Thai Tran

You probably arrived at this page by searching for my name, so I'll provide you the following snippets of information about myself so that you can determine if you've found the right Thai Tran. If you'd like to contact me, you can send email to my first name AT stanfordalumni.org.

You can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed.

Please note: I am not a poker player, an artist, nor a doctor.

Present
• Since October, 2007 I have been working at YouTube (a division of Google). I started at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, CA and then moved to Google's office in Zurich, Switzerland in October, 2008. Here are the major projects that I have worked on:

Past
Dunbar High School
• I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas and went to the magnet program at Dunbar High School -- this meant I rode on a bus for nearly two hours each day so I could get a better education at a school on the bad side of town.
• We were constantly competing in academic competitions, which culminated in the UIL state finals at the end of each year. My team won the state Science competition in 1994 and the Computer Science competition in both 1994 and 1995 -- this was a big deal at the time.
Stanford University
• I went to Stanford University between 1995 and 1999 and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. I returned in the spring of 2002 to finish my master's degree in Computer Science with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction.
• While I was at Stanford, I worked as the Resident Computer Coordinator for Kimball Hall and a teaching assistant for CS244A: Intro to Computer Networks. I really enjoyed helping other students, but these jobs were incredibly time consuming.
• I was also a part-time research assistant on the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies, Infomaster, and Rivet projects. These experiences taught me that a Ph.D. wasn't the right degree for me. These projects were similar to working in the industry, but the pace was slower and everyone was overly concerned with publishing papers.
• Since I was bored with my research projects, on a whim, I decided to join the infamous LSJUMB for just the summer of 1996. I ended up staying in the band for 6 years and got to "march" at the Rose Bowl in 2000 which was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
• On another whim, I signed up for Richard Powers' Social Dance I class. This turned out to be one of the most important classes that I took at Stanford as I fell in love with dancing. Later on, I taught the Lindy Hop classes and DJed the dances for the Stanford Swing Kids. Since then, I have traveled all over the world to go dancing.
• One day, I got really upset at the Stanford Bookstore monopoly and created a website on my dorm computer called BookSmart which was chronicled in this San Francisco Examiner article. This lead to my next adventure...
VivaSmart
• I co-founded VivaSmart, Inc. with Amr Awadallah in 1999. We initially created a comparison shopping website for college students and later syndicated our e-commerce engine to customers such as Epinions.com.
• Running this company was an emotional roller coaster and we experienced the dot com boom and bust first hand. Throughout the life of the company, we received a number of serious acquisition offers from companies such as Epinions and Excite@Home. We ultimately decided to sell the company to Yahoo! in June 2000, which was probably the best outcome for the company and our employees at the time.
Yahoo!
• At Yahoo!, I sucessfully integrated my company's team and technology into Yahoo! Shopping, and then went on to build a content management system for Yahoo! Travel. The highlight of this experience was working with Pasha Sadri, who later became the mastermind behind Yahoo! Pipes and Polyvore.
• I started seriously thinking about leaving in late 2002, but Yahoo! management convinced me to instead join the Yahoo! Search team. There, we spent a lot of time running around in circles, and the only notable thing I launched was the Yahoo! Search Shortcuts. Working on Yahoo! Search was a complete waste of my time as that team was not organized for success and did not invest in its own people or infrastructure. I finally left Yahoo! in the summer of 2004.
Google
• From Sept 2004 to Sept 2007, I was Product Manager for Google Maps and Local Search. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Here are the Google blog posts for some of my projects:
Feb 3, 2005: Hungering for the here and now
Mar 3, 2005: Reviewing local search
Apr 18, 2005: Google does Grimsby, Gateshead and Glasgow
Feb 9, 2006: Virtually Torino
Apr 21, 2006: Back on the map
Apr 26, 2006: Google Maps in Europe
Aug 8, 2006: Saved locations on Google Maps
Nov 16, 2006: Click to call in Google Maps
Mar 7, 2007: Google Maps Send to Car
May 17, 2007: Local businesses in Universal search
May 29, 2007: Mashups of Mashups
Jul 11, 2007: Google Maps Mashups 2.0
Aug 14, 2007: Planning a trip using Google Maps

I participated in a number of press interviews during this time. You can find some of the articles on Google. I also wrote an article in .net magazine on how we built Google Maps, but unfortunately the article is not available online.