lightshow-games-server
Rhabdomancy is a divination technique which involves the use of any rod, staff, stick, arrow, or the like. In other words, magical wands.
// 01 · ABOUT
PM by title.Builder by instinct.
I've been a builder since middle school. First a school newspaper site so I could tell stories with code, then apps for my teachers and e‑cards for the family holiday card. High school is where I learned what it feels like to ship hardware on a deadline: I joined the robotics team, made drive team, and we won regionals. By senior year I'd helped spin up 17 more robotics teams across elementary and middle schools in my district, because the community around the work mattered as much as the work.
I studied CS in college with a focus on robotics and AI, but paired with product‑design classes on the side. My favorite thing I built was an interactive lightshow: guests scanned a QR code and steered the lights with the gyroscope in their phone. The kind of small interaction that delights the people who notice it.
That's still the through‑line. I love how one system feeds into another, and the small details most people won't catch are where being thoughtful and intentional actually matters.
// 02 · RÉSUMÉ
Where I've shipped.
Six years on platform services across Xbox, NASA, and earlier.
// CURRENT
Xbox Platform · Microsoft
Senior Product Manager · 2020 → present
// EDUCATION
University of Minnesota
B.S. Computer Science · Robotics + AI · Product Design minor · 2016 – 2020
// INTERNSHIPS
Microsoft
Summer 2019
NASA Johnson Space Center
Fall 2018 – Spring 2019
Polaris Inc.
Summer 2017 · Summer 2018
// BEFORE
FIRST Robotics · Team 2526
High school robotics
- Dean's List Finalist
- Chairman's Award
- Regional Champions
MIT Launch
Entrepreneurship program
// 03 · DEMOS
Things I've built.Side projects, prototypes, & experiments.
A curated slice of public repositories.
enter the living laboratory →lightshow-games-client
Light Show Games Client
alexkafer-web
// no description
electrove
Electrove Website from MIT Launch
planets
OpenGL Planet Rendering
opengl-animation
OpenGL project for UMN CSCI5611, Animation and Planning in Games
GopherGoldIndicator
Get your gopher gold balance using a python script
CrowdWeb
// no description
CrowdServer
// no description
CrowdClient
A websocket client for the Tesla Works Winter Light Show. Translates data to DMX.
TEDxUMN-Wordpress
★ 1The wordpress website for TEDxUMN
LinkedInRedirect
A simple javascript redirect function with noscript failsafe. Redirects linkedin.alexkafer.com to my linkedin profile.
TimeSlot
★ 1Provides the backend and interface for a simple timeslot manager and queue system. Allows people to regsiter for timeslots and if they do not check in by their time, the server will automatically provide access to the next on the waitlist
MotionProfileBot
// no description
plant-website
Crimson Robotics Plant Fundraiser for 2016. Hosted on my personal website for the fundraiser, will be removed once plants are delivered. Will remain saved on GitHub for posterity.
FRC-Travis-CI-Test
// no description
MultiDrive
Allows FRC robotics to dynamically switch between crane-esque drive, arcade drive, and tank drive.
VisualThrottle
Uses OpenCV to communicate throttle with the FRC robot
LightsaberCV
Turns a RotatedRect into a Lightsaber
Biggest-Circle
Circles the biggest particle in the threshold.
YellowToteTracker
OpenCV tracking of the FRC 2015 yellow tote
Simple-PID-Controller
// no description
Bytes
Submission for the STEM House App Challenge
// 04 · LAB
I learn by doing. A live A/B test.
The secondary button is a live A/B test and your session was randomly assigned to one variant. Clicking that button records a conversion. The query and scorecard below run against a Cloudflare D1 database.
YOUR SESSION: —
ASSIGNED VARIANT: …
Variant A
View GitHub
// systems · prototypes · code
Variant B
Connect on LinkedIn
// career · network · message
LIVE QUERY ↓
-- loading…RESULTS ↓
No data yet. You'll be the first.
About Alex Kafer
Senior Product Manager on the Xbox Platform team at Microsoft. Read the full bio or view the résumé.