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Tracy Carpenter's Resume
OverviewMy ongoing drive is to share my experience in leadership, team building, programming, and troubleshooting at all levels of production and management in web development. This is accomplished by studying various resources and situations, and streamlining the processes involved, to ensure a very solid and straight-forward production process. Solutions need to do complex things, but the processes to accomplish goals need to be easy to understand and manage, whether they are based in code or human communication. My love is to see data flowing easily from within a person or business, out to the big, wide world. The more transformation, the merrier. :) This brings a favor for debugging and API work. SkillsGeneral
Web Technologies/Languages
Day to Day
Past Accomplishments
I completed over 30 projects for The International Monetary Fund. We developed SSI files to assist them in normalizing tens of thousands of files, created templates, and trained their staff to use use them. We also automated the process to migrate files into the SSI structure. The remainder was done with meticulous hand coding and correction of existing HTML. Every document was validated using a customized wrapper to the W3C's validation service.
Additionally, I managed a project to develop new underlying code for imf.org, which uses XHTML and CSS at a structural level. This project was very demanding from a quality control standpoint, and a very methodical, detailed, and well documented process was used to make sure that every style used will hold up in any PC web browser, no matter how old. The result of this project is ongoing, reducing development time for staff and vendors, and quality control is now considerably more attainable. This effort is a major step towards the IMF's eventual move to using future technologies, and making their abundant information more available to their readership.
Spirit Voyage Music came to Bryson Web with a successful brick and mortar business that simply had not translated into success on the Web. The system Bryson Web built and maintains, handles everything from managing inventory, to generating royalty reports for the artists that they manage. The system sends order details to the fulfillment house, allows the sales team to place wholesale orders, as well as manage sales, coupon codes, and affiliates. By the time Bryson Web had completed its obligation, Spirit Voyage had topped 40K per month in on-line retail sales, and wholesale orders are now being processed on-line as well. Bryson Web's Hosting Division has carried Pratt & Whitney Engines' corporate website, Discovery Channel School's production and testing Extranet, to name a couple, as well as some charities, and a set of small businesses with big business objectives. I recently migrated about 15 of these clients onto new hosting servers, including portation of various live data - all without missing a single order. All of these customers found a substantial a reduction in operating costs due to the migration.
Discovery Channel School (DCS)
I created and deployed a system to gather data from teachers across the country and automatically compile the information into formatted curriculum pages that aligned with programming on Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel.
I acted as technical liaison between the site administrators at DCS and the server administrators (Discovery Channel International - Digital Laboratory). I also provided training and support for the DCS HTML staff in various technologies powered by DCI's other vendors and departments.
Current Employment1996-present President, Bryson Web Production, Inc. Virginia Beach, VAAs the founder and primary officer, my duties vary greatly. Most of my time is spent acting as account manager, project manager, or programmer.
Other duties include writing and responding to RFPs, testing and quality control of vendor programming, and creating tools to automate file creation and modification (thus reducing if not eliminating human intervention, wherever possible).
In any given project, my function is to act as liaison between various parties, aligning functionality with goals, and, ensuring that the end result is a comprehensive solution, able to grow with the client as well as the constantly changing technology that under rides it all.
I am also the senior programmer when the job strikes my fancy. I like to stay in the trenches, and familiar with current technologies.
Past EmploymentSummer Productions, Inc. Alexandria, VAAs Technical Director, my responsibilities included writing RFPs, accepting proposals, coordinating vendor schedules, managing workflow, quality control, and delivering the finished product per specification. I launched the pilot site for the Welfare to Work Partnership, and worked on several Discovery Channel sites.
During my employment, I also managed the installation, configuration and maintenance of the company's T-1and LAN, and implemented a complex development and production server environment for the company as well as the hosting and development customers that I brought in.
Discovery Channel International (DCI) Bethesda, MDI was employed by DCI shortly after they decided to launch their first website, for The Discovery Channel. They outsourced the production effort. The team that I worked with, in the Digital Laboratory, coordinated with the vendor to get the files working at a basic level, and wrote post processing scripts to make various changes after delivery. I also worked on their content management system (Lotus Notes), in which various information was stored that would eventually be published on the site, including everything from copyright clearance to the actual text, images, and media. At the launch party, I was awarded "Best Dressed", and am infamous for throwing the president of DCI out of the Lab during the actual launch. Educational Background
J. Sergeant Reynolds College, Liberal Arts
In primary school, it became clear to my parents and teachers that I would need more challenges beyond those offered by school. So, it was the result of extra curricular learning that set the stage for the way that I learned to learn. Gratefully mother was a teacher, and as able to guide me through available resources, and even developed curriculum for me. At age 14, she led me into my first job, teaching BASIC and Logo programming through a program offered at J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College (JSR), to students through age 17.
By high school, I was starting to become disinterested in study. In my sophomore year, we made the decision to move me to an alternative school, which included college courses. Still feeling unfulfilled, I took my GED and started attending classes at JSR and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) a year ahead of the rest of my class. I took Liberal Arts at that point, but didn't find what I was looking for, and entered the workforce.
In the early '90's I realized my interest in Business, and enrolled at American University for a semester, but found the pace too slow, and the track too wide to take me where I needed to go. I did freelance graphic design and temp work for a few years - placements included PA to the VP of Public Relations at AT&R. And then, finally, the web appeared. At that point, there were no degrees available in this field, so I started aggressively doing research and development, which has provided my ongoing education since that point.
Resources for ongoing education at this point are generally in the form periodicals (such as Jakob Nielsen's AlertBox), print media, and websites. Insight and experience are also gathered within our network of other small web development shops, each with their own specialties, and in research and development for specific projects.
Career Interests
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