Brian Madden

Brian Madden photo

I'm a technology strategist and futurist at Citrix, where I explore how AI is transforming the workplace and what companies can do to stay secure, productive, and a step ahead. I write regularly on Citrix.com and give talks around the world, sharing ideas about how technology is reshaping work.

Check out my latest writing & talks for links to what I've done most recently.

I've spent the past 30 years in end-user computing, digital workplace trends, and the evolving nature of work itself. Along the way I've started and invested in companies, written books, published more than 2,000 articles, and delivered over 1,000 talks around the world.

I’ve advised and invested in several startups, including FSLogix (acquired by Microsoft in 2018), and worked at VMware as a Distinguished Technologist, leaving ahead of the Broadcom acquisition.

BrianMadden.com & BriForum

I launched The Brian Madden Company—best known for BrianMadden.com, and our independent EUC industry site—and founded the BriForum conference, which ran for over a decade across cities worldwide. TechTarget acquired us in 2008, and I stayed on until 2016.

Best-selling author

I've written six books and edited & published four others, all about end-user computing technologies and strategies. My favorite is "The VDI Delusion" from 2012. My most recent book is a strategy guide on Desktops as a Service. Details are on the Books page.

Creator of the Mission Pinball Framework (MPF)

I love mechanical things and pinball. I started building my own pinball machine in high school in the 1990s and discovered there's a whole community of pinball makers and geeks who build their own pinball machines in the 2010s. In 2014, I started working on a free & open source pinball machine software framework (e.g. the software which runs a pinball machine) which I called the Mission Pinball Framework. (I was living in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood then and I thought it was a cool name.) Today MPF is the de facto standard software framework for people building their own machines, having been used to power hundreds of personal projects and several commercial pinball machines. (Check out my very first post announcing MPF more than 10 years ago. Wow!)

Creator of FAST Pinball's tech docs

So, I love technical writing, and I love pinball. I combined those together as the author and creator of all of the technical documentation for FAST Pinball. FAST Pinball is a pinball platform company who makes pinball control systems (elecontronic boards, etc.) for pinball machines. Most of their business is as the hardware platform provider for commercial pinball companies (Barrels of Fun, European Pinball Company, Pedretti Gaming, Pinball Brothers, Haggis Pinball), but they also provide their platform to individual pinball makers who build their own machines in their garages and basements. In 2022-23 I took a 2-year sabbatical from EUC and wrote all of the technical documentation for FAST Pinball from scratch. This includes product docs, manuals, tutorials, how-to guides, etc. Fun!

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Check out my Latest Writing & Talks for blog posts, talks, interviews, and whatever else I’ve been doing lately.

Personal

I grew up in Akron, Ohio (Go Browns!). I now live in Paris. 🇫🇷