About the Author

“The most complicated skill is to be simple.”

Dejan Stojanović

“I strive for an architecture from which nothing can be taken away.”

Helmut Jahn

My name is Dave Hendricksen, and I am a software architect for Thomson Reuters. I spend most of my time working on WestLawNext (an online legal research tool), Optimus (a learning platform), and a wide variety of other projects, generally focused on new product development—I love to innovate. I also help run and organize an architecture mentorship program and a technology forum at Thomson Reuters.

Every day is busy and challenging; for me that equates to fun and engaging.

I have been married for 25 years to a beautiful lady. We have two great kids, one cat, one dog, and a koi pond. We have some lake property—it seems as if that’s a requirement when you live in Minnesota, the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. It is also the location of summertime building projects: trebuchet, go-cart, rain barrel water collection system, robotic lawn mower, and so on.

In a similar vein, I spend a fair amount of time mentoring the Eagan High School FIRST Robotics Team. We try to run our program like a small business—we need to raise money, market our team, build a product, and compete in tournaments.

Being the lead mentor for a large robotics team (over 80 kids and over 30 mentors) has many parallels to being an architect on large-scale development projects. There are a wide variety of opinions of what should be done, limited resources, limited time, and you need to deliver a successful product.

In short, I love to plan, research, organize, teach, mentor, architect, and build things.