Resume of Ray Davis

Contact at raydavis@pseudopodium.org

Summary

Experience

• Developed first consumer client for Swarmcast, an OpenCola peer-to-peer downloading technology, including highly customized Swing components, cross-platform compact / expanded / iconified views, multi-threaded server integration, and extensive logging and reporting.
• Prototyped an approach to peer-to-peer messaging plug-ins based on HTTP, Java, and XML.
• Developed web site for a nonprofit organization, including a content management system based on PHP, MySQL, and DHTML.

Stagecast Creator is a Java-based point-and-click authoring-by-demonstration and playback package for multimedia simulations and games.

• Designed and implemented dynamic two-way buffering techniques to enable interactivity and improve performance when streaming animated simulations from a server to a lightweight client.
• Designed and implemented cross-platform cross-browser techniques for automatic browser-based installation and running of Stagecast software, including a small applet which performed triple-duty as a full-featured locally-based player, a slim server-dependent client, and a network-based installer of the full software package.
• Made many improvements and fixes in areas such as rollover buttons, text input, audio, performance, HTTP services, and cross-platform support.

• Helped develop Java client for commercial large-scale search management system. Developed active sortable customizable multiview tables containing icons, formatted text, toggles, and other data types. Developed standard classes to handle flexible layout management, drag-and-drop, highlighting, multithreaded updates, data management dialogs, and animation. Found, worked around, and fixed many Microsoft AFC bugs in areas such as locking, memory use, browser control, display updates, user interaction, and efficiency (e.g., a 300-to-1 speed-up in sorting).
• Developed cross-platform personal communicator Java applet for children whose easily extensible interface included dynamically handled bulletins, dynamically generated imagemaps with pop-up annotations, paging, and browser navigation control.
• Developed Java application to provide object browsing, searching, selection, and comparison, including generalized property support, dynamically sorted editable scrollable tables, and graphing across dynamically selected properties.
• Developed Pinball Construction Kit for Apple, a demonstration of constructive multimedia in Java including generalized multiple-Z-level graphics support, physics simulation, animation, optimized compositing, easily extensible runtime add-ons, application-specific messaging, and sample game element catalogs.
• Redesigned web site architecture and online client UI (including a complex filtering system) for a commercial email client.
• Analyzed and defined user interface changes and set out an approach to web-based applications for a commercial programming analysis tool.
• Modified and documented Java-based chatroom software for a commercial site for children.
• Wrote book Web Design Resources Directory, explaining a full range of Web authoring topics from HTML variants to streaming video. Reviews include: "If you want to buy just one Web publishing book this year, this may be it," "truly superb.... compulsive reading," and "One of my favorite Web development resource tools.... grab it fast!"
• Developed Web pages and dynamic content (including Java, cross-platform JavaScript and DHTML, PHP, MySQL, CGI Perl programming, Shockwave, text, and graphics) for KOLA, Cyrusoft, Intrinsa, Reel.com, the San Francisco Digital Media Center, Kaleida Labs, Dark Carnival, and others.

Kaleida Labs developed ScriptX, a cross-platform dynamic object-oriented programming language for multimedia development.

• Spearheaded the use of ScriptX as an enabler of Web-oriented interactive multimedia. Responsible for the free distribution of the ScriptX runtime player and of sample ScriptX applications on the Web. Technical lead in many Web-related meetings.
• In customer meetings, press interviews, trade shows, and the Web, pioneered self-modifying applications: CD-ROM distributed multimedia titles whose behavior could be permanently extended via online distribution of small cross-platform executables. Designed and coded the first example of such an application.
• Designed, set up, and maintained Kaleida's Web site, profiled as an exemplary corporate site in several books, online digests, and magazine stories.
• Developed modular approaches to ScriptX title and accessory design, including documentation, example code, and negotiations with product engineering.
• Developed demos and coding techniques, researched bugs and workarounds, and provided technical sales support.
• Managed ScriptX code samples in the final Kaleida CD-ROM release.

• Developed, wrote reference materials, and taught successful Web publishing workshops and introductory classes at San Francisco Digital Media Center.

• Architect for a new distributed document management product to be deployed in both commercial and technical spaces across four operating systems and several database platforms, replacing five existing products. Defined key concepts (versioning, configurations, associations), mapped client-server components using OLE 2 and CORBA interfaces, ensured compatibility across the product line, and contributed to designs of work flows, data models, front-ends, and databases, including a generic object-oriented interface to distributed relational database engines.
• Led and contributed to special projects.
• Negotiated, defined, designed, and implemented changes to data management and framework software, including databases (Oracle, ODI, Rdb), naming, versioning, configuring, transactioning, extension language, object creation, and concurrency features.
• As leader of a six person team, delivered a one million dollar OEM project on time and under budget.
• Developed an OEM technical strategy which enabled development of mainstream product while supporting vendor-specific or vendor-differentiating features.
• Re-designed and re-implemented naming, scoping, view, and filter components, eliminating bugs and inconsistencies, and reducing both code size and I/O usage by up to 75%.

Provided quick and accurate solutions to high-priority problems in tape-handling, volume initialization, backup, and file system components of the VMS operating system, working at all levels of problem definition. Defined and designed database, media management, and resource management components of a new archiving product.

• On my own initiative, created a new callable system service to handle volume initialization and added user end-of-volume handling to VMS device drivers, resolving two long-time top customer wish list items.
• Dramatically improved file creation and file access performances with the addition of a simple caching system.

Provided a wide variety of design, programming, tuning, and conversion support to customers at all levels of management. Created and reviewed proposals and estimates accurately, honestly, and quickly. Consistently rated very highly on customer surveys.

• Considered largely responsible for the successful return to schedule of a television network satellite management project which had previously been far over budget, capping expenses and averting the loss of one of our largest customers.
• Defined a cable network signal decoder management system with an efficient but extremely cost-effective user interface to complex commands and data, which successfully replaced the earlier, more difficult, and less flexible system.

• Promoted to responsiblity for design approval, product selection, training, scheduling, and troubleshooting in first year at firm.
• Independently made changes in third-party financial system software which reduced the running time of critical modules by 40% to 90%.

Neurometrics developed a package of programs to process and analyze EEG data, including color head maps displaying changes over time and differences from population norms.

• Within a year of being hired as a junior programmer, had made improvements in virtually every software layer from the speed of signal processing to the screen design's ease of use.
• Designed and implemented a program to analyze evoked-potential (EP) brain patterns, including color topographic animation, fully interactive filtering, and displays of important wave forms.
• Designed and implemented a stable file management system well under the estimated schedule.

Education