David B Anderson

We founded FolkLogic to provide high quality software with real business value to our customers through our direct participation in their projects. We do this by developing software, managing projects, and training our customers with the best-in-class techniques we have discovered and developed through our extensive careers in the computer industry.

I am an equal partner in the company with responsibilities for all aspects of management, software and technology development, and customer consulting services.

Tech lead. Doing whatever needs to be done — Rails, JS, CSS, sys admin — for this virtual NGO.

Product owner, rails architecture team. I led a team of 8 senior rails developers in a six month scrum project to overhaul the rails portion of this popular social networking site (the rails part of the site handles millions of page views per day). We split a large, monolithic application into a set of much more maintainable engines, improved deployment processes, increased throughput by 50%, and did a lot of cleanup and refactoring. I was also responsible for managing several technology upgrades, including Rails 2.1 to 2.2 and then 2.3, ferret to solr, and subversion to git.

Stefan Kaes and I were awarded the prize for "Most Geeky Project" in the 2009 Xing Hackathon for a log file visualization tool (logjam) we wrote to find performance hotspots in ruby on rails applications. See http://github.com/alpinegizmo/logjam.

Implemented a job recommendation feature, using a combination of full-text search and collaborative filtering.

Working with the team at hotelsearch.com, Larry Baltz and I led the effort to re-implement and re-launch their site, using Ruby on Rails and an XML toolchain we developed for them. (See Rails on XML and http://github.com/alpinegizmo/xslt_render.) Also provided training and mentoring in Ruby and agile methods.

At AutoScout24 FolkLogic was part of a large project to migrate and re-implement a custom CRM system in Ruby on Rails. I implemented the reporting system (using Ruby, SQL, Perl, gnuplot and LaTeX), and made major contributions to the commissioning system and the migration of legacy data. The data migration required lots of creative database spelunking, as we didn't have source code to key parts of the legacy system.

Quiconnect was a startup building virtual wireless IP networks for market-leading communications companies. I worked with the CTO to define the technical strategy and led the engineering team, tracked emerging standards and new technologies, and worked closely with the marketing and business development teams. Successfully introduced extreme programming practices and Ruby on Rails to the engineering team, and managed the development of new products and services from conception to production, including:

• Interconnect Management Portal: An extensive database-backed web portal used by Quiconnect's customers and Quiconnect's network engineers and marketing staff to manage network interconnection projects, hotspot data, end-customer session info, etc.
• Hotspot Robot: a tunneling solution that provides remote access to partners' networks, based on OpenVPN and OpenWRT running on Linksys hardware
• Hotspot Connector: an embeddable library that can do web-based logins at public hotspots, for devices such as Windows Mobile or Symbian phones

Launched a research program in sensor networks -- the "network of things". Recruited an international team which developed architectures, strategies, and business models for Sun the area of wireless programmable transducers (sensors and actuators). Organized a company-wide summit, and influenced several previously disjoint groups to work together. The work we began has since appeared as the SunSpot product line.

Performed and led application-oriented basic research in the areas of social/networked virtual reality and off-the-desktop user interfaces, including tangible interfaces, computer vision, and speech.

Also served as Evangelist, Coordinator of the Gadget Skunkworks, Chair of the Resume Committee, Chair of the Computing and Network Infrastructure Committee, and Advisor to Management. As Evangelist, I gave television interviews, wrote magazine stories and whitepapers, prepared and presented demos at trade shows, appeared on panels at conferences, gave invited talks, participated in standards meetings, and managed strategic partnerships.

Selected projects:

I worked on the IBM-funded Andrew project, developing an advanced campus computing platform. Initially I was an architect and developer, and later manager. I supervised 5 full-time staff members and was responsible for the development and releases of the campus-wide Andrew system (for which I received an ITC award). I worked with executive management to spin off an independent consortium to continue Andrew development, and consulted with IBM to transfer the technology to a product group.

Taught courses in Computer Science and AI, and supervised student research projects.

Part of the Mach group, Ed Smith and I invented remote method invocation (RMI) and built a windowing system and user interface toolkit based on distributed objects. I also wrote and maintained a popular email client, the first to provide rule-based filtering.