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| jamzen@michmer.net http://www.michmer.net |
57
Milton Avenue Hyde Park, MA 02136 |
My value, to any prospective employer, will lie in team-building, requirements and product definition, and management. I have excelled at these throughout my 23-year career in software engineering.
Successful projects are made of three components: good people, good tools, and a good manager. The manager gathers the people and the tools. He constructs, with their help, the design (work breakdown and schedule) of the project; the project will only be executed once, and there is no debugging cycle.
I am looking for an opportunity to do this, as a hands-on manager in an innovative small-business or startup context.
I'm committed to the principles and business models represented by the OpenSource community and the Free Software Foundation. Every software development group – whether open or closed/proprietary – can benefit from understanding how open-source tribes define themselves and accomplish their work, and from adapting that understanding to their own circumstances. Proprietary shops can benefit from adopting, internally, open-source development models.
As a hands-on manager, I am fluent in java, c, and c++; in development-support tools such as code control (CVS, ClearCase, MS Source Safe, MKS Source Integrity), configuration and build (make, imake, ant), testing (Junit), UML design (Rational Rose, Together), and of course the compilers and linkers and IDE's associated with these: VisualCafe, Jbuilder, MSVC. I am equally familiar with unix/linux and with the past 16 years of MS Windows releases; most of my home machines currently dual-boot W98/W2K and Mandrake 9.0, and I am slowly freeing them of MS products.
The development environment is Windows NT, VisualCafe, and ClearCase. Some maintenance and QA work is done with SQL scripts and perl. Development and unit test are integrated using Junit.
On leaving AAI, I contracted for a number of years, both independently and through area agencies. This gave me an unparalleled opportunity to gain exposure to a wide range of development technologies, and I did so; but, even more importantly, I observed and evaluated many leadership and management styles.
In 1999 I joined with Mystic River Software to undertake larger joint consulting ventures for Granitar Systems, Inc., ODAC (a startup), and for the Bone Density Lab at MGH.
For Granitar, I designed and implemented an HTML parse engine in Java, with some preprocessing in perl. For the ODAC project, I worked in Visual C++ and Oracle (using ODBC and SQL) to create the central database component of a system serving the advertising industry.
For the Bone Density Lab, we built an NT4/SQLServer6.5/ColdFusion4.5 back end, with special-access and maintenance utilities in C++. Working with the end-user client, I prepared the master specification document for the system. I analyzed the existing (QBase) database, and designed the new one (SQLServer). I designed and wrote (in VC++) a maintenance tool to create and load a text-selection database from formally defined, user-accessible, specification files.
Earlier, contracting both independently and through area agencies, I worked for such companies as Vality Technology, Hewlett-Packard, Parametric Technology, BBN Systems & Technologies, Delphi Internet, Phoenix Technologies Ltd., and local startups such as The Beautiful Machine, Inc., Colorgen, Novalink, AT/Comm, and PSI.
I worked generally in the areas of graphics (HP/Parametric and Phoenix), website construction (The Beautiful Machine), network communications and client/server design (Vality, BBN, Delphi), and logic programming (Vality).
For The Beautiful Machine, Inc., I led a geographically distributed development team in the construction of an interactive web site using Java, C++, and perl, on a Solaris platform; for Vality, designed and implemented the client/server communications subsystem, in VB and C++, for the company's Integrity product line; for Delphi, designed and created a Gopher/Web cache server, in C on DEC UNIX and Solaris, to speed up client access times. For BBN, did a MIB and its SNMP access routines, in C, for a custom internet/telephony product. For HP, at Parametric, extended the Parametric driver base, in C, to incorporate newly released HP hardware and software capabilities in perspective rendering, transparency, and planar cuts.
Founded in 1986, AAI performs spectral analysis of satellite imagery. One of only a small number of companies worldwide engaged in subpixel analysis, AAI has successfully established itself in a unique field with commercial, military, and intelligence applications. Under contract,
Then, as AAI's second employee and Director of Software Development, I laid the foundations of the company's present success:
I joined this startup as Software Development Manager. I created its software development group, and laid the foundations of its development disciplines. I developed the 8051 firmware for what, at the time, was a state-of-the-art, large-format document scanner. I designed and led the development of critical PC-based support products: to acquire, compress, store, and edit large (8800x6800) bitmaps. Created algorithms to process (scale, rotate, clip) images in their compressed form. I worked in C and in 8086 and 8051 assembler.
I managed a critical new product development project intended to make ADT a market leader in card-access security systems. I formed and led the team that defined, designed and developed the product over a 14-month period. At my initiative, this was the first development project at ADT to utilize structured project management techniques. These yielded an on-time, under budget project delivery, and a smooth transition from development to support.
IMLAC, during this period, was making the transition from discrete-logic to microprocessor-based hardware designs. I hired and managed the team that developed the firmware for the IMLAC Series II Vector Graphics System. The central technical issue was that the 79 CORE standard had not addressed the distribution of graphics processing between a host and an intelligent terminal.
Throughout the late sixties and most of the seventies, I was active in music recording and in electronic audio synthesis. I wrote the Arp 2600 Owner's Manual, and founded and operated the Boston School of Electronic Music.
I have a B.A. from Hope College, with majors in Philosophy and in English Literature and a minor in Music. I completed graduate coursework in Philosophy at Yale University on a McCormack fellowship.
Member of the Association for Computing Machinery since 1979.
References can be made available when a mutual interest is established.