex problems and content into stories and experiences that are engaging and effective for the end users. In doing so, Howard draws on his diverse background in instructional design, psychology and his past incarnations as a videographer and musician.

Howard got hooked into this world of VR and real-time interactive computers as a graduate student and researcher at the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington. "I still remember the thrill of building my first virtual world at the HIT Lab. It was a really simple game, kind of like tennis, where I could make a ball fly back and forth between two cubes by touching a virtual button with my hand attached to a sensor. It was so simple, but I sat in that helmet batting the ball back and forth for a really long time. What was exciting was the discovery that we can break the window of the computer monitor and step inside. With trackers, sensors and new kinds of displays we can transform the way people interact not just with these boxes we call computers, but more importantly with the information and knowledge which we seek." Growing from this realization and his own thesis research exploring virtual environments for teaching Japanese language (Zengo Sayu), Howard began to focus on a mission putting these technologies and approaches to work to recast teaching and learning. In 1995, Howard and like-minded co-researchers, Ari Hollander and Kimberley Osberg Lippman, decided to form Firsthand and follow this shared goal.

Howard loves to pursue his own personal educational journey through travel and encounters with other cultures. "Living seven years in Kyoto, Japan, gave me the opportunity to discover very different social and world views, leaving me with a greater appreciation of the diversity that makes up our planet. The cultures of Japan and Asia are still a big part of my life, which inspire me to look beyond apparent boundaries to find new solutions." Howard's work-life in Japan included two years as Coordinator for International Relations in the Yasu City (Shiga-ken) government, international communications coordinator for an NGO, a stint as a local journalist for the Kyoto Shimbun, and various forms of teaching both English as a second language and other topics related to international issues. The lesson of these years in Japan was a transformational odyssey from an outsider to insider to finally settling comfortably as an inside-out-sider.

This odyssey continues daily with Howard’s wife, Keiko, and son, Hiei.