Chris C. Kemp Founder, Nebula & OpenStack

Chris Kemp brought to NASA the ability to manage and get things done, creative approaches, and commitment to the outcomes. He coupled that with the technical soundness needed to understand the technologies and what directions NASA ought to pursue. That is an powerful and extremely rare combination and it was a loss for the future of NASA when we lost Kemp.

Chris is a delight to work with. He brings a breath of fresh air to any conversation. He opened my eyes to new ways of doing business at NASA. In fact, he introduced me to LinkenIn years ago before social media had made it's mark on NASA. I enjoyed collaborating with Chris on creative partnerships to use the latest technology to tell NASA's story.

Chris, I miss your tremendous energy and contagious smile. Good luck in all you do!

Chris was an awesome addition to the federal IT community. In a very short time he made a big impact. It can be difficult to make rapid progress in the federal space, but Chris led the development of NASA's Nebula private cloud, and stood it up swiftly, using an open standards approach and strategic partnerships with industry leaders. Nebula was deployed at a point when the Obama Administration had just announced cloud computing as a strategic priority. Chris's leadership helped pave the way for broader adoption of cloud computing by the federal IT market.

In addition, he's energetic, really smart, and a lot of fun to work with. :)

Chris brings amazing energy and pace to the challenges he chooses to tackle. He's a visionary who can rally his team to great heights. Not only did he bring fresh ideas about information technology to NASA but he brought fresh ways of of achieving them. I enjoyed collaborating with Chris at NASA over the years, enjoyed sharing his passion for technology, and would not hesitate to work with him again.

Chris Kemp is a visionary leader with a remarkable background in information technologies. His successes have ranged from a successful web startup to playing a key role in the cultural and technological transformation of NASA's Ames Research Center.

Chris is engaging, energetic, and very intelligent. He is a seriously talented person with a significant future. I can recommend him unequivocally.

Chris is one of those rare individuals that has a strong technology vision, can motivate and excite people about that vision, and then execute to make the vision a reality. He is very smart, capable, and is a great leader as well as an impressive public speaker.

Chris can also take very advanced technical concepts, then break them down into components that can be understood and executed on by both technical and non-technical team members. His vision on the direction that the NASA Nebula cloud IaaS project needed take has resulted in one of the best technical designs in the federal government or in private industry.

Chris is also a pleasure to interact with, and his energy around the projects he is engaged with is contagious.

Working with Chris has from day one been unique. His combination of technology understanding and vision, business focused, and insights in a large important government agency like NASA, makes things move forward. Combined with a high energy - rocket fuel - can do attitude - all the best.

Chris is one of the rarest few in the technology world: A visionary technologist with Steve Jobs' presentation skills. The dictionary defines true genius as being able to convey incredibly complicated concepts in a way that even a child could master them; Chris truly fits this definition. If US Government had even a handful more Chris Kemps at their disposal, we'd pay fewer taxes, automate more, embrace better and cheaper commodity and open source technology and have a functionally advanced government. I'd wish Chris luck on his new venture but he won't need it.

This is a really really great guy.

Chris is a brilliant, passionate, and ambitious entrepreneur who enjoys developing and deploying world class software that adds significant business value to his customers. If given the opportunity, I would definitely work with Chris again.