Résumé

Personal Information

Kenneth Elwood Gary
200 S Wilcox Street, #142
Castle Rock, CO, 80104

Phone: 303-800-6591

Kencinnus, LLC

200 South Wilcox Street, #142
Castle Rock, Colorado
80104

October 2008 to Present

Self Employed

www.kencinnus.com

People usually hire me to be their heavy-hitting PHP programmer because that is the area in which I excel. Since I built my first web page in 1995 I’ve become involved with numerous web design projects eventually free-lancing on a part-time basis beginning in early 1998. Every project I’ve worked on has given me new skills that are useful for dealing with people and for choosing the correct design approach for achieving the goals set for their web sites. My clients are people with whom I’ve become closely familiar and whose businesses I have come to understand. As a result I have been able to help guide their web strategies; from choosing and dealing with their domain registration and web site hosting to providing technical support as necessary to establish their web presence. Each of their sites is considered to be a success when the target audience can use it to accomplish the purpose of their visit with ease.

I am well versed in most of the web-based languages, tools, and environments necessary to prototype or otherwise implement my client’s requirements. I’m fluent in the latest standards of HTML and CSS. I’m experienced in PHP, Javascript, XML, AJAX techniques and both PostGreSQL and MySql databases. I keep my eye on other emerging web technologies. I’m a passable graphics designer using Adobe Photoshop.

For web page authoring I prefer hand-coding with TextPad. For site management I prefer WordPress. I’ve had experience integrating all sorts of web software and payment systems including WordPress, vBulletin, aMember, AutoResponse Plus, PayPal, 1ShoppingCart just to name a few. I’ve worked on Windows and Unix platforms but I prefer Linux and am familiar with the Apache web server. Most importantly I know that the technology of the Internet changes rapidly and it is my duty to keep up.

The sidebars of this site list links to web projects I have or am currently working on.

Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd.

8042 S. Grant Way
Littleton, CO 80122
303-730-8193 x128

June 2000 to October 2008

Senior Web Developer

www.sonlight.com

As the Senior Web Developer at Sonlight Curriculum I was responsible for ensuring the company’s entire web operations ran smoothly. I mentored a team of copywriters, marketers, web designers and junior developers and helped the marketing manager coordinate all of the internal web operations and enhancement projects. I was also the company’s point of contact with external developers and software vendors to ensure projects got done on time and under budget. The majority of my work was very hands-on developing advanced PHP programs and applications that were unique to Sonlight’s homeschool curriculum environment.

In my time at Sonlight we did one major business system upgrade. I worked with SoftResources to narrow down our choices to three of the best candidates to upgrade our Southware business system. We interviewed and evaluated those three candidates and recommended our choice to the owners of the company. We chose Assist Cornerstone and I was part of the team who helped them transition us into their system. My role was to make it work with our web site, whatever it took. It was a very successful transition, though not without its hurdles. When it was apparent that the Assist Cornerstone team was not going to fix our persistant issues quickly enough I took over for them, learning their Java based web application in a short time and made the changes that kept our customers coming back to buy from us.

Throughout the years I was involved in many web site redesigns and constantly kept our many off-the-shelf applications patched and up-to-date with the latest releases. I evaluated and purchased more web software than I can remember. We have tried many, many things. My job included numerous projects to “stitch” these applications together with custom PHP code that made them work together seamlessly to our customers. Among the applications I’ve purchased for Sonlight, installed, maintained and customized over the years were vBulletin, PerlDesk, AutoResponse Plus, Assist Cornerstone/WebStore, Article Manager, Page Publisher, WordPress, Zen Cart, Mambo, Joomla, e107 and many others.

Two of the most involved PHP projects where I concieved, designed and built from scratch were an expert system for personalizing a family’s curriculum choices called SONIA (Sonlight Internet Advisor) and a customer relationship tool that helped Sonlight Ambassadors call first-time full curriculum purchasers to see if they were doing alright.

Sonlight has Curriculum Consultants who attend homeschool conventions and promote Sonlight Curriculum, answering questions and helping visitors to their booth pick the best curriculum. Sonlight has a very complicated, advanced product and it can be very confusing to know which level to start with, especially when you have many childred and are taking them out of public school. I realized that our best consultants had a set of questions they typically asked a family new to our product so I set out to capture that logic and make an online tool to replicate that experience. I met with our top two advisors and the company owners for several meetings that lasted for hours and we painstakingly drew out a logic diagram flowchart of the questions and answers that would ultimately lead to the best product choices. That diagram, printed out in 8 point font was 5 foot wide and 6 foot wide! I created a database, an admin interface and a customer interface and made it work. The admin interface let our advisors edit and update the branches in the decision tree. It was all fully integrated with our customer database. We hired a special copywriter to make the screens personable. Our graphic designer created “Sonia” our mascot. The final result was that customers who used this tool spent at least 40% more per order than those who didn’t. I had one customer say, “I have read the catalog from cover-to-cover but Sonia showed me products you sell that I didn’t even know about!” You can see this tool at http://www.sonlight.com/choosing/ (providing the company is still maintaining it there).

A project that I cannot show you but can only tell you about is the Sonlight Touch program. The owners and management wanted to touch base with our best customers, those who buy our full curriculum packages for the first time, shortly after the sale to make sure they were on track and happy. We wanted to collect information about the “Ultimate Question” too. So I wrote an application in PHP to integrate with our purchasing system. It would pull out the customer records of anyone who purchased a core package for the first time. If they purchased one core package then it went in a list for our Sonlight Ambassadors to handle, if they purchased two or more packages then they went on a list for more experienced Sonlight Advisors to handle, mostly to be sure the family had not bitten off more than they could chew. The system provided a way to send out personalized custom emails to let the customer expect the calls. It provided customized scripts for the operators to read to the customers so that the marketing department could maintain a high level of quality experience for each customer. The operator was prompted to ask certain questions and gather certain information that would be handled by the appropriate people in the company such as sending out bonus CDs or handling problems the customer was experiencing. The Sonlight Touch program I wrote let us set up a series of these calls to touch the first-time customer over the course of their whole homeschooling year with different questions each time. That information was fed back into the product creation to make a much better product. Overall the customers who were on this program were more likely to purchase again from the company the next year.

Booz-Allen & Hamilton

Houston, TX

October 1995 to June 2000

Senior Consultant/II

www.bah.com
www.raytheon.com

I’ve worked as the lead engineer on the Space-to-Space Communication System (SSCS) upgrade to the Space Shuttle simulator at NASA’s Johnson Space Center as a team member with Raytheon (formerly Hughes Aircraft):

• Responsible for all delivery milestones for this project including the design and implementation of Audio Communication model changes in the Shuttle Mission Training Facility (SMTF). These changes are a result of the real-world upgrade from the current UHF radios used between the shuttle orbiter and up to two EVA crewmembers to a new RF radio system used between the shuttle orbiter, the space station and as many as five EVA crewmembers.
• Responsible for defining and coordinating the interface between the Space-to-Space Orbiter Radio (SSOR) software models with the Vehicle Audio Distribution System (VADS) modifications that this upgrade requires in the SMTF. The VADS system is being updated by United Space Alliance (USA) and therefore I work with their software engineers to coordinate the interface and the integration schedule for this project.
• Responsible for defining and coordinating the interface between the SSOR software models in the SMTF with the Space-to-Space Station Radio (SSSR) software models in the Space Station Training Facility (SSTF). Another department at Raytheon is writing the SSSR models on the SSTF.
• Responsible for meeting with the NASA Training Division representative concerning clarification of requirements for simulator models and instructor displays on this project.

Previously I worked on the Multifunction Electronic Display System (MEDS) upgrade to the Space Shuttle simulator at Johnson Space Center as a team member with Hughes Aircraft (formerly CAE Link):

• Developed a C++ software application to control a Dynair Series-36 video switcher from a Motorola based UNIX platform over an RS-232 connection.
• Updated instructor display pages for the new MEDS hardware configuration. This involved updating existing UNISYS Aydin page format code and implementing new C and SAMMI page format code, which resides within an X-Windows environment on a Silicon Graphics machine.
• Provided detailed design inputs for software updates required for the MEDS upgrade.
• Presented design reviews and training classes to managers, co-workers and NASA representatives.
• Responsible for creating and implementing software symbol dictionary and data file updates for the new MEDS hardware upgrade.

I have designed and implemented the Houston office web pages on Booz-Allen & Hamilton’s public web site at www.bah.com/houston. (But my design is no longer there.)

United Space Alliance

formerly
UNISYS Space Systems Division

Houston, TX

February 1986 to September 1995

Senior Software Engineer

www.unitedspacealliance.com

My responsibilities included developing and maintaining software for the NASA Integrated Shuttle Mission Training Facility at the Johnson Space Center:

• Learned HTML syntax and the Mosaic browser plus early versions of WYSIWYG editors such as HoTMetaL and Hot Dog as part of ongoing training in new technologies. We began creating departmental web sites as part of what would later become the company’s intranet.
• Lead Engineer for maintenance of the Space Shuttle Mission Simulator Vehicle Audio Distribution system that provides digital voice communications between the astronauts and the training instructors during astronaut training simulations. This system was developed at CAE Link (formerly Singer – Link Flight Simulation).
• Project leader for the MCC Command Generator upgrade, which is a PC based ADA application that provides uplink telemetry commands to the simulators.
• Wrote and maintained a portion of over a million lines of offline software used by the Simulation Applications department to create and configure the Shuttle Mission Simulator software at NASA.
• Created an automated software submittal and regression-checking tool called Electro-SMURF that was adapted by the entire department.
• Performed software moves, compiles, installations and distributions for integration into development test and master software baselines.

Singer – Link Flight Simulation Division

Houston, TX

October 1983 to February 1986

Computer Operator II

I started my computer career operating and maintaining three UNISYS 1100/44 computer systems, one UNISYS 1100/91 system, one IBM 4341 with MVS/JES operating systems, one Perkin Elmer 8/32, one Concurrent 3254, and one Calcomp 925 Plotter computer system. I have also trained operators and worked with secure mode operations.

Computer Skills

Education

WEBAUSTIN ‘99 Seminar – Austin, Texas

BOOZ-ALLEN & HAMILTON – Houston, Texas
Client Presentations

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON AT CLEAR LAKE CITY – Clear Lake City, Texas
BA, Computer Information Systems

SAN JACINTO JUNIOR COLLEGE SOUTH CAMPUS – Houston, Texas
AA, Business Data Processing

CLEAR CREEK HIGH SCHOOL – League City, Texas
High School Diploma