09/1996 - Present
Consultant / Programmer - UI Designer - Project Manager/Team Lead - Architect - Instructor - QA

Programmer & Consultant
09/1996 - Present

Ran this consulting business as a sole proprietor under its previous name, "The Personal Computerist", then as a partner under "Ford & Wise" Responsible for finding contracts, estimating and negotiating cost and schedule, software design and programming, and administration such as billing and taxes. Completed more than 30 projects for more than a dozen clients including Hewlett-Packard, Arthur Andersen, Sun Microsystems, and Williams Sonoma.

Programmed over twenty five projects in many programming languages including Java, Python, Javascript/DHTML, C/C++, Visual Basic & VBA. Wrote servers, database applications, games, accounting and business applications, and multimedia/instructional software. Use the expando triangle next to Ford & Wise, Inc. in left panel for more details on each project.

UI Designer
1996 - Present

Designed database front ends, game GUIs, multimedia and TV interfaces, and a few other miscellaneous Swing user interfaces. See projects for details.

Project Management
1998 - 2001

Managed Stock Market Server, Mediator, & TSJMS projects for U1 Consulting Group. Managed three telecommuting programmers, interfaced with client in Japan and New York via teleconference and status documents, worked with U1 management. Instituted estimation and status tracking documents/processes that were adopted for subsequent U1 projects. Procured and adminstrated bug tracking software. Managed separate weekly teleconferences for managers, programmers, and bug resolution. Wrote code as needed to meet schedule goals.

Managed a Multimedia CD for Arthur Andersen. Although technically hired as a programmer by the media consultants, Zoomedia, it soon became apparent that in spite of there being three of four people who could claim to be the project manager, there was no spec yet, and the budget and schedule were already well defined!

Got the Producer, the Content Manager, the Zoomedia personnel (Media Project Manager, President and VP of Sales) to commit to a spec, then budget it.

Working with the Content Manager from Arthur Andersen and the Media Project Manager from Zoomedia, created a project spec, negotiated a schedule with the Producer, designed content management tools, hired, trained and managed the QA team, took responsiblity for final decision to ship.

See Multimedia CD for details on this project.

Architect
1998 - 1999, 2000 - 2001

The Multimedia CD project above involved architecture. This was the second title in the Mastering Markets series, and packed enough media to fill three CDs. The first product had been built so that all the learning activities were sequenced in database tables. There was a different table for each kind of interaction. Apparently this was their way of letting geographically diverse content providers edit their content independently. It made an unmaintainable mess for development, debugging and final editing.

Implemented architectural band-aids in crucial places including a sequential actions table that served as the master sequencing table. Created a suite of forms and queries for editing related information that resided in multiple tables.

Architected Stock Market Server for U1 Consulting Group. This involved a multithreaded server that interfaced with third-party middleware and used Sybase for message persistence and crash recovery. It spoke JMS out the back end, interacting with other remote stock exchanges.

Instructor
1996 - 1997

1996 - Taught salesmen to use their new laptops and OS as well as Lotus Notes and other applications at Hewlett-Packard Company.
1997 - Taught intermediate and advanced MS Access classes at Hewlett-Packard Company.
1997 - Taught PowerTV OS programming in C to developers, developed sample code for class.

QA
1998, 2000

Responsible for all QA on all consulting projects except Multimedia CD and Stock Market Server. See above for managing QA team on the Multimedia CD. Wrote JUnit prototype code for automating remote clients for QA on Stock Market Server.