Allan Padgett

Mr. Padgett is the founder and primary engineering force behind the Tour Tracker™ platform.

Mr. Padgett designed and wrote the original Tour Tracker in 2007 as a volunteer who loved cycling. In the five years since, and with a growing team of industry veterans, he has continued to update, refine and expand the platform. Through his work and experience covering more than 15 major cycling stage races with Tour Tracker, Mr. Padgett has become the most experienced person in the field of live online cycling coverage.

As an avid cyclist, Mr. Padgett leverages his passion for the sport and understanding of racing to deliver very rich, compelling race coverage. He also brings a highly detailed understanding of the technical requirements necessary to deliver a reliable, broadcast-ready experience anywhere on the globe. Over the years, he has developed strong relationships at every level of the international cycling community, including event owners, event management, video production staff, the cycling press, manufacturers and, as he is proud to point out, Phil Liggett, one of the Tour Tracker’s biggest fans. Through his GPS data processing and data visualization development on Tour Tracker, Mr. Padgett has been awarded and/or has pending numerous patents.

One of those patents, in fact, was co-authored by one of the founders of Adobe, where Mr. Padgett began his software career. At Adobe Mr. Padgett was the primary author of a then little known product called Acrobat. His Acrobat experience led to his soon playing a critical role in the web’s early growth – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI – suggesting to Netscape that they allow 3rd parties to extend the Netscape browser. Interestingly, the most successful “browser plugin” –  Macromedia’s Flash – was later bought by Adobe and lies at the heart of a number of the Tour Tracker’s clients.

Prior to his work at Adobe, Mr. Padgett received his BS and MS degrees in computer science from Stanford University. Before that, he lived in Texas and ate copious amounts of BBQ – a proud tradition he continues today.

Rob O’Dea

Rob O’Dea is an accomplished marketing executive with 15 years experience working with world class brands and structuring strategic partnerships. After several years in the corporate marketing world based in Minneapolis, Rob was recruited by a venture backed, Silicon Valley start-up where he worked with brands like Wal*Mart, adidas, Nike, CostCo and others to launch new marketing technologies for their retail distribution channels. Rob left the comforts of the big brand world to co-found an aviation technology company that he helped run for 6 years. Rob successfully raised the firms start-up capital and closed more than two dozen strategic deals with the most well known technology and travel brands. After exiting the start-up world, Rob and his wife relocated to Boulder, Colorado to start a family.

In Boulder, Rob was quickly recruited to run the marketing and sponsorship programs for the Kodak Gallery Pro Cycling Team. In this capacity, Rob developed the concept and sponsor backing to establish the world’s first carbon neutral pro sports team. This accomplishment received major international acclaim and has since been copied by several major teams across multiple professional sports.

When not riding or racing his bike, Rob gets his 2-wheeled fix as an internationally published professional photographer. His cycling images have graced the pages of magazines ranging from Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair and Outside to nearly every print and on-line cycling industry publication. Rob has also shot for many major cycling industry brands including Oakley, SRAM, Specialized, Michelin, Pearl Izumi, CatEye, CliffBar and Honey Stinger.

For the past five years, Rob has also been running the consulting practice of Barracuda M.A.D., LLC.  In his spare time Rob can be found juggling two great little kids, on two wheels or fly fishing Colorado’s many world class trout waters.

Advisors

Phil Liggett

Phil Liggett is a British journalist and the world’s most recognized commentator of professional cycling. Phil has shared insights gained as a racer and an inimitable wit over 13 Olympics and 38 editions of the Tour de France. He is the voice of cycling for Versus, ITV and SBS and has worked as a broadcaster for ABC, CBS, and NBC.

In addition to his on-camera work, Phil has written books on bike racing, contributed to publications including Cycling, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer and served as Cycle Sport magazine’s international editor.

In 1973 at only 30-years old, Phil became the youngest ever UCI international commissaire. From 1972 and 1993, he was technical director of the Milk Race. His race organization successes led to his becoming vice-president of the Association Internationale Organisateurs des Courses Cycliste. From 1997 to 2007 Phil was president of Britain’s national cyclists’ organization, Cyclists’ Touring Club.

In 2009, Phil was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame. He is fond of spending his time away from the broadcast booth at his home in South Africa.

Michael Gough

Michael Gough is Adobe’s Vice President, Experience Design. He is also the leader Adobe’s  Experience Design Team (XD), an internal design practice focusing on the next generation of digitally enabled experiences. A longtime advocate for quality in all digital experiences, Michael has been pushing the digital envelope for years.

Previously, Michael was the Chief Creative Officer at Macromedia, Vice President of Brand Design at Nike, the Chief Creative Officer of Quokka Sports. In addition to serving as Quokka Sport’s lead visionary, he was Executive Producer for several successful large scale Quokka productions including FinalFour.net, NBCOlympics.com, SaltLake2002.com, AmericasCup.org and Whitbread.org.

Michael conceived and lead Quokka Labs, innovators of digital sports media coverage responsible for leading edge R&D including the Intel co-developed CART Broadband Trial. He also developed product definition and supervised production of Sports Immersion, Quokka’s immersive sports experiences, leveraging data, images, video and next generation presentation methodologies.

Also spent time as a VP at Sportvision, a sports media technology company best know for their First Down Line.  He presently lives on a ranch in Northern California surrounded by family, horses assorted farm animals and hills that seem to go on forever.