Web Development and I.T. Management

For businesses pursuing Internet and I.T. projects I offer the following consulting services.

I.T. Project Management
Coordination and completion of projects within the information technology department. Oversight of all aspects of projects, including the setting of deadlines, assignment of responsibilities, and monitoring and reporting on project progress. Building and maintaining working relationships with team members, vendors, and other departments involved in the projects. Preparation of reports for upper management regarding the status of projects.

Web Application Development
Designing, development, testing, implementing, and maintaining of web-based application systems. Troubleshooting system problems and issues and identification of ways to improve applications. Debugging existing code and implementation of additional functionality.

Web Design
Design and construction of web pages and sites including incorporating graphic user interface (GUI) features and other techniques. Maintenance and provision of ongoing design of web sites. Production of graphic sketches, designs, and copy layouts for online content. Identification of size and arrangement of illustrative material and copy, selection of style and size of type, and arrangement of layout based upon available space, knowledge of layout principles, and aesthetic design concepts.

BACKGROUND AND QUALIFICATIONS
When I was about 12 years old I went to a demonstration of a Sinclair ZX81 home computer. The demonstration consisted of a brief introduction of the hardware components, the Basic programming language, and some simple computer games. I thought it was a really fascinating toy and over the next couple of years I kept asking my parents to get me one. During the following years I kept asking my parents to get me one too. While that didn't happen immediately there were some computer labs that became available at school that had Commodore 16s. Eventually when I turned 14 I got my own Commodore 64 followed about a year later by an Intel 386 DX based personal computer that included a floating point coprocessor. Both of these computers were a ton of fun to have especially the i386.

As far as my PCs were concerned my initial use of them was playing games. Eventually I got into programming with the Basic and Assembly languages and made a few small applications and demos (non-interactive multimedia presentations). Demo's were really popular back in the days and were the means of communicating between software development groups as well as talent advertisements. During my high school years I continued playing with software development tools and building my own computers as well as began supporting others with their computer needs. Unfortunately knowledge of computers during this time seemed a lot more of a curse then a blessing because somehow people always seemed to come up with endless amounts of questions and there was very little benefit (besides being called The Wiz Kid) in supporting them. Nevertheless I kept spending enormous amounts of time on the computer until even really complicated tasks seemed to become quite trivial. Eventually shortly after High School was over I got my first computing job working as an Internet Specialist developing web sites and content transfer processes from the print media Quark Xpress to the Internet.

Developing web sites for print magazines was exciting in the beginning, but my desire to continue learning more about the diversity of the computing field and the Internet made the job seem repetitive. So after approximately two years and five magazine sites I decided it was time to advance and jumped ship to a small Internet Service Provider where I became the IT Manager shortly afterwards. During this time I learned how to use and manage network switches, routers, servers, and a variety of applications. Unfortunately the owner decided to sell his facility and ISP business and reinvest into transfering telephone traffic for Sprint from Los Angeles to Seoul Korea via Voice-over-IP technology. This point became the start of my first business Infomedium, Inc. since this decision pretty much eliminated my job. However since we had a pretty good working relationship he offered to transfer the clients to my company for a small fee so there was some cash flow right from the start.

Once the Infomedium, Inc. ISP infrastructure was in place I picked up about a dozen additional accounts and began to build and host additional web sites and connect more businesses to the Internet. These were the .COM bubble's heydays when E-commerce and database driven web sites became very desirable by many businesses. As a result most of the sites were database driven, spiced up with flash animations, and in some cases functioned as web stores.

After the .COM bubble was over and things slowed down for Infomedium, Inc. and the computing industry in general it was time to face the music for me and many others. I went back to school and when that was done after about five years I began looking for new things to try. Oddly as it turned out, my IT skills were still the ones in most demand so for the last couple of years I've been doing web development and server administration yet again. The sites I develop nowadays fall into either one of two categories, either web publications with the use of a Content Management System such as Drupal or custom .NET multi-user web applications. In addition to building web sites I've been able to leverage my 3D modeling and flash programming skills to produce virtual worlds with the use of open-source technologies.