International recognition for PMUG comes from the Apple User Group Resources site. In this list of Milestones it declares, "Sending a shout out to President Art Gorski, Apple Ambassador Ward Stanke and members of PMUG" honoring the milestone of PMUG's starting in 1989.
Welcome to Our New Ambassador
Stepping up to volunteer to serve as PMUG Ambassador is Ward Stanke. Let's get acquainted!
Ward's introduction to computers was a FORTRAN programming course using an IBM 360 with punch cards. This occurred during his undergraduate days at the University of New Mexico where he earned a BS in Electrical Engineering in 1969.
He spent nine years in the Air Force doing research and development in computer architecture while picking up his MS in Electrical Engineering. The personal computer bug bit him early and he played with Motorola 6800 and 6809-based home-brew systems in assembly language.
After leaving the Air Force, Ward moved into the aerospace industry and later into the application software development industry. He bought and programmed an Apple II (and even made some prototype add-in boards for it.) His first Mac was a 128K original Mac bought about two months after it was introduced in February of 1984. He wrote his first programs for the Mac on that 128K machine in Apple's BASIC and C.
Ward worked on a number of commercial Macintosh software applications in various roles ranging from developer (programmer) to technical lead to software architect to manager. Some of the products he has worked on include Roxio's Toast, Quicken for the Mac, and installers for a number of Adobe products as well as several other much more obscure products.
He officially retired in 2009 and moved from Silicon Valley to Prescott where he continues to program his Mac "just for the fun of it." His current machines include a dual processor quad-core Mac Pro, and a MacBook. His wife has an iMac and an iPad.
Ward fills the position held by Roger Lakner who asked us to let him retire. We appreciate all Roger has done, and look forward to working with Ward.