The first thing you learn from Patrick Scanlon, President & CEO of CarbonWave, is that Australians call Australia “Oz”. Scanlon knows because he lived and worked there for a number of years. Calling himself a “Serial Entrepreneur”, (“Because I’m a repeat offender”), Scanlon was a key figure in the Australian Internet Industry founding a number of companies in his 13 years there. His last was a streaming content company, which he co-founded and ran as Chairman and CEO. He came back to the US mid last year with his Australian born wife and two daughters.

Never one to sit on the sidelines, Scanlon is also an internationally award winning photographer with credits ranging from The Summer Olympics to NIKE and QANTAS. In addition, he was also the first Director of Interactive Marketing for J. Walter Thompson Advertising in the Asia-Pacific region (1995) and a broadcaster. Scanlon was even the photographer for the 1995 Australian (Auspost) Christmas stamps!

While the early part of his career featured largely the creative side of Scanlon he nonetheless always focused on the business side of things by founding and growing the various endeavors he was involved in.

Becoming President and CEO of Carbonwave in November of 2000 the company was headquartered in Bellevue for 2 years before Scanlon, a Gig Harbor resident, decided to move it to downtown Tacoma earlier this year.

Scanlon talked to us from his top floor office in the Harmon building, overlooking the UWT and the Washington State History Museum. The art director in him comments wistfully as he watches the progress of the Chihuly Museum of Glass from his floor-to-ceiling windows. Pat Scanlon gave us 10 minutes for 10 questions on Australia, net access at 40,000 feet and being one of the latest tech companies to move south from the Seattle area to Tacoma.

Q. You were a streaming content provider in the very early days of audio on the net. What did you do?
A. I’ve been an Internet broadcaster since February 1997. It certainly was audio only and 16kbs tops in those early days. I did a daily 3-min. net radio program in Australia. We specialized in Australian Internet industry news. Talk about your vertical market!

We would collect great stories on the Australian tech scene and syndicated the show out to Yahoo! Australia, AOL Australia, ZDNet Australia - we had 15 syndication partners at the time. We grew that from one tech show to about 15 shows across music news and interviews, Australian Stock Market reports, Films, Sports…..

Q. What did you call your company?
A. We called it “WHOOPi!”. We thought “Whoopi Goldberg”, she’s pretty cool, professional but unorthodox. We thought “Tom Hanks” as the same kind of brand personality. We thought: What if we combined the two - but we got “Wanks”. That’s not good (smiling) so we settled on WHOOPi!. That way when we did the shows, we could be making WHOOPi! It had legs!

Q. How could a red-blooded American get away with producing Australian Tech News?
A. It was because we were internet-based. When we first started, 70% of our listeners were from the U.S. and overseas. The Internet is huge over there. Australia is #3 after Finland as far as per capita Internet usage.

We used to partner with a lot of websites in the States, so I did a lot of translation. I had an Australian partner and he used words like “bonza!” (Australian for “great!”).

Q. From Australia to Tacoma. Why?
A. I had been homesick for about 2 years and felt that it was time to come “home”. While born in the US I had never actually been to Seattle for any more than a quick 3-hour trip in January 2000. So we moved pretty much sight unseen. But we could not be happier with our choice! 

Q. What does Carbonwave do?
A. Our history is in manufacturing streaming media servers and software. Carbonwave is a Linux-based software developer. We have a development arm of Carbonwave called Linux SC, which focuses on wireless and streaming media development, as well as working heavily with XML for the Health industry.

Q. How large is your company?
A. We have nine developers, all senior talent, no junior programmers for us. There’s a lot of cold pizza and we have to keep them from walking out the door without their pants not on - the Einstein principle, you know! (smiling) But seriously, they’re very clever…Now go back to work guys.

Q. What kinds of projects are you working on right now?
A. We have two specialties: We deal with streaming software development, anything from Boeings Connexion project to mp3, mpeg4, all the major formats. If you have to got do something unique with streaming audio or video, we’re your people.

Q. You’re on the cutting edge. XML is the hot thing.
A. I think it’s bleeding edge, actually. That’s even farther out. I’ve always been a bleeding edge kind of guy.

Q. What are you doing for Boeing?
A. We’re involved with Boeings project called Connexion. In short, its wireless streaming audio and video, check your email, virtual private network at 700 mph and 40,000 feet. It’s for commercial airlines. It’s a brand new division of Boeing and the interesting part is all the servers on the Boeing plane are Linux-based.

Q. What else?
A. We’re working on an electronic medical records project. This whole ehealth side of things is quite fascinating. There is a lot of effort in the government and private sector going to patient privacy. All the Democrats are now saying that their next big thing after education is the Patient Bill of Rights. The issue is the security of passing patient information between doctors. Given the ubiquity of Internet connections in doctors’ offices, using the Internet as a transport mechanism makes perfect sense, but you do have to watch the patient’s privacy.

Q. OK - a final frivolous question. You were a photographer for Sports Illustrated. Did you shoot a swimsuit issue?
A. Yes, I worked on the 1985 issue.

Q. Wasn’t that a bit…well…distracting?
A. It was a great job and a real challenge, but as I always said about it - “After the first ten minutes it’s no big deal - but boy, those first ten minutes!”

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CarbonWave’s website is at www.carbonwave.com. You can listen to Pat Scanlon on the radio as a frequent co-host of WebTalkGuys Radio on KLAY 1180 AM or online at www.webtalkguys.com.

(Editor's note: Dana Greenlee, president of LoudVox.com and co-host of the WebTalkGuys Radio Show, will be writing a technology column for Friday editions of the Index. WebTalkGuys, which features technology news and interviews, can be heard Saturdays from 11 a.m. to noon on KLAY 1180 AM in the Tacoma/Seattle area. Past show and interviews are also webcast via the Internet at http:www.webtalkguys.com).