Steven G. Woods

Steven G. Woods

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
5K followers 500+ connections

About

I am currently Partner & Chief Technology Officer at Inovia Capital Partners.

From 2008 through 2021 I was Senior Engineering Director & Canada Engineering Lead for Google - building a capability from 20 engineers to 1400 and a campus. Canadian teams lead engineering and product in multiple areas of responsibility from consumer to ads, enterprise and infrastructure. Canadian efforts outside direct delivery have included efforts of enormous impact in STEM, startup support and community building in all aspects - particularly in Waterloo, Ontario.

Prior to Google, I founded and built several startups, most recently NeoEdge Networks- providing ad-enablement services and technology and targeted advertising sales to companies interested in delivering free ad-supported games to consumers.

Earlier, I served as Vice President of Voice Services for America Online/Time Warner, creating high-quality interactive consumer solutions for millions of users. I joined AOL through the acquisition of Quack.com, a company I co-founded, and which earned acclaim as the world’s first consumer Internet portal accessible entirely by voice. At Quack.com I led all aspects of product and technology development as CTO & VP Products.

In addition to a background in enabling online consumer products & services, I have extensive experience in all aspects of software development. I held a variety of roles at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Australia’s CSIRO and Canada’s Department of National Defence. I have received numerous awards, and have authored numerous patents, technical publications and books. I hold Masters and Ph.D degrees in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Specialties: Consumer services, software and service innovation, entrepreneurship, online advertising, games, leadership, management, team-building, strategic alliances, public speaking, social consumer interactions.

Activity

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Experience

  • Inovia Capital Graphic

    Inovia Capital

    Greater Toronto Area, Canada

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    Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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    Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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    Greater Toronto Area, Canada

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    Greater Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo Metropolitan Area

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    Guelph, Ontario, Canada

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    Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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    Toronto, Canada Area

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    Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

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    Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

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    Toronto, Canada Area

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    Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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    Calgary, Canada Area

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    Waskesiu, Saskatchewan Canada

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    Kitchener, Canada Area

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    Waskesiu, SK Canada

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    Canada

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    Mountain View, California

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    Calgary, Canada Area

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    Mountain View, California

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    Toronto, Ontario

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    Palo Alto, California

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    Mountain View, California

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    Mountain View, California, USA

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    Mountain View, California

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    Mountain View, California

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    Mountain View, California

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    Mountain View, California

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    Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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    Honolulu, Hawaii

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    Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

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    Quebec City, QC, Canada

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    Canberra, Australia

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    Canberra, Australia

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    Regina, SK

Education

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    Activities and Societies: Software Engineering Research Group, Artificial Intelligence Research Group, Captain of Waterloo Warriors Varsity Golf Team

    Dissertation: A Method of Program Understanding Using Constraint Satisfaction for Software Reverse Engineering
    (Supervisor: Q. Yang)

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    Activities and Societies: Artificial Intelligence Research Group, Waterloo Warriors Varsity Golf Team

    An implementation and evaluation of a hierarchical non-linear planner - "Abtweak".

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    Activities and Societies: Varsity AAA basketball, AAA volleyball, golf, badminton. Top graduating athlete award (shared), various academic and other athletic awards. Provincial medals in golf multiple-years.

Volunteer Experience

  • Director of Representative Hockey

    Waterloo Women's Minor Hockey Association

    - 4 years 11 months

    Children

    I designed, built and co-led programs at the highest level of women's competitive ice hockey as a member of the board of the Waterloo Girls Minor Hockey Association spanning U11, U13, U15, U18 and Waterloo U22AA Rangers elite divisions.

  • Head Coach, Representative Hockey

    Waterloo Women's Minor Hockey Association

    - 4 years 11 months

    Children

    As a volunteer, I coached with Waterloo Women's Minor Hockey Association. As a head and assistant coach this involves practice preparation, team leadership, management of a staff of 10 other volunteers and close coordination with association, league and affiliated partners to deliver a great experience to aspiring and committed young women in competitive ice hockey. Regional representative teams are the highest level of ice hockey in Canada, and the Ravens play in the top tier leagues of…

    As a volunteer, I coached with Waterloo Women's Minor Hockey Association. As a head and assistant coach this involves practice preparation, team leadership, management of a staff of 10 other volunteers and close coordination with association, league and affiliated partners to deliver a great experience to aspiring and committed young women in competitive ice hockey. Regional representative teams are the highest level of ice hockey in Canada, and the Ravens play in the top tier leagues of women's ice hockey in Ontario.

Publications

  • Google Scholar - All my published articles

    Google Scholar

    Google scholar provides a searchable index of all publications and citations.

    See publication
  • Constraint-Based Design Recovery for Software Reengineering: Theory and Experiments

    Springer

    The great challenge of reverse engineering is recovering design information from legacy code: the `concept recovery' problem. This monograph describes up-to-date research dealing with this problem. It discusses a theory of how a constraint-based approach to program plan recognition can efficiently extract design concepts from source code, and it details experiments in concept recovery that support the authors' claims of scalability. Constraint-Based Design Recovery for Software Reengineering:…

    The great challenge of reverse engineering is recovering design information from legacy code: the `concept recovery' problem. This monograph describes up-to-date research dealing with this problem. It discusses a theory of how a constraint-based approach to program plan recognition can efficiently extract design concepts from source code, and it details experiments in concept recovery that support the authors' claims of scalability. Constraint-Based Design Recovery for Software Reengineering: Theory and Experiments presents models and experiments in sufficient detail so that they can be easily replicated.

    Other authors
    See publication

Patents

  • System and method for funneling user responses in an internet voice portal system to determine a desired item or service

    Issued US US8131555B1

    Other inventors
  • Identification of areas of interest on a web page

    Issued US US 8,379,053 B1 / 13/357,329

    Interest mapping systems and/or methods determine areas of interest on a web page or other information resource based on the time a user spends in various scroll positions on the page. The system identifies scroll positions on a web page that are maintained for at least a predetermined period of time. The system may further generate one or more interest maps for web page or other information resource indicative of those areas of the web page which seem to be of relatively more or less interest…

    Interest mapping systems and/or methods determine areas of interest on a web page or other information resource based on the time a user spends in various scroll positions on the page. The system identifies scroll positions on a web page that are maintained for at least a predetermined period of time. The system may further generate one or more interest maps for web page or other information resource indicative of those areas of the web page which seem to be of relatively more or less interest to users. The system may further generate trend data for the web page based on the scroll position data over time.

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • System and method for using voice over a telephone to access, process, and carry out transactions over the internet

    Issued US 7974875

    A method for executing a transaction related to an item or a service using a telephone includes providing information identifying the item or the service, providing a query as to a transaction to be performed in which the transaction is related to the identified item or service, and sending to a server system a request to execute the transaction related to the identified item or service in response to a user answer. The transaction is executed without the user performing a single action on a…

    A method for executing a transaction related to an item or a service using a telephone includes providing information identifying the item or the service, providing a query as to a transaction to be performed in which the transaction is related to the identified item or service, and sending to a server system a request to execute the transaction related to the identified item or service in response to a user answer. The transaction is executed without the user performing a single action on a computer interface.

    Other inventors
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  • System and method for the transformation and canonicalization of semantically structured data

    Issued US US7676500

    A method of transforming and canonicalizing semantically structured data includes obtaining data from a network of computers, applying text patterns to the obtained data and placing the data in a first data file, providing a second data file containing the obtained data in a uniform format, and generating interface specific sentences from the data in the second data file.

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • System and method for advertising using an Internet Voice Portal

    Issued US 7103563

    A method of advertising includes maintaining an Internet-related communication session between a user and a portal and, during the communication session, selectively providing advertisements based on any one of user constraints, sales criteria, and context.

    Other inventors
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  • System and method for determining if one web site has the same information as another web site

    Issued US 6687734

    A method of determining if one web site has the same information as another web site includes receiving a signal to select a form configured to find data in a file containing information displayed on a web site and accessed via a network, applying the selected form to the file and selectively identifying item information available in the file, copying identified item information to a first data file, the identified item information being related to a specific product or service, and comparing…

    A method of determining if one web site has the same information as another web site includes receiving a signal to select a form configured to find data in a file containing information displayed on a web site and accessed via a network, applying the selected form to the file and selectively identifying item information available in the file, copying identified item information to a first data file, the identified item information being related to a specific product or service, and comparing the first data file and a second data file to determine if the specific product or service of the first data file is related to the specific product or service of the second data file.

    Other inventors
    See patent
  • System and method for voice access to internet-based information

    Issued US 6510417

    A method of providing voice access to Internet-based information and services includes receiving a signal indicating a communication connection request in which the communication connection request is initiated by a user of a communication apparatus, establishing a communication connection with the communication apparatus of the user, receiving voice information from the user, and communicating voice information responsive to the voice information received from the user. The responsive voice…

    A method of providing voice access to Internet-based information and services includes receiving a signal indicating a communication connection request in which the communication connection request is initiated by a user of a communication apparatus, establishing a communication connection with the communication apparatus of the user, receiving voice information from the user, and communicating voice information responsive to the voice information received from the user. The responsive voice information includes Internet-based information.

    Other inventors
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  • Region classification based on regional distribution information

    Filed US US 13/271,532

    A region classification server classifies a region based on region distribution information. The region classification server may include several databases to facilitate the classification of the region, including a classification type database, a classification evaluation database, and a region classification database. The region classification server may also include one or more interfaces for receiving region distribution information, such as an automated business listing interface and a…

    A region classification server classifies a region based on region distribution information. The region classification server may include several databases to facilitate the classification of the region, including a classification type database, a classification evaluation database, and a region classification database. The region classification server may also include one or more interfaces for receiving region distribution information, such as an automated business listing interface and a user-input classification interface. The region classification server may also classify a region by modifying a classification evaluation stored in the classification evaluation database, where the modification is based on received user information. Moreover, the region classification server may provide the region classifications to other systems in communication with the region classification server, such as search engine providers, augmented reality developers, or other third-party entities.

    Other inventors
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  • Associating advertisements and game data in a flash-based gaming environment

    Filed US 12/471,582

    A method of associating a service with a computer software product includes loading an executable software file containing software code that upon execution carries out a software program, inputting code into functions of the software file, mapping execution of the functions of the software file, receiving an input identifying a content trigger, identifying a function of the software file associated with the content trigger, and modifying the function associated with the content trigger to…

    A method of associating a service with a computer software product includes loading an executable software file containing software code that upon execution carries out a software program, inputting code into functions of the software file, mapping execution of the functions of the software file, receiving an input identifying a content trigger, identifying a function of the software file associated with the content trigger, and modifying the function associated with the content trigger to cause presentation of service in response to an occurrence of the content trigger. An enhanced software file may be produced that includes the modified function.

    Other inventors
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  • Overlay content in a gaming environment

    Filed US 12/388,079

    A method of overlaying content in a computer gaming environment includes loading a binary executable form of a computer program, analyzing graphical elements in the computer program while the computer program is in operation, receiving criteria to configure overlay content slots, and modifying an import address table of the binary executable form of the computer program such that logic for delivering overlay content is loaded when the computer program is in operation.

    Other inventors
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  • Apparatus and Method for Service Enabling Computer Programs

    Filed US 20100211934

    A method of injecting services into a computer program includes analyzing the computer program to evaluate its technologies. The method further includes identifying objects within the running computer program to inform an injected service that an event has occurred, and modifying the computer program so that the injected service responds to an occurrence of the determined object.

    Other inventors
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  • Interstitial advertising in a gaming environment

    Filed US 11/678,253

    A method of advertising within a game is provided in accordance with an exemplary embodiment. The method comprises identifying a frame of the game, wherein the frame is capable of receiving an advertisement. The identified frame can be presented to a player of the game before, during, or after game play. A time when the identified frame is presented to a player of the game is determined. The method further comprises rendering an advertisement over at least a portion of the frame at the…

    A method of advertising within a game is provided in accordance with an exemplary embodiment. The method comprises identifying a frame of the game, wherein the frame is capable of receiving an advertisement. The identified frame can be presented to a player of the game before, during, or after game play. A time when the identified frame is presented to a player of the game is determined. The method further comprises rendering an advertisement over at least a portion of the frame at the determined time.

    Other inventors
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  • System and method for providing content, applications, services and digital media to users in a peer to peer network

    Filed US 11/545,026

    A device, a software product, and a method for obtaining content in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network are provided. A request is received for content from a device. For example, using a browser, a user at the device selects a hyperlink indicating content that can be obtained by the user. The content may include an application and a media file. For example, the content may be a movie, a song, a picture, a game, a software application, etc. The request includes information associated with the device…

    A device, a software product, and a method for obtaining content in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network are provided. A request is received for content from a device. For example, using a browser, a user at the device selects a hyperlink indicating content that can be obtained by the user. The content may include an application and a media file. For example, the content may be a movie, a song, a picture, a game, a software application, etc. The request includes information associated with the device. The information associated with the device is added to a collection, which is a group of devices connected in a P2P network that have received the selected content. A file is sent to the device using the P2P network. The file includes the content and programmed instructions to instantiate a management application at the device and to execute the first content at the device.

    Other inventors
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  • System and method for advertisement identification, selection, and distribution involving a peer to peer network

    Filed US 11/544,449

    A method of presenting an advertisement to a user executing content at a device is provided. A request for content is sent to a device in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. A file is received from the P2P network. The file includes the content requested and a campaign file. The campaign file includes information identifying when and which advertisements are presented to a user during execution of the requested content. The received file is installed and the requested content is executed. A time is…

    A method of presenting an advertisement to a user executing content at a device is provided. A request for content is sent to a device in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. A file is received from the P2P network. The file includes the content requested and a campaign file. The campaign file includes information identifying when and which advertisements are presented to a user during execution of the requested content. The received file is installed and the requested content is executed. A time is determined for presenting an advertisement based on information read from the campaign file. At the determined time, the advertisement is requested and presented. The advertisement itself is delivered either in-advance of a request or on demand in response to a request as determined by the campaign file. The advertisement is delivered from either the content-requesting device, a peer or server in the P2P network, or a third party Internet delivery service.

    Other inventors
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  • Service and messaging infrastructure to support creation of distributed, peer-to-peer application with a service-oriented architecture

    Filed US 11/545,057

    system and method allowing engineers to create large scale, consumer oriented, distributed applications that utilize peer to peer messaging patterns and service oriented architectures. Applications built using the method produce operational cost curves typical of successful peer to peer systems. The system includes mechanisms to deal with reliably and securely sending messages over consumer grade networks that are inherently unreliable and insecure while still permitting direct…

    system and method allowing engineers to create large scale, consumer oriented, distributed applications that utilize peer to peer messaging patterns and service oriented architectures. Applications built using the method produce operational cost curves typical of successful peer to peer systems. The system includes mechanisms to deal with reliably and securely sending messages over consumer grade networks that are inherently unreliable and insecure while still permitting direct, consumer-to-consumer messaging by virtue of an extensible Network Address Translation traversal strategy. The system and method allows for the creation of consumer applications by facilitating the identification, location and assembly of services running in a network on a plurality of devices. While the application of the system and method to the distribution of large digital media is readily apparent, the system and method is, in no way, limited to this domain.

    Other inventors
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Honors & Awards

  • University of Saskatchewan Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award

    University of Saskatchewan

    This award recognizes a graduate for an outstanding lifetime of accomplishments and contributions to the social, cultural and economic well-being of society.

    https://alumni.usask.ca/get-involved/achieve/woods.php

  • J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation

    University of Waterloo, Faculty of Mathematics

    The J.W. Graham Medal in Computing & Innovation was created in 1994 to recognize the leadership and many innovative contributions made to the University of Waterloo, and to the Canadian computer industry by J. Wesley Graham, during his career as both a professor and university administrator.

    The J.W. Graham Medal is awarded annually at the spring convocation to a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics normally who is currently in business, government, or education and exemplifies many of…

    The J.W. Graham Medal in Computing & Innovation was created in 1994 to recognize the leadership and many innovative contributions made to the University of Waterloo, and to the Canadian computer industry by J. Wesley Graham, during his career as both a professor and university administrator.

    The J.W. Graham Medal is awarded annually at the spring convocation to a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics normally who is currently in business, government, or education and exemplifies many of the qualities shown by Wes Graham during his career.

    https://uwaterloo.ca/math/alumni-friends/faculty-mathematics-alumni-awards/gallery-past-recipients/recipients-jw-graham-medal-computing-innovation

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