About Me



I'm an independent (freelance) consultant and entrepreneur with broad expertise in a number of areas.
Jan-Rychter-1508-T


I'm one of the founders of Sentivision, where I worked as a CTO. Sentivision designs and develops digital media appliances, such as IP-TV set-top boxes. The company successfully created the world's fastest DSP-based software H.264 decoder, gained Sony (BRAVIA TV division) as its major customer, and took an investment from Sony Communications Network.

Before that, I had my own software development company, RG Studio, providing consulting and development services, mostly around the Linux operating system. We grew to employ about 20 people. The company was acquired in 2000 by 7bulls.com SA, a publically traded company, whose majority shareholders sadly later declined to honor the terms of the acquisition agreement. As a result, the whole episode didn't make me much richer financially, but did provide me with priceless experience (moral of the story: never do business with people who can only understand a simple month-to-month bar chart).

I also worked for the Warsaw University at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling (ICM), where I worked with supercomputers (parallellizing software and providing user training), and managed software development projects. I later moved on to manage the Warsaw University wide-area network. I also took care of the USENET news server and helped build SunSITE Poland.

I currently live in Warsaw, Poland. In the past, I've also lived in Lyon (France), where I studied at INSA, Columbia MO (USA), and San Diego CA (USA).

Over the years, I've done a number of minor contributions to various Open Source projects:
  • INN -- enhanced access controls for NNRPD
  • Linux kernel -- a driver for the built-in buttons on Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet PCs
  • CMUCL Common Lisp -- support for return-from-frame
  • XEmacs -- maintenance of the escreen package, as well as some allocator performance improvements
  • CL-EFL -- Common Lisp bindings for the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries
  • Gnus Mail Indexer -- a Spotlight plugin for indexing a Gnus NNML mail spool
  • Weblocks web development framework: work on form validation, Javascript/CSS dependencies, and more.

I sometimes give speeches and presentations at various conferences. Some of those are listed below.
  • Forum HDTV, Warsaw Poland
  • Broadband World Forum Asia 2005, Yokohama, Japan: panel discussion on Video Compression Advances and Challenges (slides).
  • Borland Developer Days 2002, Jachranka, Poland: Linux and TCPA/Palladium
  • Information and Promotion Workshop (part of the Strategic Planning, Public Responsibility and Management of Change TEMPUS program), 2001, Warsaw, Poland: Internet Content Management
  • Warsaw Autumn Linux Workshop 1998: Extreme Linux
  • Network Operating Systems conference, 1998, Poznan Poland: Linux and Open-Source Software
  • Parallel programming workshop, Warsaw University: Cray T3E software optimization
  • Intranet'96, Warsaw, Poland: Linux as an intranet platform
Some of my interests: kernel methods, support vector machines, Common Lisp and web application development, photography. I've also done some paragliding.

I am available for consulting/development as well as photography work, please contact me for further details if interested.