The $5 bill still hangs in a frame in Jeff Walls’ department. When an automaker bet that HP’s workstation team couldn’t devise a way to display digital, three-dimensional models of cars in real size, Wall took up the challenge.
Not only did he win the bet, but his project spawned 10 patents in the process.
“We used up to 48 computers,” said Walls, a software developer at HP. “They were so convinced we couldn’t do it. The guy bragged that he had never lost a bet.”
Workstations are high-end computers with more processing power than the average home PC. They’re most commonly used by people working in the oil and gas, finance and automotive industries.
Walls earned a master’s degree from CSU in software engineering and interned at HP before landing a full-time position there in 1993. Today his workstation team is developing graphics software that can be accessed remotely. He’s received a total of 15 patents, including one earlier this month.
He said that Fort Collins is underrated, as few people know about the wealth of tech talent in the “big-sized town in a small-town body.”
“When I moved here, HP was out in the middle of nowhere, and now we’re surrounded by other high-tech companies,” said Walls, 38. “It’s hard to go anywhere in town and find somebody that didn’t work for HP at some point. They’ve gone to other companies or started their own company. HP has really been the cornerstone of all that growth.”
During the dot-com boom, Walls left HP to work for a friend’s software company in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“It was a disaster. Within about a week I wanted to come back,” he said. “I called up my former boss and she said my job was still open. In three months I was back.”
