Questions people ask about him.
Short answers, each traceable to the sources page.
Who is Charles Petrie?
Charles J. Petrie, Ph.D., is a retired Senior Research Scientist of Stanford University's Computer Science Department (Logic Group). He was the first hire of the MCC AI Lab in Austin in 1984, led the Proteus project, was the founding editor-in-chief of IEEE Internet Computing, the founding executive director of the Stanford Networking Research Center, and the founding chair of the Semantic Web Services Challenge. From 2013 to 2017 he managed the Burning Man airport, 88NV.
Is this his official website?
No. This is an independent fan and tribute site. His own pages are at www-cdr.stanford.edu/~petrie, and an archived copy of his professional bio, as it looked, is at /classic/ on this site.
What is he best known for?
Founding IEEE Internet Computing in 1997 and putting it online by hand, so it was the first IEEE Computer Society magazine on the Web; the Proteus reasoning system at MCC, the first MCC technology to reach a commercial product; the Redux model of decisions and dependencies; and his writing on the Coordinated Internet and emergent collectives.
Where did he study?
B.S. in Mathematics from Louisiana State University (1969), and M.S. (1986) and Ph.D. (1991) in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, advised by Prof. Robert Simmons.
What was MCC?
The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, formed in 1982 under Admiral Bobby Inman and based in Austin from 1983. It was the first large US computer-industry research consortium, a response to Japan's Fifth Generation project. Its AI Lab was founded by Prof. Woody Bledsoe; Petrie was its first hire.
What is the WWW Virtual Library connection?
The WWW Virtual Library, started by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1991, was the first index of the Web, edited by volunteers. Petrie started its Mechanical Engineering section from Stanford in 1993 and describes himself as one of its earliest editors. He calls it a precursor of Wikipedia.
What did he do at Burning Man?
He managed Black Rock City Municipal Airport (88NV) from January 2013 to January 2017: about 300 volunteers, software to document every flight and passenger, the Ministry of Customs, and the airport's first operating manuals. IEEE Spectrum profiled him in 2018.
Which books did he write?
Web Service Composition (Springer, 2016), Automated Configuration Problem Solving (Springer, 2012), Semantic Web Services Challenge: Results from the First Year (co-editor, Springer, 2009), Enterprise Integration Modeling (editor, MIT Press, 1992), and Ten Years Off-Grid: Don't Try This At Home (self-published).
Where can I read his papers?
Most are linked from his Stanford bio and reproduced on the publications page here, with links to his own PDFs where he posted them. His Google Scholar profile lists the rest.
How can I contact him?
This site does not publish his personal contact details. His LinkedIn profile and his Stanford pages are linked on the links page.
Are the photos real?
Yes. His portraits come from the pictures directory of his own Stanford home page; the buildings and the airport approach are Creative Commons photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited on the sources page. No AI-generated images are used.