Seek Nuance

I’m John DeRosa, and this is my blog.

What I write about

The topics you’ll find here include Python, Django, careers, start-ups, technical and team leadership, and the Seattle geek/technology ecosystem.

What I do today

I work at IP Street. Before that, I was co-founder and Principal in Meta Consulting, and Director of Web Development for Fisher Interactive Network, which is Fisher Communications‘ web division. Among other matters, I led a large CMS project for in-housing Fisher’s news sites, using Plone.

My technical interests cover web application development (community sites, content delivery, etc.) and large data stores. I favor Python, Django, Plone, PostgreSQL, Solr, and other open source technologies. I’m fluent in JavaScript, CSS, XHTML, etc., although I wouldn’t advertise myself as a front-end developer. My management work includes building large first-rate technical departments from scratch, and taking over & fixing dysfunctional teams.

Past technical work includes working in Perl, C, Java, C#, Lisp, and ISP microcode; on spiders, search engines, operating systems, and CPU instruction sets. I’m rusty in those disciplines, but they’re still somewhere in my head.

I regularly attend PyCon and Open Source Bridge.

A brief history

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

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

After DEC, I held VP, Director, and senior management roles in a few start-ups. The most successful was Singingfish, where I was Co-founder and VP Engineering. We created a novel service that we sold to Thomson SA, which sold it to AOL, which killed it. It was one of the only successful start-ups in 2000.

Joe Heck introduced me to Python and Django in 2006, when he and I built TrenchMice. For this am I ever grateful!

For fun, I spend time with good friends and obsess about my pets.

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, and I’m usually at least on the #django channel. I’m @johnderosa on Twitter.