Dr. Petrie was a Founding Member of Technical Staff of the AI Lab founded by Prof. Woody Bledsoe at the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Consortium (MCC) in 1984 (Project Leader of Proteus, the first technology commercialized by MCC), Founding Program Chair of the ICEIMT 1992-1997, one of the earliest editors of the WWW Virtual Library (a precursor of Wikipedia), Founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Internet Computing, Founding Executive Director of the Stanford Networking Research Center (2000-2007), and founding Chair of the the Semantic Web Service Challenge (2006-2010). Dr. Petrie has been often asked to write and speak on Internet futures. He edits and writes the Peering column of Internet Computer. He is also a contributor to The Economist.
His general research topic is collective work (see also “Emergent Collectives for Work and Play”), and his research focuses on the use of web services to create and support Virtual Enterprises with Dynamic Web Service Integration. This is summarized as the World Wide Wizard vision and also reflected in the recent talk and paper “The Future of the Internet is Coordination”.
He has collaborated with STI Innsbruck and DERI Galway and was an Advisor to SAP’s Enterprise Services Community. Dr. Petrie has also consulted with companies such as HP, Siemens, Volkswagen, DaimlerChrysler, CommerceNet, and Commerce One on advanced IT technologies. He has been a member of the Technology Advisory Group of DaimlerChrysler. He has worked on Stanford projects with SAP and some of the POEM project results are now reflected in SAP products. In 2012, he was a Guest Professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of St. Gallen (HSG). He continues as a Sr. Research Scientist at HSG.
In addition, he is the Operations Manager for the Black Rock Municipal Airport, managing about 300 volunteers. The BRMA, in addition to being a busy airport (approximately 68th in the US for a few days), is also a 2nd gate into the event, running box office, gate, greeting, perimeter/ramp security, and general office functions. He initiated the first airport organization, the Ministry of Customs, and, with other founding volunteers, the first manuals defining the functions of airport roles. The BRMA designated 88NV: an FAA- and Nevada DOT- inspected airport.