Last year I wondered about Ron Okamoto's responsibilities at Apple. (Who is Ron Okamoto, you ask? Exactly.)

I guessed, or maybe saw somewhere, that Okamoto manages John Geleynse. Today I was thinking about Developer Relations again and came across Geleynse's LinkedIn page, where he describes his dual role as both Director of Technology Evangelism and User Experience Evangelist at Apple.

Geleynse's mission, as I understand it, is to help developers be Apple developers in the strongest possible sense of the term. He and his team help us learn and use Apple technology, and he helps us design user experiences that are up to Apple's standards.

I see he's not responsible for the sort of plumbing issues that are most often complained about, like Radar, like app reviews and rejections, or like the recent fiasco with WWDC tickets being revoked. But he might be someone to bug (assuming he's approachable) about the uncertainty around sandboxing.

I saw Geleynse helping someone at a Tech Talk years ago, and he seemed interesting. I wonder if he'll give a talk or have some sort of presence at WWDC other than hosting the Apple Design Awards.

Director, Technology Evangelism
Apple Inc.
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; AAPL; Consumer Electronics industry
December 2002 – Present (9 years 6 months)
Responsible for directing a team of technology Evangelists who:

• Provide the technical guidance and insight needed by 3rd parties to build elegant, attractive, innovative, connected, integrated, and great software solutions for iPad, iPhone, and Mac
• Promote advanced iOS and OS X technologies and software development techniques to the 3rd party ISV and software development community
• Work with Apple’s engineering and interface design teams to efficiently address technology adoption issues faced by 3rd party software developers
• Track 3rd party developer technology needs and communicate them cross-functionally within Apple
• Define and manage the technical content for the annual Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) and annual Tech Talks
• Manage and host the annual Apple Design Awards

User Experience Evangelist
Apple Inc.
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; AAPL; Consumer Electronics industry
November 1999 – Present (12 years 7 months)
The user experience for Mac OS X applications encompasses the visual appearance, interactive behavior, and assistive capabilities of software.

Primary responsibilites include:

• Working one on one with 3rd party software development team to ensure that products they're building deliver a truly Mac OS X user experience
• Improving the user interfaces of 3rd party software products via design audit/review meetings in which every application window, dialog, palette, toolbar, and icon is reviewied for Aqua compliance and the overall usability and interaction design is analyzed and re-designed
• Defining the lions-share contents of each revision of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines
• Working closely with Apple OS Engineering to ensure Aqua adoption issues faced by 3rd party developers are addressed.