Postcards From My Life

Cal Evans
Nashville, TN 37013
cal@calevans.com

My goal, my love, my passion is life, is to help companies deploy technologies that make a difference. It’s nice when it makes a difference in their bottom line but it matters most when it makes a difference in the community around them.

Team Management

Professional Nerd Herder, experienced in building world-class software development teams.

Community Development

Experienced in building and managing developer communities.

Web based design and development

10 years experience in building dynamic, data-driven, interactive web sites based on the LAMP stack.

System Architecture

Experienced in building web based applications from small, open source projects to multi-million dollar mission critical applications.

Writing

Published author, podcaster and journalist.

• PHP
• MySQL
• Linux
• Windows

Independent Computer Consultant
01/89 – Present

Consulted for many customers over the past 24 years building systems and web sites to enhance their bottom line.

Ibuildings
Utrecht, The Netherlands, 11/2008 – Present

Director of the PCE
My role at Ibuildings is still evolving. As the Director of the PHP center of Expertise, I hvae wide latitude to take on projects where I feel I can make a difference.

Zend Technologies, Inc.
Cupertino, CA, 06/2006 – 10/2008

Editor-in-Chief
At Zend, my duties were to write articles and tutorials about PHP for Zend’s DevZone. I was tasked to promote PHP to the technology community at large and Zend to the PHP community. Additionally I was responsoble for managng the relationship between Zend and the PHP community. I moved quickly from Editor to Editor-in-Chief. In 2006, I was the Master of Ceremonies at the annual Zend PHP Conference and Expo and in 2007 and 2008 I was the Program Chairperson.

In my role at Zend, I have more than doubled the incoming traffic to DevZone in a year. Additionally, I started a PHP centric podcast called PHP Abstract. It has garnered wide acceptance in the community judging by the feed statistics.

As the program chair for ZendCon in 2007 and 2008, I was instrumental in shaping the course and content of the conference. I organized the first ever ZendCon Unconference.

RouTek, Nashville, TN
01/2006 – Present

Senior Programmer
My duties at Routek include converting an existing VB application to VFP as well as extending existing web applications as needed.

Jupiter Hosting Inc., Santa Clara, CA
07/2005 – 12/2005

Director of Information Technology
My responsibilities as Director of Information Technology included hiring and firing responsibility for all IT personnel. I had budgetary responsibility for both the development team as well as the operations team. I managed the datacenter and was responsible for oversight as well as day to day operations. In addition to my management responsibilities, I also handled pre-sales technical questions and post-sales support for major clients.

Software Development Manager
My charter at Jupiter Hosting, Inc. was to build and manage the growing development team for both in-house and client-facing projects. I was responsible for locating, hiring and managing the development team.

SimpliHosting Inc., San Jose, CA
01/2005 – 06/2005

Chief Operating Officer
My focus at Simpli was to bring my 22 years of IT experience to bear. I initiated several infrastructure changes while working to streamline the ordering and billing operations.

• Led effort to audit billing system and locate customers who were not properly in the system.
• Managed a cage in Above.net datacenter with 200+ servers. Includes shared hosting servers, firewalls, dedicated servers, co-location servers, routers and power equipment.
• Held responsibility for all technical operations of the company.
• Managed a 24×7 support team.
• Improved efficiency in services offered that reduced number of support incidents and increased customer satisfaction.
• Wrote automated nightly backup system for shared servers.
• Implemented Nagios monitoring system for all corporate servers.

J & J Music, Chickasaw, AL
01/2002 – 01/2005

Director of Information Technology
As Director of Information Technology at J & J Music, my first priority was to stabilize the software that had been neglected for several years. Once stable, I was able to turn my attention to infrastructure details.

• Replaced Novell server with Linux/Samba
• Replaced 2 co-existing email systems with a single system
• Brought the email server in house,
• Spread their services across 3 Linux based servers to reduce risk,
• Built a backup system that allowed for automated, off-site backups and a hot-backup server
• Built a custom firewall and web caching system.
• Implemented Nagios monitoring system for all servers.

All of these infrastructure changes were built using whenever possible open source solutions and existing hardware.

The resulting system stabilized the infrastructure and reduced system wide downtime from approximately one day per week to less than 1 hour per month.

Martin Progressive – WebMD Nashville, TN (Contract)
06/2001 -01/2002

Principal Engineer
At WebMD, my primary function as Principal Engineer was to maintain and extend their web based claims processing system. My team managed the processes that handled both their batch and real-time processing. I gained experience in EDI, medical insurance claims processing, and integrating MS-SQL Server/VFP-COM/VB/IIS.

RHIC – Asurion, Nashville, TN/Houston, TX (Contract)
04/2001 – 06/2001

Project Manager/Senior Developer
At Asurion I oversaw the conversion of a major application from FoxPro 2.6 to VFP 6. Additionally, the database was moved from native FoxPro tables to SQL server. I was the lead developer as well as the project manager while working on this project.

InPHact, Nashville, TN
03/2000 – 04/2001

Nerd Herder
At InPHact I was hired to replace an existing application with one developed in house. I selected the core technologies that would be used. I built the development team necessary to create the application using the technologies selected. Finally, I filled the role of Senior Architect until I could hire one. The application was web based, we used Apache running on Solaris, Java with Tomcat and Oracle as the back end database.

Education Networks of America, Nashville, TN
02/99 – 02/2000

Director of Applications Development
While Director of Applications Development at ENA, I staffed two separate development teams. One building web based applications using Microsoft technologies. The other building back-end services, filters and network routing software based on Linux.

Each team had 3-5 members and was responsible for building pieces to assist in managing the network for all Tennessee School systems.

SCB Consulting Nashville, TN
04/98 – 02/99

Senior Analyst
As a Senior Analyst for SCB, I was assigned to the Tennessee Department of Mental Health/Mental Retardation. While there I worked on a variety of FoxPro and Visual FoxPro projects.

Express Media, Nashville, TN
09/97 – 04/98

Director of Management Information Systems (MIS)
While at Express Media, I was responsible for day-to-day operations, computer support and designing new systems to support the various needs of the company.

Christian Broadcasting Network, Virginia Beach, VA
2/95 – 09/97

Lead Developer and Analyst
I started at CBN as a Systems Analyst/Programmer working on FoxPro based systems. In 2.5 years, I was promoted 3 times to the eventual position of Team Lead. While a Team Lead, I managed teams who maintained and extended the mission critical “Partner Information” system. My teams also implemented the first handwriting recognition system at CBN and replaced the aging check processing system with new state-of-the-art hardware and software.

J & J Music, Chickasaw, AL
2/85 – 2/95

MIS Manager
At J & J I was tasked with maintaining and extending a Xenix based accounting system. For 6 years, I managed that system until it became apparent that PCs and networks would be a more cost-effective system. I selected the new platform and accounting system, oversaw the transition from the Xenix system to the new PC based accounting system, wrote all the data migration code and trained all the employees on the new system.

References Provided Upon Request

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