About Kraig

Kraig Brockschmidt (1968-) was born and raised in the Seattle suburb of Renton, Washington. His father is a career electrical engineer at Boeing, still engaged in a wide variety of projects as he is widely known in the company as a brilliant problem-solver and fix-it man. His mother worked many years as a schoolteacher in kindergarten and primary grades. In retirement she enjoys playing with her grandchildren and is working toward a long-time goal of sewing 10,000 quilts for Lutheran World Relief (she's above 8,000 now).

Early in his life, Kraig showed a propensity for mathematics. As one story goes, when his parents were trying to teach his older brother Kevin to count using M&M's candies, with the reward of having as many as he could count, they quickly had to abandon the practice when two-year-old Kraig quickly caught on. In kindergarten, Kraig sat down one day to write numbers as high as he count. After passing 1,000, he realized he could count as high as he wanted to and didn't need to keep scribbling! Later, in third grade, he completed two-and-a-half years of math coursework

To encourage continued development along these lines, his father bought him his first computer in 1979: a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer. At the same time, his father refused to buy any software. “That,” he said, “you will have to write yourself.”

Kraig did just that, taking to computer programming with the same passion that Kevin took to art (Kev works as a freelance cartoonist). By 1984, during his sophomore year at Hazen High School in Renton, Washington, Kraig was writing his own software and selling it through various Color Computer magazines (Rainbow, Spectrogram, and CoCo Clipboard). He also published several articles in those same journals, eventually having a regular column in the latter. In this he found that he loved sharing ideas about computer programming as much as the programming itself.

Kraig entered the University of Washington in 1986 to pursue a degree in Computer Engineering (why he didn't go into mathematics is told in Chapter One of Mystic Microsoft). He spent some of his free time volunteering for the Microcomputer Support Lab on campus where he got his first exposure both to IBM-style PCs and to the work of customer support. It was based on this experience that he was offered his first real job: an internship in Microsoft’s Developer Support department. (His only other employment was two months for a temp agency through which he did damage returns for United Parcel Service.)

During his time in Product Support, Kraig wrote the Calculator program for Windows that is still shipped with the operating system to this day. Following that success, he was hired to work on some of the other Accessory programs of Windows version 3.0. The following summer he was offered a full-time software development internship in which he continued to work part-time up to his graduation in 1990. (For details, again see Mystic Microsoft, as for all his time with Microsoft.)

Kraig then returned to Developer Support where he honed his skills in both understanding the intricacies of technology and communicating that understanding to others. In less than a year he became one of the most productive engineers in all of Microsoft’s Product Support Division. A short time later, his unique combination of talents brought him into a much broader role. In late 1991 he took a position in Microsoft’s technical evangelism group, Developer Relations, where he remained for the bulk of his career.

In Developer Relations, Kraig used his skills to speed the adoption of Microsoft’s newest technologies by other software companies. He offered papers and sample programs that demonstrated exactly how to incorporate those technologies into a wide variety of applications and regularly spoke at industry conferences. In addition, he continued to publish articles in magazines such as Microsoft Systems Journal and Windows Programming Journal.

In 1993 Kraig took his work to another level with the publication of Inside OLE 2 (Microsoft Press). This book became extremely popular and catapulted him to the status of an industry expert. Being in great demand as a lecturer, he traveled far and wide for several years to help people understand Microsoft’s key technologies. He was also in great demand within Microsoft as other development teams regularly approached him for help with their designs. Thus he made important contributions to many of Microsoft’s flagship products including Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer.

Late in his career (if you call age 27 being "late") his life began to take a spiritual turn. While Kraig had been raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran, he had set religion aside shortly after joining Microsoft. Through the ensuing years spirituality was little more than an intellectual curiosity; at different times he didn’t think about religion at all while at other times he loathed it. Then in 1995 a deep yearning to know truth began to reorient his priorities; by the end of 1996 his life looked completely different. Kraig had retired from Microsoft (with enough assets from stock options to provide a small but adequate income). He and his wife Kristi (who holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering) had moved from their large, almost brand-new suburban home to a humble apartment in an intentional spiritual community in Lynnwood, Washington. More recently they have moved to a similar community in Portland, Oregon, to undertake a new phase of their spiritual lives that includes starting a family (their first child, Liam Edward Brockschmidt, was born October 7th, 2006.)

Since that shift in 1996, they have both been dedicated to seeking God rather than worldly success, and to the ideals of non-attachment, service to others, devotion, simplicity, and self-control, specifically as expressed through the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi. They are both life members of the Ananda Sevaka Order, a renunciate order open to "householders" and married couples, as well as those with children.

For Kraig, this dedication has expressed itself in a wide range of diverse activities—all part, he says “of an expanding self-identity that is reaching out—literally, it seems—to embrace Infinity.” When asked what he does with his time, he simply answers, “Whatever God puts in front of me.” If he’s responding to a less spiritually-oriented person he’ll simply say, “I’m Self-employed.” (That’s Self, of course, with a capital S!)

These activities have included everything from construction (including wiring, plumbing, and welding), writing, music (various instruments), conducting, singing (both solo and choral in a number of domestic and international concerts), and real-estate to importing, photography, forest management, office management, volunteering, cooking, graphic design, web-mastering, consulting (technical and legal), mechanics, retail sales, ministry, and childhood education. In this latter role he even appeared in a program on National Public Radio. Kraig is also a nationally certified Yoga and meditation instructor and has taught a variety of classes and seminars. And recently, in addition to parenthood, God has saw fit to direct Kraig into a new Program Management role at Microsoft, a definite help with the costs of raising a family and certainly a vehicle for many possible opportunities to serve.

That inner dedication is also reflected in the spiritual name Satyaki, which Kraig uses in spiritual contexts (he continues to use his birth name legally and in the mainstream). This Sanskrit name, pronounced SAHT-ya-kee, literally translates to "devotion to truth." This is a quality that has long been at the heart of Kraig's inner search; in having those who support his spiritual aspirations call him with this name, the quality is further reinforced, strengthened, and magnetized.

For more, see the philosophy behind this site.