Email: job@colinsteele.org
Phone: (434) 227-4513
Experience
hotelicopter, Charlottesville, VA (4/09-present)
CTO(4/09-present)
Everything technology related, in an early stage startup. Architected and led complete overhaul of technology. Initiated adoption of Customer Development Process to match the maturing agile Product Development Process.
Independent Consultant, Charlottesville, VA (1/00-present)
COO- and CTO-for-hire
Performed various executive-level consulting services for clients, with a focus on early-stage, pre-revenue companies and companies struggling to reach a reliable breakeven point.
Projects include technology due diligence for Boston- and Charlottesville-based venture capital firms and IT consulting for regional technology firms. Expert witness and research investigator in technology-related class-action litigation against a large multinational corporation.
Recent clients include:
- BoldMouth - Next-generation PR and marketing using viral and social media tools. Wrote custom Facebook application using FBML and Ruby on Rails. Built custom web widget to accompany it. Performed CSS and HTML work on custom MySpace page. Search engine optimization (SEO), CSS/HTML/JS customizations on PHP-based site. Wordpress customizations and administration. Moved company IT assets to source code control using git and GitHub. Researched and recommended hosting solutions for company internal assets and client sites.
- General Services Administration (GSA) - Two-week sprint to develop comprehensive analysis for the applicability of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) development models to a highly visible Government Off The Shelf (GOTS) proprietary application.
- SAIC - Keyword extraction from unstructured text - standalone binary written in C. Prototyped next-generation distributed system built using C and Ruby. Resulting system overlayed proprietary binary with an open standards-based distributed architecture using message queue middleware. The result was very well received, and my SAIC manager asked me to give a full staff presentation on SOA / distributed systems.
- Mitre - Prototype Ruby on Rails application for the Air Force. Built using a combination of proprietary solutions dictated by security requirements, alongside a suite of open source tools that I researched and selected, including Ruby on Rails, SVG, MySQL, and AT&T’s open source directed graph drawing tool, Graphviz.
- Netwave - Rural wireless ISP. Conducted top-down comprehensive analysis of a heterogeneous dialup, leased line and wireless network, including recommendations for aligning IT and network operations with overall business goals.
- 45Fix - Internet-based remodeling and construction services.
- MonkeyClaus - Next-generation Internet music distributor, music studio and social label.
- Bluewall Interactive - The engine behind Monkeyclaus - multimedia CMS and media software.
Vmeals, LLC., Charlottesville, VA (1/00-10/05)
Member, Board of Directors (5/03-10/05)
Guiding Vmeals from startup to fast-growing and profitable business.
Interim CTO (1/03-5/03)
Aided Vmeals through funding and technology crisis. Recruited replacement technology team and CIO/CTO to take over day-to-day operations.
Free Union Country School, Free Union, VA (Spring/03-present)
Chairman, Board of Trustees (2/04-8/05)
Guiding the school through a transitional period.
Member, Board of Trustees (Spring/03-present)
Chair of Buildings and Grounds committee.
HighSpeed America, Inc., Bluemont, VA (5/03-3/04)
Cofounder, Vice President (5/03-2/04)
Helped with most aspects of company launch, with focus on strategy, fund raising, market approach, and opportunity analysis.
WebG2, Inc., Charlottesville, VA (3/99-1/02)
Founder, President/CTO
Founded and launched Internet startup. Performed all business functions, including strategic and business development, sales, marketing, R&D, finance, HR, and operations. Business concept development. Raised over $600,000 in seed-stage financing. Filed for patent on core IP. Hired key management and technology teams. The company was caught in the general technology sector downturn in 2000.
Kesmai Corporation, Charlottesville, VA (10/98-3/99)
Senior Software Engineer
Co-architect of Kesmai’s massively multiplayer chat game engine, Voltron.
America Online, Inc., Vienna, VA. (9/93-8/98)
Director of AOL Instant Messenger Host Development (1/97-8/98)
Led 10 directly-reporting and several indirectly-reporting software engineers of varying levels of experience from pre-launch of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) through acquisition of over 14 million registered users. Led host server design. Scheduled, managed and tracked multiple software projects of changing priority. Lobbied for new positions and hired new employees.
Conducted performance appraisals and actively managed performance of both high-performing and under-performing software engineers.
Assumed a primary operations role for 10 months after AIM launch, prior to transfer of operational responsibilities to AOL Network Operations. Acquired hardware and networking infrastructure. Scheduled and conducted hardware, operating system and server software installations for close to 100 HP UNIX machines. Diagnosed and debugged hardware, network and server problems. On call for frequent emergency situations. Made hardware and operating system purchasing evaluations and recommendations. Trained AOL Network Operations personnel and transferred operational responsibilities to them over a 3 month period. Trained AOL Network Operations Center personnel on AIM host system monitoring and troubleshooting.
Actively managed the host server technology portion of the AIM co-marketing partnership between AOL and Netscape Communications.
Conceived of and led development of generalized web interface to AIM and AOL host system complex. System now supports various AOL and AIM initiatives, including MyNews.
Acted as a liason and informal internal technology consultant for Product Marketing on AIM and related issues.
Principal Software Engineer - AOL Instant Messenger (9/96-1/97)
Key participant in the 6-member team responsible for the AIM host system architecture. Co-conceived AIM’s Neighborhood Watch and rate limiting systems with two other team members.
Architected, designed, implemented, tested and maintained a specialized account database known as MORF, for AIM. MORF is capable of handling 8,000 lookups per second. It is a distributed, replicated, non-relational database with 70-100 microsecond lookup latency. It supported over 6 million entries, and ran with minimal downtime for 18 months. Under intense time pressure, wrote and debugged all 45,000 lines of the MORF source code in less than 3 months.
Co-author of two patents for AIM technology (6,339,784 and 6,336,133).
Designed, developed, debugged and maintained two classes of servers responsible for interfacing AOL proper with AIM for interoperation of Buddy List and Instant Messages.
Manager - MOO Project (1/96-9/96)
Took a primitive AOL-adapted MOO server that had been developed as a “proof of concept” into full production. Designed and implemented features that integrated the MOO fully with AOL, including the ability to display graphical and web content in the MOO environment, etc. Trained content development staff and acted in a consulting role as they created AOL areas around the MOO. Actively managed relationships with Product Marketing, the AOL Games Channel, Operations, and other groups on an ongoing basis.
Lead Software Engineer - USENET Project (9/93-1/96)
As architect and lead engineer of the small team responsible for AOL’s USENET gateway, designed and wrote most of the system. The system is written in C and C++, and makes heavy use of BSD sockets, libg++, Sybase, IPC, and NFS. At last count, the project was hovering around 100,000 lines of code. Familiar with many of the issues involved in design, implementation and operation of a very large scale system.
Designed and implemented most subsystems in the gateway, including the generic user interface framework which the gateway is based on, external control via a command port, the user interface, article threading, presentation and posting, and access to newsrc, preferences and parental control databases via classes using the letter/envelope class idiom, etc. In addition, wrote various support libraries and classes.
Performed network and systems administration tasks necessary until operations personnel were hired.
AOL’s newsgroups gateway was extremely successful, and beat the competition to market by 6 months. AOL became the largest single USENET site in the world, and averaged about 10,000 postings per day (approximately 10% of the total volume of USENET, in postings). In addition, the gateway generated significant revenue from online usage (over $60MM/year) and contributed to member retention.
Wrote daemon for use by multiple projects at AOL which collects, manages and sends users’ outgoing messages via various, extensible transmission methods, including sendmail and inews. Wrote newsgroups testing scaffold in PERL using BSD sockets.
Developed coding conventions adhered to by newsgroups project, and accepted to a greater or lesser degree by many other development projects. Proposed, implemented and maintained AOL’s standard Makefile, RCS and software construction processes, methods, and tools, used by about 30 developers. Gave tutorials on USENET to AOL network operations, marketing and support staff. Introduced AOL UNIX development staff to Purify and Quantify.
Cayman Systems, Inc. Cambridge, MA. (4/90-9/93)
Software Engineer (5/92 - 9/93)
Lead engineer for 2nd generation of cross-platform SNMP-based management and configuration tools. Technical evaluation of cross-platform development environments. Designed application and implemented UDP, TCP, and DDP network classes, template-based container classes, C library wrappers and utility classes in C++. Wrote UNIX-based test tools in PERL using BSD sockets. Developed coding conventions and source documentation utilities in PERL.
Maintained and enhanced GatorKeeper, Cayman’s Macintosh-based router configuration and management tool, for release 2.2 and Cayman’s 4th generation hardware platform. Redesigned and rewrote SNMP configuration module. Maintained GatorInstaller, Cayman’s TCL-based FLASH EPROM updating utility. Proposed a source code control system for the Mac development group and wrote MPW tools in C and MPW scripts to support the system. Wrote 7,000 line “port-node mapping” module for GatorKeeper.
SQA Project Leader (10/90 - 5/92)
SQA Project Leader for GatorStar GX, Cayman’s third hardware platform. Guided engineering quality assurance activities, developed and executed testplans, and managed SQA analysts. Designed and wrote a PERL-based implementation of MNP-5 for a UNIX-based testing scaffold. Tested release 2.0. Wrote functional specification for and tested Cayman’s Appletalk to DECnet router. Developed DECnet endnode simulator and a DECnet protocol decoding module for a proprietary network analysis tool.
SQA Analyst (4/90 - 10/90)
Wrote and executed testplans for release 1.5 and 1.6 of Gatorbox software. Proposed, implemented and maintained SQA bug tracking system. Proposed and tracked quality metrics reflecting customer satisfaction.
Software development expertise
Architecture, implemenation and technical management of massively distributed systems with extremely stringent performance and reliability requirements; 24x7 server systems; BSD sockets and IPC; TCP/IP; HTTP; database-backed Web applications; NNTP; SMTP; DNS; Appletalk; DECnet; serial protocols; UML, Design Patterns; CRC.
Patents
6,339,784: Self-policing, rate limiting online forums
6,336,133: Regulating users of online forums
Publications
An Introduction to Ruby, published by O’Reilly & Associates
Languages
C/C++, Ruby/Rails, PERL, PHP, Tcl, Unix shells, 68K assembler.
Tools
GNU tool suite (GCC/G++, Emacs, gdb, subversion, CVS, RCS, gmake, etc.), Ruby on Rails, git, XML, HTML, MySQL, PostgreSQL, UML, Purify, Insight, Quantify, Oracle.
Platforms and operating systems
Linux, HP running HPUX 10.x, 9.0.x, Solaris.
Additional Skills
Experienced software architect, technical team leader, and project manager. Strong experience with aligning IT organizations with business goals. Technologist with strong business acumen and successful track record of business/IT analysis and implementation.
Technologist with extensive background in entrepreneurship and business across a range of industries. Excellent communicator with strong analytical, writing, and research skills.
Education
1990 B.A. Mathematics, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA.
References
Available upon request.
