The intention of the VITA Technologies Hall of Fame is to honor and preserve the remembrance of those people and technologies that have had the greatest influence on the VITA open standards industry. These are the people who have overcome technical and procedural problems to help bring forth the products that set new expectations. It is our pleasure to honor these contributors to this industry.
Mike Macpherson
Mike spent over 40 years in the defense industry. Mike graduated from the California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science where his specialty study area was numerical analysis. He began his career supporting anti-submarine warfare systems at the Lockheed Corporation in southern California. In 1985 he helped found Vista Controls Corporation, a pioneer in bringing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic solutions to the military. In 2000, Mike joined the MITRE Corporation, a Federally Funded Research and Development Company (FFRDC), as a Senior Technical Manager. His most notable assignment was that of Program Manager for MITRE’s support to the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program; in this capacity, Mike led the development of the Network Centric System of Systems Architecture for FCS.
Mike joined Curtiss-Wright in 2005 as a Business Development Director. He moved on to become the Vice President of Strategic Planning for Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions. While in this role, Mike also served as the Curtiss-Wright representative on the VITA board of directors, where he was active in guidance of VITA. Mike retired from Curtiss-Wright in 2022.
Joe Norris
Having a passion for electronics since childhood, Joe goes back to the end of the vacuum-tube era. At 12 years old (1969), he constructed a 12AU6 based flip-flop from what he saw in a book, made from junk from a local TV store, not realizing at the time the implications it had for his future. Joe graduated from Rutgers in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts CS/EE degree.
Joe did stints with various companies – Formation, Perkin Elmer, Concurrent computer, Honeywell, Telenex, General Signal, Texas Instruments (“firewire”) and many consulting jobs along the way. Always the inventor, Joe founded Technobox, Inc. in 1989.
About 1993, with some practical background in VMEbus design when working for Formation – he used John Rynearson’s (VITA Hall of Fame 2014) 6800 side-card from Mizar – he had a perception that Futurebus+ (IEEE 896) was the next VMEbus, and became actively involved with design, production, and marketing of 68000-based FutureBus+ boards under the Technobox brand, making himself somewhat of a “reputation” in the VME community.
Before taking off, FutureBus+ collapsed, with everyone walking away. Joe’s company was stranded and forced to find something else; by a lucky suggestion from Wayne Fischer (VITA Hall of Fame 2014), Joe decided to try IEEE 1386 (PMC) as a Technobox business direction.
Passionately working 24/7 on PMC products, Technobox business took off in 1997. Some of these products are still sold today in various forms. With money rolling in, he was able to hire 10 employees at Technobox’s peak.
Then XMC (VITA 42) was developed, and Joe had the expectation that XMC would naturally follow the business success of PMC. Like FutureBus, he was mistaken with that notion. So, in approximately 2016 Joe sold off some IP/patent which brought in some money for several years. In the meantime, he was trying to find the next thing after XMC.
The industry was primed for a new, smaller mezzanine standard, leading to the formation of the VITA 93, QMC working group. At about 20% of the size of a PMC/XMC module, commensurate with contemporary component sizes, Joe saw this as the next generation of mezzanine standard.
Joe worked feverishly on this standard starting in 2022 as a VITA 93 co-chair and as a primary contributor. His objective was to create a standard with manufacturability, simplicity, cost, and deployment across many industry standards in mind. Joe retired from Technobox in 2024. 
Principal Standards Participation:
- IEEE 1386 – PMC
- VITA 42, 61, 88 – XMC
- VITA 93 – QMC
Key Patents:
- 5,313,154 – Frequency deviation between two sources
- 5,784,386 – Fault tolerant synchronous clock
- 5,796,733 – Time division switching system
- 5,805,614 – Fault tolerant switch Fabric via Hamming Codes
- 5,984,688 – IEEE 1386 PCMCIA
- 7,539,026 – Sub-mezzanine Structure for PCB assemblies