Created a schema for information pertaining to Civil War battlefields and recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Built an API supporting location-based queries in support of a map-based browsing application.

Technology employed: PostgreSQL, PostGIS, GraphQL, Node, Heroku

Managed and contributed to the development of dentataBase, an online repository of data related to breeding, planting and restoration, used by the Foundation and its partners in support of their mission to restore the American chestnut tree:

• Instituted Scrum and related practices; served as ScrumMaster
• Designed and helped implement a role-based access control system
• Built a bulk CSV data import facility
• Added filtered search functionality
• Added support for tracking of and planting from cloned material

Technology employed: Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, PostgreSQL, Heroku

Developed content and data management features for Bedsider, an online birth control support network for young women:

• Maintained and enhanced SMS-based health care appointment and birth control reminder service
• Converted SMS infrastructure from Ericsson IPX to Twilio
• Built a portal for health care providers, allowing them to register patients, create appointments and schedule reminders on their behalf
• Added functions for creating, managing and displaying site content: articles, banners/billboards, FAQ questions, user-contributed photos, e-cards etc.
• Built location-based clinic search function
• Added record linkage/de-duping to clinic data ingestion system
• Added authenticated access, account administration functions and analytics to API

Technology employed: Ruby, Rails, Grape, Resque

Managed and contributed to the development of a Facebook application enabling artists, brands et al. to enlist their fans in social marketing efforts and reward them for their participation:

• Staffed and managed the development team
• Instituted Scrum and related practices
• Managed the infrastructure
• Built asynchronous services to process real-time updates from Facebook, automatically post messages on Facebook Page walls, award and revoke badges, distribute rewards, compile statistics etc.
• Developed a sentiment analyzer employing the AFFIN affective lexicon

Technology employed: PHP, beanstalkd, MongoDB, Ruby, Rails, elasticsearch, Python, Amazon Web Services

• Architected a publish/subscribe platform and API for the real-time Web. Messages were ingested from various sources (e.g., Twitter) as well as entered directly, classified by content and/or metadata and tagged after entity extraction and sentiment analysis. Users could create standing queries on the aggregate message stream, remix and re-broadcast content in public or private channels.
• Prototyped system using Rack, Sinatra, ActiveMQ and various Web service APIs

This project was the result of an invitation to pitch a new product idea, extended to the development team at Kinfo by that company's investors following its dissolution. The company ultimately received funding for a personalized search application, and was subsequent acquired by OpenTable.

Managed the development of a consumer photo-sharing service uniquely suited to family photos, combining genealogy, social networking and asset management techniques to provide a collaborative online family album:

• Selected the technology (Ruby on Rails, Adobe Flash, Amazon Web services)
• Hired and managed the developers
• Established the process (Scrum and selected Extreme Programming (XP) practices, including test-driven development and continuous integration) and oversaw execution
• Pair-programmed features with developers
• Managed QA, deployment and infrastructure

Led the development of a production management system for animated commercials, television shows and films, using XP throughout:

• Created product roadmap, project charter and development plan
• Selected technical platform (Python, TurboGears)
• Worked with Product Manager to develop user stories
• Pair-programmed most features with one other developer

Constructed a digital audio catalog for online music retailer specializing in electronic/dance genres:

• Created sophisticated data model supporting arbitrary playlists as products, multiple download formats and territory licensing restrictions, with extensible associations between artists, tracks and genres
• Designed content integration system for importing and associating metadata and audio, encoding downloadable tracks and inserting into catalog

Improved development tools and productivity on the Super Audio CD project:

• Fixed dependency generation bug in unsupported third-party IDE written in Tcl
• Created and documented a template and process for using the IDE in conjunction with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe to manage multiple development projects
• Created wrapper scripts for querying workspace and project data from the UNIX shell

Helped the Site Operations department gain increased control over the process of deploying software to CNET's numerous Web sites:

• Conducted an assessment of software testing, delivery and maintenance activities; compiled and prioritized findings; produced a report with recommendations
• Established an inter-departmental working group devoted to process improvement
• Prepared a Request for Proposal and organized vendor meetings leading to the selection of a software deployment tool

Organized and managed the software development effort for the world's first person-to-person on-line betting service. In the first 9 months:

• established the technical infrastructure (source code control, development and QA server environments)
• hired 6 developers
• created standards for data modeling and software design documentation
• established design review, release and maintenance procedures
• directly managed development of the first major site revision
• worked with Product Managers and Technical Leads to deliver 6 subsequent feature releases

Challenges included: unclear division of responsibilities between the Vice President of Engineering, CTO, Chief Architect and myself; geographical separation of the development team from the Product Managers and unstable product requirements.

In the second 9 months:

• helped move our SF-based development team to London, retaining almost all development staff
• hired 3 more developers
• introduced use cases and XP practices (refactoring, unit testing, continuous integration and automated nightly builds)
• led the development of an entirely new service, which increased revenues by 40% in its first week of operation

Challenges included: distraction of transatlantic move and loss of our QA department, integration of the SF and UK teams; complete revision of business model and concomitant urgent necessity to overtake a competitor that had already built a product. The company subsequently merged with this competitor and the business was valued at £1.4 billion in its initial public offering.

Developed a content management system for sports betting site:

• Created relational database and XML schema
• Built an import tool in Perl for news and other content supplied by third parties
• Created administrative and publishing tools for third-party and editorial content using Java Server Pages

Improved the reliability and performance of the CDDB music metadata service:

• Reworked server memory management and error handling code
• Built an interactive client in C for troubleshooting the service
• Developed a test language and interpreter in Perl with iterative, periodic and random query execution features. This was used for regression testing and service monitoring.

Helped transform Phil Tippett's stop-motion animation studio into a full-service digital visual effects company, while the studio was producing VFX shots for feature films including Starship Troopers and Armageddon. Responsible for digital asset management, production tracking tools and automation of the production pipeline.

• Established standard file system layout for production
• Defined procedures for setup of new productions and shots, and a protocol for scanning and processing live-action plates
• Created tools for setup, maintenance and navigation of workspaces, and for managing multiple "takes" (revisions)
• Developed an object-oriented framework in Perl for production management applications. Data are stored in the UNIX file system, metadata in a relational database. Programs communicate with the database through a persistent object interface. Key artifacts of the production process (3D scenes, photographic or rendered image sequences, rendering control files, etc.) are modeled as classes.
• Developed applications using this framework:
  • – a system for publishing, browsing and retrieval of work products
  • – a Web-based browser, selector and manager for photographic elements used in compositing
  • – on-line film output and dailies screening request forms
  • – rendering setup tools
  • – automated backup and archival of production data to offline storage

As the sole UNIX developer contracted by this firm with no previous Web experience to help launch the Ford Motor Company's Web site:

• Set up the in-house development server, established protocol for upload to the client, mapped out the site architecture and coordinated the work of copy editors, artists, and HTML coders. The initial site went live in just six weeks.
• Wrote CGI programs in Perl: dealer locator, budget planner, lease vs. finance calculator, and dynamic page generator for "virtual showroom"
• Developed the "Mercury Sable Virtual Giveaway," one of the first on-line sweepstakes promotions on the Web