William Edward Humphries
1 408 314 6143 (home/wireless)
Objective: Technical lead or senior engineering role in an agile team developing web applications or web components (client or server side.) I prefer opportunities where I can work with other teams, across organizational lines as a partner or customer, as it’s a role in which I excel.
Experience
Linden Research, San Francisco
Project Manager, Core Engineering: November 2008 - June 2010
- Under tight deadlines and shifting requirements, worked with a distributed team of developers and product managers to deliver simulator and client components for a new identity management feature for the Second Life 3D virtual world.
- Coordinated with developers and product owner to resolve blockers and manage priorities. Worked with other Program Managers responsible for dependencies to keep velocity high and project on track. Planned strategy for announcement and release of a disruptive new feature, resulting in enthusiastic response by Second Life residents in private previews.
- Supported developers building tools for managing 3D content exported from Second Life for customers of Second Life Enterprise. Wrote test plans for QA team in Singapore, as well as deployment plans for release team. Ran daily scrums, and represented team at Enterprise team scrum of scrums.
- Project support and release coordination for engineers working on simulator maintenance tasks.
Technical Project Manager, Open Grid Technologies: June 2008 - October 2008
- Managed Open Grid Public Beta program, which involved over 100 residents and developers, enabling transfers (“teleport”) of avatars between a Second Life beta grid and externally managed OpenSim grids.
- Worked with OpenSim and Linden Lab engineers to debug protocol issues, often in IRC and 3D simulations. Tracked and closed issues in Second Life and OpenSim bug trackers.
- Developed an innovative plan to promote the Beta Program, communicating the benefits to not only developers, but the broader Second Life resident community.
Web Engineer: September 2007 - June 2008
- For the CSI:NY in Second Life project, developed inventory provisioning code that outfitted new Second Life residents with custom avatars based on the popular television show, and worked with developers from Electric Sheep to integrate their registration system with Second Life’s and support a peak of 20,000 new registrations in one hour during the episode's initial airing.
- Developed user and inventory snapshot code to improve unit tests for developers.
- Worked with other web and backend system engineers to find bottlenecks in web services code.
Apple, Cupertino, CA
User Interface Engineer, .Mac; January 2006 - August 2007
Developed Ajax and JSON-driven web applications.
.Mac Gallery
- As part of a team of engineers, developed innovative application for sharing photos on web from iPhoto built using the Sproutcore MVC framework.
- Built data consumer component for acquiring gallery data from customers' .Mac WebDAV storage, and populated model.
- Built web view and controller for downloading galleries.
- Coordinated with iPhoto team's project management to keep requirements for data iPhoto sent to .Mac in sync and specified new and changed requirements for data.
.Mac Webmail
- Worked on revamp of .Mac webmail and address book web front-ends using Prototype and script.aculo.us libraries.
- Implemented drag and drop interface on web, with multiple elements loaded and refreshed through AJAX techniques.
iWeb Comments
- Added feature for displaying comments posted to .Mac-hosted iWeb weblogs. This style of embedded commenting is now in common use by services such as Disqus and IntenseDebate.
- Wrote JavaScript to read comments as JSON (stored on .Mac user's WebDAV space), then display them by rewriting static blog entry's DOM.
- Worked with remote iWeb team to design static HTML hooks for iWeb to publish for JavaScript comment fetch and loader to use.
- Coordinated with .Mac server team on comment data model.
Web Engineer: August 2001 - January 2006
Developed web applications for Apple Employees and HR professionals, including:
Online Learning
- Preventing Harassment course integration
- Worked with Flash and backend database developers to build a HTTP/REST interface between courseware and tracking system
- Delivered course on-time to 1,000+ managers
HRWeb Publishing System
- Reworked Apple's online HR manual for the US, Europe, and Canada.
- Updated an existing content management system to run faster, and export XML files to make reuse and redesign of HRWeb easier.
New HRWeb site
- Wrote PHP application to generate pages from XML exported from publishing system using XSLT transforms.
- Replaced old JavaScript with a gracefully degrading system for menus and presentation.
- Worked with on-staff designer to eliminate tables and use CSS for layout and styling.
- Integrated corporate single-sign-on system for access control to restricted content.
- Integrated with Google Search Appliance
HRWeb Dashboard Widget
- Built MacOS X Dashboard widget for ‘Live’ searches of HRWeb Sites.
- Supported searches in Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana), as well as English and European languages.
Employee Training
- Built front end to Training and Development's FileMaker database.
- Created a communication layer between FileMaker and a PHP web application.
- Integrated with corporate single-sign-on system for authentication.
myPage
- Adapted a paper self-assessment tool for the web.
- Created a familiar, iTunes-style interface using JavaScript.
- Converted source material, a 400 page MS Word manuscript, to XML source files.
MyPlan
Redesigned an awkward web interface used by US, Europe and Asia based employees for creating vacation, sick time, and other leave requests.
Other Experience
2Roam, Redwood City, CA
Client Development Software Engineer, January 2000 - July 2001
OnRadio, Scotts Valley, CA
Software Engineer, March 1999 - December 1999
Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA
Web Technologist, April 1996 - March 1999
James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council
Web master, December 1995 - May 2004
Technical Skills
Programming Languages and Libraries
PHP (3.x through 5.x), Perl (5), Python, JavaScript, Prototype, SproutCore, LSL
Application Development Tools
Jira, Mercurial, Subversion, TeamCity, vi, Emacs, CVS, SourceSafe, Perfect Tracker, BBEdit
Certifications
Scrum Master
Education
MS (Economics)
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990
BA (Economics)
University of Texas at Austin, 1987
Publications, Presentations and Editorial Work
- Presentations on RSS and Blogging at Seybold SF, September 2003
- Building Web Services With FIleMaker Pro, XML.com, October 2001
- The San-Suds Semantic Web at Software Development 2001 East, Boston, MA, August 2001
- Technical reviewer for XSLT Quickly, by Bob DuCharme, Manning, 2001
- XSLT for the Real World at XMLOne, San Jose, CA, October 2000
- URLS! URLS! URLS!, A List Apart, September 2000
- RSS Scraper for the Desperate CMS Hacker, August 2003