Erik Hanson started Experience Images (formerly Experiential Imaging) in 2002
to use his background to help people experience digital images in new ways.
Experience Images specializes in creating high-quality virtual tours for
websites, CD-ROMs, and interactive exhibits.
In 2004, Erik Hanson
Digital Photography was created to offer Fine Art prints of panoramic
images, including some of the example images created for Experience Images.
More details about Erik are given below.
Click here to contact Erik Hanson by email
Erik Hanson's father was an architect who taught Erik to think
about how lighting and views can change dramatically with
small changes in viewing positions.
This idea has fascinated Erik throughout his life
and motivated him to study physics,
mathematics, computer graphics, and now photography.
Erik's goal with photography, especially panoramic photography,
is to help people experience new and interesting places through images.
Erik taught himself programming on an Apple II+ computer at his high school in
1980.
As a high-school senior, Erik wrote a computer graphics program that won first
place in state and national computer contests. In college, Erik received a
Bachelors degree in Physics and Masters degrees in Mathematics and Computer Sciences.
After college, Erik worked at Microsoft Corproation as a Software Design Engineer for
about 8½ years. He got experience working on large C++ programs while working
in Microsoft Office for 3½ years. In 1997, Erik moved to Microsoft Research
where he worked on Computer Vision, Image Processing, and Computer Graphics applications
for about 5 years. Erik left Microsoft at the end of 2001 to start Experience Images.
After developing the Experience Images business, Erik decided to go back to school to
get an MBA and learn more about business. While in school, Erik became
involved with Seattle-area startups as a Program Manager for the
Alliance of Angels.
Erik received his MBA in 2006 and started working as an online marketing Analyst in
the Atlas division of aQuantive, which was acquired by Microsoft Corporation in August 2007.
He is currently working on advertising research projects at Microsoft and continues producing
virtual tours with Experience Images on a part-time basis.
| 2006-Present |
Analyst, Custom Solutions Group, Atlas Division |
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Prepared dozens of custom research reports for clients in areas including Time to Convert,
Optimal Frequency Analysis, Order Funnel Analysis, Geo (Location-based) Targeting, and
Targeting based on prior user Actions.
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Started the Advanced Conversion Attribution research project that became very important for
differentiating Atlas when Google acquired our largest competitor. Presented initial research
results to our top customer.
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Worked with product teams to define requirements for Advanced Conversion Attribution implementation.
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Provided research and recommendations to the Rich Media group for event implementation and reporting.
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| 2005-2006 |
Program Manager (part-time) |
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Screened and evaluated about 200 business plans submitted to the Alliance of Angels.
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Screened, evaluated, and gave feedback for about 120 in-person company business-plan presentations.
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Research found significant new information about company plans for half of the member luncheons.
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| 2005 |
Finance Intern, Aerospace Electronic Systems |
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Co-designed and implemented an interactive data visualization tool for Finance Managers.
|
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Tool gave finance managers practical everyday access to information that allowed them to
evaluate the profitability of combinations of customers, product lines, and market segments
at any level of detail.
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Tool eased the monthly planning and reporting process and allowed finance managers
to change reports to respond to changes during a corporate reorganization.
|
| 2002-Present |
Owner and Manager |
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Developed photography business that produces high-quality virtual tours and fine art prints. |
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Clients include the Herbfarm Restaurant, a AAA five-diamond restaurant.
|
| 1997-2001 |
Research Software Design Engineer, Microsoft Research |
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Designed and wrote the Microsoft Vision SDK, a set of programming libraries distributed
on the Microsoft Developer Network and downloaded by thousands of researchers around the world.
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Solved implementation problems for research ideas, including a "Video Mouse"
input device for which Microsoft filed a patent application.
(Device measured tilt and height in addition to translation.)
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Worked with researchers and gave presentations at labs in Cambridge, England and Beijing, China.
|
| 1993-1997 |
Software Design Engineer, Microsoft Office Development Group |
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Designed software interface used by Office applications to open documents.
When Microsoft was under pressure to add Internet functionality to Office
applications, interface was flexible enough to allow access to documents
from Internet without modification.
|
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Created coding method that greatly speeded teams' ability to convert
software to work with Far East languages.
|
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Went beyond assigned tasks to add Visual Basic for Applications support
to teams' code, enhancing the functionality available to corporate
customers who wrote custom applications that worked with Office.
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Designed Y2K-compliant date-parsing code in 1993, years before this became an issue for Office.
|
| 1989-1992 |
Trustee |
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Elected to three one-year terms, the maximum allowed for a student Trustee.
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Board issues included a trademark dispute, new competition from national chains,
management succession, and a merger with a long-time competitor.
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| 1984-1985 |
Computer Programmer (part-time during first year of college) |
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Wrote programs to help warehouse managers, including a departmental budget
program that reduced monthly budgeting task time from three days to three hours.
|
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University of Washington - Seattle |
| June 2006 (expected) |
Master of Business Administration |
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2004-2005 Neal and Jan Dempsey Endowed MBA Fellowship |
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Entrepreneurship and Innovation Club President (March 2005 - present) |
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Global Business Association Vice President for Emerging Markets (March 2005 - present) |
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Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) class and campus competition (October 2004 - January 2005) |
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Part-time technical help at Digital Ventures in UW Technology Transfer Office (January - May 2005) |
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Business Consulting Network (BCN) project with Kvichak Marine Industries (January - March 2005) |
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Host for Cameroon team in 2005 Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (February 2005) |
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Business Plan Competition (April - May 2005) |
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Computer programming (C++, C#, COM, ActiveX, VBA, DHTML, XML) with emphasis on image processing. |
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Personal interests in art, aviation, wine, and Japan. |
Robust and Rapid Generation of Animated Faces from Video Images: A Model-Based Modeling Approach,
Cloning Your Own Face With A Desktop Camera,
A Robust and Fast Face
Modeling System,
The VideoMouse: A Camera-Based
Multi Degree-of-Freedom Input Device,
Hinckley, K.,
Sinclair, M.,
Hanson, E.,
Szeliski, R., Conway, M.,
