Why hire me

If you've known even just a few developers, you've had to listen to how awesome Typescript is or that Mongo is light years ahead of MySQL or the MEAN stack is way better than having a Python jammed up in the Django, and that's great but...

Have you ever worked on a project and something new came up, and your developer said, "That's easy. I can do that in an hour," but he or she did not take into consideration the time spent on the UI, planning, testing, feedback, integration, how it fits in with everything else, or anything beyond just the code? Developers with gumption and optimism benefit the team, and that's great but...

Most developers have that job because they love programming, and that's great but...

You need a developer who sees and understands the big picture, not just the nerdy stuff. You need a developer who knows why you are doing what you're doing, why your clients/customers/users are using your software, and why they're doing what they do.

I love development and marketing, especially where the two meet. I am a developer because I love to build ways for people to get what they need, achieve what they want to achieve, enjoy life. I want people to be better off because I built something for them.

It's really not about Node vs Python, Postgres vs ArangoDB, Grunt vs Gulp. It's about, "Did we build something that helps people?" It's about, "Are we getting more people interested in our product?" It's about, "Could we make it easier and more enjoyable to use our system?"

Don't get me wrong. I will certainly dork out on Angular, ArangoDB or Twilio. I just want a bigger reason to work on a project than the technology. What's your reason for doing what you do?

Notable Projects

TWG Quote Tool - As the Senior Director of Technology at TWG Plus, I developed the internal quote system. We had four, complicated ways of calculating price. The system streamlined the sales process, making the process easier for both sales and operations. I built the first version in PHP in the CodeIgniter framework with jQuery and MySQL/Maria.

Custom online publication CMS - The client's business, television production for professional sports (i.e., the camera crew, editors and producers at NFL games, the Olympics, NBA games, etc.), was changing drastically by the internet. They chose to expand their business by creating a sports gossip website. A regular Wordpress site wasn't going to cut it, due to the intense customization needed and potential security risks. I built a custom CMS based on their specific needs using agile methodologies. Our weekly calls helped them see the development progress, but more importantly they could provide feedback so I could adjust the features to better suit their changing needs. I built this in PHP with CodeIgniter and jQuery on the front end with MySQL/Maria for the DB.

SEO dashboard (circa 2008) - I was the Chief Technology Officer at RefreshWeb, an SEO consultancy. We built (I programmed) an SEO monitoring system that crawled the search engines and assigned a ranking based on reach. The idea of reach fascinated me because knowing how many qualified people are searching for your solution is much more interesting and meaningful than where did you rank on Google. I built this in Ruby on Rails with Postgres as the DB, and Perl and pure Ruby for automation.

100+ custom e-commerce sites (2000 to 2013) - I started as an e-commerce developer when most companies still needed to be convinced they even needed a website. All of the sites were for small businesses, so I worked directly with owners who knew what they wanted but didn't know technology. I developed sites in Perl with flat files, and soon moved to PHP with MySQL/Maria. I used custom javascript on all sites.

Pre-uber taxi fare estimator (2005) - Before Uber and even before Google Maps became popular, I developed a fare estimator for the various Texas Taxis websites, which included locations and rates for four cities. I used the MapQuest API to determine distance. Customers could select from landmarks, stores and any notable location (data provided by the client), or they could just enter an address for the pick up and destination locations. The result page auto-populated the order form so they could easily order a taxi. I also used an API for a fax service, because the taxi industry is not at the cutting edge of anything, really.

Portfolio

Contact me if you'd like to see my portfolio.

Experience

I got my first professional job in the early 90's, right when personal computers were starting to get popular. The web wasn't even invented. I sold burglar and fire alarms, and integrated systems for access control and CCTV. I started in customer service and worked my way up to selling large, high end, integrated systems for high rises, business campuses and prisons.

I created my first HTML page in 1995. I programmed my first e-commerce site in javascript, which was a mistake since I didn't understand the need for backend logic. I went to work at an e-commerce company in 1998 as the "HTML Programmer" and Sales Engineer. After a brief stint as a Marketing Director for a small software company, I became a freelance developer specialising in e-commerce starting in 2000. I hosted websites, email and DNS on a server at home, eventually moving everything to a managed server in a data center. I've worked on a ton of projects since then, with the most notable ones mentioned above.