Resume / About Me

February 4th, 2010

I believe in Free Software, and Free Standards. With that in mind, I offer my resume in two open standard formats: pdf and odt.

Me, In a Nutshell

I’m a Senior Software Engineer currently employed by Molecular, a Boston based Internet consulting company. My jobvaries pretty widely by the project to which I’m currently assigned. In the past, I’ve worked on these projects [technologies used in brackets]:

  • Contributor to StatusNet, the software that power the popular microblogging sites identi.ca and twit army [PHP, Apache, MySql, Postgres, Memcache, XMPP]
  • Created Celtics 3-Point Play Facebook game [PHP, Apache, MySql]
  • Developed hybrid e-commerce and community site as the main web presence of one of the major American cellular carriers [Java, Spring, Hibernate, Velocity, Tomcat, MySql, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Apache, Tomcat]
  • Developer for the new OLPC community site [PHP, Smarty, MySql]
  • Programmed user friendly web-based CMS frontend for a large multinational athletics site [ASP.NET 3.5, C#, Tridion]
  • Technical lead for the re-creation of the web presence of Reebok. The project includes: requirements gathering, preliminary high level design, architecture (including the integration of 4 backend products, 1 front end product, 1 visual design agency, and a translation agency), implementation, team coordination, testing (QA and UAT), documentation, and deployment. [Java, Spring, Maven, Weblogic, FreeMarker, Flash, SOAP, Tridion, Oracle]
  • Engineer on the HumanaOne PlanPointer project. HumanaOne PlanPointer is an AJAX web application designed to help consumers find out which health plan is right for them. It graphically represents each plan’s relevance, and asks refinement questions to help narrow down the options, ultimately allowing the user to apply for the plan of their choice. As an engineer, I didn’t design the UI, but I did implement it and make it all work, from backend communications to the front end javascript (along with another engineer and a user experience specialist). The system is build using ASP.NET 2.0, C#, and MS AJAX.NET. You can read about some of my experiences on my blog post entitled “Microsoft Only Ajax Application”. Want to check out Planpointer? The application is presently only available in a few states. If you want to give it a test drive, try “70001″ as your zip code. [ASP.NET, ASP.NET Ajax, C#, MS SQL Server]
  • Reebok RunEasy developer. I worked in a small team of user experience designers and engineers to develop the goruneasy.com web site, a Web 2.0 social networking site for runners. The site features a Google Maps mashup showing user contributed runs. It also has a forum, text message receiving, flickr posting/mashup, user created videos, and iTunes integration. The site is compatible with IE6 and 7, and Firefox 2+. We used Prototype and Scriptaculous as the Javascript libraries, and Microsoft ASP.NET / C# as the backend. The campaign ran world wide in 2007, and received a few awards. [ASP.NET, ASP.NET Ajax, C#, MS SQL Server]
  • Creation, from scratch, of a new Web 2.0 social networking site for a large advertising company. I must say, the technology was very awesome, and the architecture clean. Unfortunately, the company scrapped the project following code complete about a month before deployment for reasons I can’t disclose. Some of the code is scattered around some of their web properties, though, so not all is lost. [Java, Spring, Maven, Velocity, Hibernate, EJB3, MS SQL Server]
  • Development of a demonstration mobile facing web site written in Java, leveraging WURFL for device capability detection and abstraction. [Java, WML]
  • CMS implementation for Aetna insurance, including requirements gathering, content analysis, taxonomy design, system architecture, installation, and implementation. Interwoven Worksite MP was the CMS (well, really a Document Management System, but we used it like a Content Management System).
  • Development of an internal project metrics tracking tool written in C# and Microsoft AJAX.NET (then known as “Atlas”). I also tried to get it to work on Mono, but didn’t quite get there (I’d love to try again!)

While I’m engaged in a project, I never fail to find things which seem suboptimal. For example, I realized that if we had an outlet for knowledge sharing, we could share the great work done between teams, so each team didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. My philosophy is that if I see something that could be improved, I improve it. Thefore, in addition to the projects I’ve been assigned to, I have also engaged in these efforts which I started and developed:

  • Introduction of a continuous integration system (Hudson). I originally was using for just the project I was on, but decided to set it up for anyone to use.
  • Switch from Microsoft VSS (Visual Source Safe) to SVN (Subversion). When I started at the company, I was not impressed by VSS, to say the least. It was slow, proprietary, and worst of all, became corrupted and lost data. I found this completely unacceptable, so I requested a server, installed Ubuntu, Apache, mod_svn, wrote a few scripts, integrated LDAP account management, and gave the company a reliable, fast version control system. Soon, all projects at the company switched away from VSS to SVN.
  • Introduction of Trac. Continuing my quest for an open, dependable project environment, I was disappoined in the tools used to manage issue lists and milestones (namely, spreadsheets). So I introduced Trac. Because of the greater-than-Excel learning curve, migration has been slow, but a few projects so far have leveraged it.
  • Creation of an internal company wiki. I received buy in from the proper people, then created an instance of MediaWiki which I customized to take advantage of unique features of Molecular’s environment via MediaWiki’s plugin system. I organized a small group of volunteers who created the initial information architecture and taxonomy, then we bootstrapped the system with some base content. The wiki is now favored over the competing Sharepoint system by many people.
  • Creation of an internal/external company blog. Again, I rounded up supporters and selected WordPress as the blogging platform. With a combination of standard and custom written plugins, I created the Molecular Blog. Experience designers created the theme, and finally the blog was launched externally.

I’m also huge supporter of Free Software. To prove it, I put my money (and my time) where my beliefs are. I’m a paying member of the FSF and the EFF, and contribute to Free Software projects (such as StatusNet). At work, I always endorse Free Software, and choose it whenever possible.

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