Career Overview

With a passion for open technologies I have evangelized the use of Linux and open source software in both the private and public sectors by demonstrating the importance of developing an open source strategy that can coexist with closed, commercial solutions. This applies to everything from the basic use of open source software, adoption of open document formats to fostering the culture of open thinking. I have spent the past seven years working with executives including CEO and CIOs to understand the importance of having an open source methodology and how its implementation can effect not only the bottom line but the ability to retain top notch talent.

Professional Experience

• Developed an open source strategy which resulted the migration to PHP as our core competency, migrating to MySQL as our primary DBMS, begin migrating from IBM's WebSphere environment to Jboss, exploring the use of the Mono as our target .NET environment.
• Helped introduce a repeatable software development life cycle (SDLC) methodology that is heavily influenced by basic open source principles such as short release cycles, project transparency and open collaboration.
• Helped Introduced a repeatable project management (PM) methodology that complimented our SDLC. Success in this process resulted in building a formal project management practice within our organization. Together with the SDLC this has resulting a number of high profile systems delivered to the citizens of Iowa such as the Iowa Sex Offender Registry, Iowa School Alerts, Enterprise Authentication and Authorization and the state's electronic payment system, ePayment.
• Consulted with nearly every state agency to do business process improvement, system analysis and software architecture.
• Continued iterative improvements to our SLDC which resulted in developing the beginnings of a software test methodology.
• Did performance tuning including application and database server optimization, load balancing and code optimizations.
• Sponsored countless lunch-and-learns to expose all of state government timely open source topics

• After starting off as a contributor to the Geeklog Content Management System (CMS) I was eventually moved into the role of Project Lead. I learned first hand how open source development operates including it's drawbacks and benefits
• Responsible for building the project community and coordinating the development across as many as a dozen contributors located throughout the world.
• Promoted the use of the CMS as a way to manage online content throughout State Government. I also used the CMS to build the online community Iowa Outdoors, http://www.iowaoutdoors, which I eventually sold in April of 2007.
• Consulted with the technical team at Groklaw, http://www.groklaw.net, to improve the performance of Geeklog to handle high loads (often the result of being Slashdotted).
• Knew when it was time to step aside as the Project Lead so that the project could progress to new levels.
• Participated in the Google Summer of Code program by mentoring two students.

• While the company's core competency was online property management, my duty was developed a complete different set of systems for the main venture capitalist (VC) in the company. The VC ran the third largest cattle herd in the U.S. and had a desktop system built over seven years that managed his herd and he wanted to port it to the web. This was a technically challenging tasks as the system was built as a windows application using an outdated language called xbase++. The final solution was to use Citrix initially and when demand was higher would then have the revenue needed to convert it to a web-based system.
• The other system I created was a website aimed a building an online livestock community that the VC could use to sell products and services from and to market his herd management software.
• Responsible for managing the financials of both systems I made use of open source software where it made sense.

• Businessolver.com, a small dot-com start-up initially hired me to help them build their own internal IT shop which included severing the relationship with their vendor, bringing all hardware in-house and hiring networking, database and programming staff to run the website. The successful completion of this project saved the company over $100,000 in monthly expenditures.
• Developed the Enrollment and Eligibility system was envisioned to be the company's core service offering. This allowed companies to handle new and annual insurance enrollment online where, once entered, we would convert to the required format of the insurance carriers.
• I was promoted to Directory of Technology where I was responsible for managing a tight $400,000 annual IT budget. This required leveraging the maturity of open source technologies which included migrating from Solaris to Linux, migrating to the Resin Java application server and implementing IP tables and Squid for firewalls and proxies respectively.
• As part of establishing their IT competency, I ensured all applicants had experience with open source development methodologies yet had the fit-and-finish needed to excel in a high stress .com environment.

• Developer for one of Compaq's enterprise web applications that allowed up to 700 customer service representatives to help customers, place and track an order and give inventory information on parts.
• The Compaq system was developed to be multi-tiered, distributed highly available. Technologies used included Active Server Pages (ASP), XML, DHTML, JavaScript, COM, MTS, MSMQ, IBM MQSeries, Internet Explorer, and used MS SQL Server 7 and DB2 for backends.
• Helped a Des Moines-based retail store improve their IT infrastructure by introducing the use of Linux-based thin clients, a Linux-based network complete with a firewall and network monitoring and by helping them define their business requirements for an inventory management system so they could make a decision on a commercial system to purchase.

• As my first job out of college this was my first real chance to develop not only technical expertise but the soft skills needed to progress my career.
• Developer at Pioneer Hi-Bred on a team that delivered a system to manage all of their products (corn, soybeans, etc) from pre-planting through harvest. In addition to basic programming duties, I was specifically responsible for working with middleware (IBM MQ Series) to get product harvest data over to the SAP ERP system.
• Developed a system for Norwest Mortgage (since bought by Wells Fargo) that stored meta data about all the mainframe systems so they could develop a detailed plan to consolidate as many systems as possible.
• Developed an enterprise system for The Sunflower Group in Kansas City that allowed them to include product samples in all major newspapers in the country. This included a complex GIS component for identifying the paper routes which included households in the target demographics for a given client.
• Built a real-time stock system for a small agriculture start-up company. The system would read commodities information from FutureSource, import it into an Oracle database and display the information on the web to their customers. This was all run under Linux doing basic serial port programming in C.

• Helped developed real-time embedded code to run on Rockwell's PLGR II generation of hand held GPS units. This experience included interfacing with hardware on bread boards and dumping contents of memory to the VAX in order to debug memory values.
• Responsible for building the language modules needed to support a variety of languages including Arabic.
• Learned the internals of how GPS works as well as the application of selective availability (SA).
• Exposed to ISO 9001 certification process as well as the governmental bid process.
• Obtained secret level security clearance with the U.S. Governement.

Speaking Experience

The list below highlights some of my formal speaking experience. It should be noted that the list below does not include the countless talks I have given at board and committee meetings, local Linux and user groups as well as informal lunch-and-learns.

Technical Expertise

A job of this nature may not require detailed knowledge of any specific technologies however the list below should give a quick idea of the first-hand exposure I've had to a variety of technologies.

References: Available Upon Request

|