7/2008 to 9/2008

Responsibilities:

Dates:

9/2001 to 7/2008

Organisation:

MetService New Zealand

MetService is an SOE which provides weather forecasting services for New Zealand and many other countries. It also provides software for the creation of television broadcast of weather data, and formats weather content for publication. It operates several websites to support these services.

Position:

Senior Analyst / Programmer

Reported to:

Software Development Manager

Responsibilities

My responsibilities at MetService cover the development and ongoing support and maintenance of all the websites with the exception of the aviation sites and a brochure site. This includes the public site MetService.com, the business to business sites MetConnect.co.nz (domestic) and MetraWeather.com (international) as well as specialist sites such as CupMet (Americas Cup).

MetService.com is one of the fastest growing sites in New Zealand and currently occupies 10th place overall in terms of traffic and has over 45,000 registered MyWeather users. It receives in excess of 100,000 unique visitors per day and generates advertising revenue approaching 1 million dollars.

MetConnect and MetraWeather are business sites which supply customised data presentation services to commercial customers (over 400) which range from major energy clients and government departments to small film and tourism ventures, again with revenues approaching 7 figures.

None of these sites existed in their current forms when I joined MetService, and the web was regarded as a minor irritation by most. The transition of these sites to their current role as central to MetService business has taken place during my time here, and has been largely enabled by the development of the WISE (Weather Information Services Engine) which I developed to meet the demands I foresaw in this area.

The MetService.com website project was initiated after the initial WISE engine development and it was decided to use the engine for this site as well. This has allowed the rapid development of many complex pages, and these can be updated easily by relatively unskilled users as needed. The public site also includes open source search and advertising engines.

The initial WISE engine development took me about 3 months and was then used to develop the B2B sites. The subsequent development of the public website took a similar time.

The nature of MetService is such that there is no formal web team, and in fact there is no full time webmaster or other staff working on any one site. I have worked with other development, operational and marketing staff throughout the last 6 years to make these sites a success. Most staff at Metservice operate across multiple projects at any one time so project management tends to fall to the lead developer working in conjunction with the project owner.

Besides being totally responsible for the development of the WISE engine over this time I have also worked with the operational staff to create a 12 server load balanced redundant path web serving environment.

I have mentor and guided other designers and other developers in various aspects of the site, and have also worked very closely with the market managers in identifying and developing products. Other developers who have worked on the key projects described here have been largely involved in making the required data available for use on the sites.

In addition to developing my involvement extends to researching and planning future developments, identifying market and product possibilities, client visits, liaison with external agencies and on-going support. I attend at least one public event representing MetService each year (ie Mystery Creek) to get feedback on the public perception of my work, and have identified significant market possibilities. The most recent of these was the WRC (World Rally Championship) in Hamilton where we sold MetConnect profiles to all the major teams and developed rain radar products specifically for the event.

For the first few years I was sole on-call support for the websites, I am now part of a team which shares this responsibility although as a specialist I am still available at any time if required.

I am a member of TUANZ, serve as a judge on their awards committee, and attend industry seminars and conferences frequently to keep in touch.

Technology used:

The websites I have developed all use the LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) stack – I chose this because it is a standard out of the box installation and allows our web applications to be quickly installed elsewhere. On the client side, apart from the usual HTML/CSS I have used Javascript/AJAX for interactive behaviours and Flex (RIA based on Flash) for specialized real time display modules.

Major achievements:

I have been the primary (and usually sole) developer in the following projects. Other developers have provided data feeds and operational staff were responsible for setting up and maintaining the web serving environment.

WISE: The key development I have been responsible for is the WISE (Weather InformationServices Engine) which has largely been my own work. This engine follows the MVC (model view controller) pattern and makes extensive use of databases to configure and manage websites. It incorporates smart templates and plugin scripts to develop meta data from any one of nearly 100 weather data feed types (numeric or images). It allows a market managers to quickly assemble a customized web site for a client, creating unlimited pages of mixed content with each element able to have its own time zone and system of units. In addition to web content it allows the generation of customised data in other formats including XML/RSS, Excel and even remotely hosted Javascript widgets on other websites. It also supports a flexible access security model. The WISE engine won a ComputerWorld award for client services.

VodafoneLive: This application provides the weather content section for the VodafoneLive mobile portal. Based on PHP and MySQL this application was the precursor to the WISE engine above. Although Vodafone were going to go with an existing provider from overseas we built this application on spec and offered it as a backup option which it turned out they needed. It includes animated radar and satellite images, numerical modeled wind forecasts, a search facility and a user ‘MyWeather’ option, none of which were in the original requirement. Vodafone used this content as the flagship product during its launch of the portal and it won a TUANZ award for mobile applications.

MetConnect/MetraWeather: These websites are the reason the WISE engine was originally developed, and are used as the primary or secondary delivery channel of weather data to our business clients. These sites allow us to build highly customised weather presentation options for clients quickly and at low cost, making short term sales viable as well as supporting long term contracts. For those clients who take our television, raw data (FTP), email and fax feeds these sites are used as backups in the case of failure as well as providing ancillary data in support of the main content. This site was winner of a Computerworld award and also a New Zealand Road Safety Innovation and Achievement Award.

Metservice.com: The public site was built using the WISE engine, which was enhanced to meet the additional needs of this site. Formerly a largely static and neglected site earning no revenue, this site is now a key income stream for Metservice. With over 1000 pages some of which are updated every second and contain over 200 pieces of weather data the site offers users the ability to create their own weather pages from content anywhere on the website. It also includes a payment gateway which allows them to access enhanced content for a fixed period. The WISE platform allows the constant improvement and feature enhancement this site demands. This site has won a TUANZ award and been finalist in Webby and NetGuide awards.

CupMet: This site provided real time data feeds to all 12 Americas Cup syndicates in Auckland. In Valencia it was replaced by MetConnect (above).

Dates:

9/1999 - 9/2001

Organisation:

Helios Communications/ Simpl Group. Helios Communications was a small but successful web development company which was later taken over by Simpl Group

Position:

Senior Internet Programmer

Responsibilities

I was responsible for providing application programming and website development support (we had designers and html coders). Technologies included ASP, SQLServer, Oracle PL/SQL. I worked on projects to develop an insurance broking portal (Oracle) interfacing into a legacy system for FMG, and asset management portal (ASP) and also a reporting system for National Library. I also worked on an eCommerce site (eneedle.com) and participated as a consultant in a SSC working party to develop an eGovt Portal Strategy.

Dates:

8/1997 - 9/1999

Organisation:

Dept of Internal Affairs

Position:

Manager of NZ Government Online, Oracle DBA

Responsibilities

I had full management responsibility for all aspects of the government website, including operation, content, budgeting and funding, and reporting to the board representing the Chief Executives Forum (the site ‘owners’). In addition to running the site I was also tasked with supporting the upwards of 200 government and quasi government agencies represented on the site. I provided advice, hosting and support as neede. I also dealt with the 40-50 enquiries per day that came through the site. After 1 year I took on the position of Oracle DBA to manage the DIA Financials and Lotteries Grants Boards databases, however I continued to provide day to day support for the site until I left DIA. I was DBA during the Y2K testing and changeover.

Dates:

11/1995 – 8/1997

Position:

Consultant, Web and Multimedia

Responsibilities

I developed several web applications including the NZ Film Festival web site, developed a multimedia CDROM for BCHF, provided advice to various organisations including Victoria University, and won the inaugural TUANZ New Zealand Web site award for my own site www.winzurf.co.nz against competition from the top web design companies in New Zealand.

Dates:

8/1973 - 9/1995

Organisation:

Institute of Nuclear Sciences (DSIR), subsequently Industrial Research Limited (CRI)

Position:

Scientist

Responsibilities

During this time I designed electronic instrumentation for research applications, including general purpose computers (precursors to todays PCs). I managed an electronics laboratory with several staff and worked across a wide range of science disciplines including nuclear, geological, biotechnology, chemical and mechanical engineering. With the changes in electronic technology I became more involved in software development and also carried out research into a new non destructive testing technique called acoustic emission applied to composite materials. I produced nearly 100 publications in the form of manuals, articles for magazines, refereed papers for journals and conferences, and a provisional patent.

TECHNICAL SKILL SUMMARY

Programming languages

Skill rating (1-10, 10 being highest)

• PHP

7

• SQL

7

• Flex

3

• AJAX/Javascript

5

• HTML

8

• CSS

5

Databases

Skill rating (1-10, 10 being the highest)

• MySQL

7

• Oracle

4

Operating systems

Skill rating (1-10, 10 being highest)

• Linux

4

• Windows XP

5

Tools

Skill rating (1-10, 10 being highest)

• Fireworks

7

• Digital design
  

• Microprocessor/controller development
  

• Assembler programming