Ben Bright

Resume

My name is Ben Bright and I am available for contract computer work.

I have 20 years of professional experience working with talented teams to develop easy to find, fun to use, value driven, robust, beautiful websites and related tools.

You can leave me a phone message at 512-653-8746 or send e-mail to hello@benbright.net.

  • Expertise

    • Custom WordPress CMS and E-commerce solutions
    • Responsive Design & Mobile First Development
    • Workflow automation and optimization
    • Unix hosting management for web, database, e‑commerce and e‑mail
  • General

    • Fluent in programming, design, rollout and maintenance of Internet projects
    • Advanced experience with configuration and administration of hardware, software and network solutions
    • Advocate of organic search engine optimization, website analytics, security auditing, smart caching, server scalability and speed, speed, speed
  • Programming

    • PHP, SQL, jQuery, Javascript, XML, XHTML, HTML, CSS, Bash
  • System Administration

    • Linux, iOS, OSX, Windows
  • Software

    • Vim, Apache & NGINX Web Servers, mySQL Database, Cyrus IMAP, SVN, CVS, Sendmail, SpamAssassin, SSL/SSH/SCP, Shorewall, Nagios, Nessus, Bind (DNS), Gimp, ImageMagick, Quickbooks, the GNU tools and a quiver of other applications, plugins and utilities as-needed

Experience

  • Seedling Online

    Chief Technology Officer, 2001 – Present

    • Contract network computing work, including web interface design, business workflow/data modeling and network architecture
    • Responsible for 24/7/365 uptime of network services
    • Responsible for implementation of development projects
    • Partial list of Seedling Online projects
      ( for a complete list, see seedling.com )
      • Artists for Media Diversity » WordPress based e-commerce and promotional website for non-profit organization. Includes a system for registration and sale of mp3 media files by affiliated organizations.
      • Ruby’s BBQ » WordPress based web site to support restaurant promotion and accept catering and delivery orders.
      • Sparrow’s Wheel » WordPress based musician website. Includes shopping cart with digital and physical product delivery options.
      • Poetry Matters Now » WordPress based website promoting documentary film making. Includes extensive use of AJAX to enhance navigation.
      • Carillon Beach » WordPress based web site redesign and intranet upgrade in support of real estate sales. Includes custom interactive Javascript based map. Ran a successful multi-outlet internet advertising and SEO campaign.
      • Cindy Cashdollar » PHP/mySQL backed web site and intranet in support of a nationally touring musician.
      • NuStats, Inc. » PHP/mySQL backed intranet tools for production use in projects doing statistical sampling for NOAA fisheries research and city transit systems. Included Windows/Linux/Palm Pilot integration and attention to process improvement with respect to both efficiency and accuracy of data processing.
      • Old Settler’s Music Festival » PHP/mySQL backed web site redesign in support of festival promotion and e-commerce ticket sales. Included a new look and feel, attention to standards compliance and low-bandwidth users.
  • SchoolPeople, Inc.

    Senior Engineer, 1999 – 2001

    • Responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining a production web application for K-12 education administration
    • Highlights
      • » GUI Design for SchoolPeople platform
      • » Implemented network architectures for premier client sites and internal company needs
      • » Worked with a team of 5 engineers to port existing applications into a J2EE production environment
      • » Technical lead for Dell Education Alliance relationship
      • » Successfully delivered PHP/mySQL product for 2 SchoolPeople Beta Districts for 1999-2000 school year
      • » Successfully delivered JSP/Java/Postgres/LDAP backed product for 4 SchoolPeople Premier School Districts for 2000-2001 school year
      • » Supported sales efforts with training, product demos, documentation, status reports and sanity/reality-checks
  • Shoal Crest Labs, Inc.

    President & CTO, 1995 – 1999

    • Contract network computing work, from hardware configuration to database implementation to web interface design
    • Web site design and maintenance for a variety of corporate and private clients
    • Partial list of Shoal Crest Labs projects
      • Orthopaedics International » Windows NT/95 network design and build-out for a 25-person office
      • Northwest Florida Daily News » Designed and implemented a Perl-based web-publishing engine which allows the paper to automatically publish existing articles and photos to their web site on a daily basis
  • Trilogy Development Group

    Programmer, 1995

    • Ported software from Windows 3.1 to OS/2, Motif and Macintosh
    • Created build system with built-in regression testing
    • Tested, reported and debugged software
  • IBM Austin

    Junior Engineer, 1994

    • Configured TCP/IP based consumer test environments
    • Programmed test suites for Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) and Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) products
  • Desert Medical Equipment

    Programmer, 1993

    • Created Paradox Database application to manage inventory and insurance form submissions

Education

  • 1995 All but Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin
  • 1992 Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics & English Literature from Vanderbilt University
  • 1991 Studied Mathematics & English Literature at Leeds University, Leeds, England

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