michael favia

Experienced developer, manager, consultant and entrepreneur, seeking a position in related field that utilizes my technical merit, business acumen and project management experience. Strong background in distributed work environments including opensource and commercial projects with an emphasis on Drupal CMS for the last 4 years.

Work experience

Chief Technologist, Respond Media / Blogging Systems Austin, TX 2006-2009

As chief technologist I created and managed the companies technological goals and initiatives.

Notable Details

• Designed and built an automation system that deployed and maintained dozens of independent blogs for real estate agents and neighborhood communities around the United States.
• Conceived, designed and deployed the nationwide blog platform for Coldwell Banker Realtors.
• Conceived, designed and deployed CareerConnectionNetwork, a social media platform with innovative features tailored for the career market.
• Set company technology goals and managed a team of developers and designers both in-house and outsourced to meet them.
• Acted as public face of the companies technological side for events and successfully promoted the company in conference and TV appearances.

Founder, Insites Inc St. Louis, MO/Austin, TX 2000-2006

As founder I formed the company, recruited employees, manage accounting/finances, solicited clients, and oversaw the proper execution of their account throughout the life of our business relationship. I also served as a project manager and senior developer for the company as needed.

Notable Details

• Implemented and administered Agile Unified Process based project management system (enterprise resource planning, client relationship management, budgeting, lead times, etc).
• Researched and determined competitive working rates for diverse service offering.
• Assessed, designed and developed multiple client integrated marketing campaigns.
• Developed standards compliant, accessible web presences of varying content and size (dynamic, e-commerce, content managed).
• Conducted market research and feasibility analyses for developing projects.
• Maintained and contributed to a number of open source software projects including but not limited to: (PHP, mySQL, Drupal, Gallery2, Firefox, Fedora, Yum, Ubuntu, Gnome, gDesklets, and xplanet).

Senior Developer, P-Med Corp St. Louis, MO 1999-2000

As senior developer I recruited and led 4 programmers in the design and development of a medical back office solution that electronically submitted insurance claims and securely managed all patient information for practices in various medical fields. Our rapidly successful flagship product led to our company being acquired by Pinnacle Health for an undisclosed sum.

Notable Details

• Reporting to the Chief Operations Officer I directed development work flow, supervised and trained a team of developers (4) inline with the strategic goals of the company. Implemented a source control system and unit testing procedures and trained fellow developers in their proper use these actions dramatically (>25%) reduced average "bug" life spans and total number of reported issues and regressions.
• Market researched, designed and implemented a more accessible and intuitive graphical user interface for the flagship application.
• Launched major version update within time and budgetary constraints better addressing our customers needs and providing a key competitive advantage ove rour competition with immediate online HCFA processing.
• Setup and managed production Windows and Linux servers over VPN tunnel.
• Provided 2nd Tier customer technical support and coauthored and edited 200+ page technical service manual for clients use.

IT Consultant, APC Industries Dallas, TX 1997-1999

As an information technology consultant I evaluated the technological needs of the company, conferred with executive management and implemented various technology platforms consistent with responsible growth and business development.

Notable Details

• Upgraded communications systems by installing and configuring a digital telephone system (PBX) and trained affected employees in its proper use.
• Planned and executed company wide network roll out including networked print servers, secure file shares and Microsoft Windows Active Directory.
• Created centralized repository for intraoffice documents and project management to reduce version conflicts.
• Integrated an automated job time tracking system into corporate account software which reduced clerical error, processing time/cost and properly represented employee time spent on job sites.
• Designed, developed and maintained corporate Intranet, web presence and email servers.
• Redesigned corporate identity including logo, letterhead and other marketing collateral to better reflect the companies success and unique position in the competitive landscape.

EDUCATION

Saint Louis University St. Louis, MO 2000-2002

• Graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.
• Concentration in Entrepreneurship and awarded Dean's List multiple semesters.
• Officer of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization which operates several small businesses to help students gain valuable experience in owning and managing working businesses.
• Relevant coursework includes Entrepreneurship, Marketing Research, Promotional Strategy, Business Plan Development, Financial Management, Personal Selling, Management of Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Fundamentals of Leadership, Change, and Transformation, and Current Problems in Management.

University of Texas at Austin Austin , TX 1999-2000

• Admitted to the business school and enrolled for 2 semesters (GPA: 3.7) before transferring to St Louis University for personal reasons (non academic). No degree earned.

SKILLS

Business

• Project Management (Agile, XP)
• Define project business criteria and create and manage time/budgetary constraints throughout the project lifespan
• Concise and effective communication skills especially regarding technical subjects
• Ease of adaptability to an evolving problem space and experience working in dynamic project environments
• Accounting principles and application of them concerning budget management

Development

Over 10 years of experience of managing high availability systems in a package managed Linux environment. Comfortable provisioning new systems, customizing existing ones, and creating new packages/repos to automate nondestructive system management.

• Comprehensive Linux and Windows Systems and Networking Management
• Integrated Development Environments (Eclipse, Vim, Zend, Dreamweaver)
• Languages & Styles (PHP, [my]SQL, [X]HTML, CSS, WCAG, Javascript, OOP, UML)

Product/Service Management

• New product development (Concept, Analysis, Implementation, Testing, Commercialization)
• Product pricing and market segmentation
• Product evangelization (Promotions, Public Relations, Customer Relationship Management)
• Working across and for heterogeneous functional teams to bring a product to launch

Design/Development

• Rapid prototyping/Agile Development
• Human Computer Interaction/Usability
• Managed Development (Version Control, Unit Testing, Team Coding, Agile Development)

Technical/Software

• Office productivity
  • Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, Outlook)
  • OpenOffice Suite (Writer, Calc, Impress, Base)
• Project Management (MS Project, Visio, Dia, DotProject)

Media Design

I am comfortable enhancing media work flows and have in-depth understanding of the applications functional application. Through work flow management and document structure I can make applications work for instead of against you. However, I lack the developed artistic skill involved in creating new media from a design standpoint.

• Raster (Photoshop, Gimp)
• Vector (Illustrator, Inkscape)
• Page Layout (InDesign)