Seek Nuance

I’m John DeRosa, and this is my blog.

What I write about

The topics you’ll find here will be Python, Plone, Django, social and traditional media, careers, start-ups, technical and team leadership, and the Seattle geek/tech ecosystem. I’ll keep the personal chit-chat to a minimum. I sometimes flame about products or companies, but I’ll try to minimize that, too.

What I do today

I’m co-founder and Principal in Meta Consulting, and a Principal in Gadfly Ventures. Meta Consulting provides business development and technical consulting to start-ups, medium-size businesses, and non-profits; Gadfly Ventures provides strategic and operational services for early-stage technology companies.

Before Meta and Gadfly, I was Director of Web Development for Fisher Interactive Network, which was the web division of Fisher Communications. Among other matters, I led a substantial CMS project for in-housing all of Fisher’s news sites, using Plone.

My technical skills are in web application development (community sites, e-commerce, content delivery, etc.), Python, Django, Plone, PostgreSQL, and a slew of open source technologies. I’m also fluent in JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML.

My management work includes building 35+ person first-rate organizations from scratch, taking over dysfunctional orgs and shifting them into more effective states, and helping healthy groups achieve higher performance levels.

Past technical work includes Perl, C, Java, C#, spiders, search engines, embedded operating systems, Lisp, and ISP microcode. I’m rusty in those disciplines now, but their neurons are still in my head. Somewhere.

I attend PyCon and Plone conferences. Rather than attend OSCON, I attend Open Source Bridge. Locally, I partake in Ignite Seattle and Seattle Lunch 2.0.

A brief history

I first used a computer in the fall of 1974, at Lynbrook High School.  It was a Data General Nova 1200 running in-core BASIC.

After attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where I became enamored with a DECsystem-1050 during the golden age of WPI hacking, I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Most notably, I wrote CPU microcode for the VAX-11/750 and VAX 8600, and worked on the first DEC Alpha workstation. I also worked on the port of Windows NT to DEC’s Alpha, and on the first Alpha NT firmware, which was like a BIOS. After that, I managed the NT/Alpha platforms team.

After DEC, I held VP, Director, or senior management roles in a few start-ups; and did Perl, C#, and Java development, in mostly open-source stacks.  The most successful was Singingfish, where I was Co-founder and VP Engineering. Our amazing team created a novel service that was ahead of its time. We sold it to Thomson SA, which strangled it with unrealistic expectations, after which AOL finished it off. But it was one of the few successful start-ups in 2000, at least in the Seattle area.

Joe Heck introduced me to Python and Django in 2006, when he and I built TrenchMice. TrenchMice also required intimacy with PostgreSQL, Apache, and Linux sundries.

My roles have ranged from individual developer, to building and leading large staffs. I pride myself on finding fun and interesting challenges in any level of position.

For fun, I dabble in amateur astronomy, spend time with good friends, and stare at my dog.

More details and contact info

My LinkedIn entry has lots more details.

My e-mail address is john @ this site’s domain. I’m jderosa on IRC, where I hang out in #plone and #plone.org. I’m @johnderosa on Twitter.