Bren:Alumni

The Bren School Alumni Chapter is proud of our alumni, and we are pleased to showcase their activities in these “Alumni Spotlights”. To suggest a spotlight please contact Eric Kowalik.

George Riviere toasts to the Bren School’s 40th anniversary at his wine bar, Uncorked, in Rancho Santa Margarita.

For George Riviere, the Bren School of ICS was an important aperitif to a diverse career that ranged from software engineering to starting a wine bar.

“My education at UC Irvine and ICS has pretty much been the foundation of my whole career,” Riviere a 1974 alumnus said. “I pursued software development my entire career, from graduation forward.”

Riviere chose the upstart UC Irvine campus because it was a new school and the computer science department was one of the first dedicated departments for ICS in the country.

“There were other campuses that taught computer science but in terms of giving a degree in computer science and having a dedicated department and having faculty there that focused on that particular area, it was relatively unique at the time,” Riviere said. “So that certainly attracted me and in terms of environment it was one of the most beautiful campuses and was a great place to live and study.”

The software engineering skills Riviere learned at ICS got him a job doing code maintenance on some accounting software where he discovered an industry need for a better software accounting product.

“What we found out was, what I would say was the sorry state of software development at the time especially in the accounting software field,” Riviere said. “We felt we could bring a better quality software to market than what was available at the time.”

To remedy the problem, Riviere developed MAS 90, the most widely used mid-range accounting software product in North America.

“I still find it mind boggling that the software I helped develop back in 1986 is still in use today and being sold to thousands of businesses,” Riviere said.

VIN DE GARDEV

After retiring from Sage software company in 2007, Riviere began tackling new projects such as Uncorked, a wine bar he and his wife opened in Rancho Santa Margarita.

“A lot of people ask why I got into the wine business,” Riviere said. “I’ve been retired for a few years now and while I’m involved in some other technology projects, my wife and my family wanted something that we could do together.”

But Riviere still keeps his hand in the technology field, as KoldCast TV’s senior vice president of strategic technology. The start up web based entertainment portal boasts 13 channels of high-definition short shows on topics ranging from sports to comedy and from news to drama.

Riviere drew on his prior experience refining user interfaces for his accounting software and persuaded KoldCast’s designers that the screen of an Internet TV network shouldn’t look like an Internet site. He recommended the controls should be like a DVD’s start-up menu, with selections that can easily be made by a remote control device as well as a mouse.

As a member of the Bren School’s Leadership Council and mentor to teams in the school’s hITEC entrepreneurship competition, Riviere is providing insightful feedback to the technology leaders of the future.

“You have a unique opportunity attending an institution like UC Irvine’s Bren School, take maximum opportunity in terms of exposing yourself to as much of the field as possible,” Riviere said. “Don’t lock yourself into one particular path, there is nothing wrong with being focused and knowing where your going, but don’t preclude yourself from looking at all the other possibilities that are out there.”