About
Scríobhaim
Irish verb, present tense: I write
What does it mean?
Well, as the tag line says, it’s an Irish verb for the present tense of I write. I hope the translator was accurate.
Shameless plug
If you are interested in my skill set as a web/portal based developer please contact me john_dot_lawson_at_scriobha_dot_im for more information (note the anti-spam dot and at). You can also check out my resume.
Why www.Scríobha.im?
I have been playing around with domain names for quite some time (generally on a whim) and have had many. I kept looking for the unique domain that would fit me and house anything I might concoct in the future. Scríobhaim seems to sum up many of the things I do. I write code. I write documentation. I write tutorials.
Final Thoughts
I hope the content in this site is useful, funny, informative, enlightening, eye-opening and it is one or more of these to someone other than myself. I write only partially to satisfy my narcissistic tendencies.
-J
My bio
Resume
Mgr. Cloud Infrastructure & Support
- Cloud
- DevOps
- Infrastructure as Code
All things Amazon Cloud based from EC2 to S3 and Cloud Front to RDS. Trans coding triggered jobs with Lambda or maybe a DR strategy founded in Cloud Formation and OpsWorks (Chef) with auto-scaling for good measure.
Product Solutions Lead
- Development
- Leadership
- Cloud
- Initiated transition to standard infrastructure stacks with OpsWorks and custom Chef recipes eliminating inconsistencies and reducing new or regenerated instances to 10 minutes or less
- Completed comprehensive security overhaul including proper segmentation and use of Virtual Private Clouds(VPCs) resulting in requests from several clients to perform assessments of their own accounts
- Instituted build management process including Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment process for all customized or custom solutions with integrations to Jira and GitHub reducing bugs by 50% and providing project leaders insight to status
- Developed Chef recipes for custom SSO solutions based on SAML/Shibboleth including multi-source authentication and integrations with cloud solutions (MS Azure) reducing delivery time by 16 hours
- Setup and configured Jenkins for Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) with bootstrapped jobs via DSL
Application Development Manager
- Process Standardization
- Team Dynamics
- Delivered strategic goal that led to an 87% decrease in new client launch duration
- Completed a stalled migration to automated build/deployment product with cross functional team leading to an 78% reduction in deployment time for new releases
- Instituted 3 month strategic resourcing projection providing senior management and CEO visibility into staffing needs and sales pipeline bottlenecks
- Engaged and strengthened development team's skills, reliance, expertise and trust within the team and with each other through cross training, open team discussions and 1-on-1 sessions
- Performed year end evaluations including participating in a 9-box evaluation for entire IT group
- Established standard process for hiring/evaluation of applicants including base metrics
Sr. Manager Web & Portal Services
- Cross-Functional Teams
- Team Bulding
- Process Standardization
- Developed 24 month Portal Roadmap and Architectural Strategy
- Initiated Agile Implementation team consisting of 4 cross-functional groups
- Instituted department wide Release Calendar accounting for multi-team process needs, student life-cycle events and business requirements/considerations
- Reviewed and provided input to SEO initiative for external division with a successful new team launched
- Piloted several cross-functional teams incorporating multiple disciplines, with measurable success that lead to the establishment of permanent Middleware and Ops support teams
- Developed and coached direct reports’ individual and career development paths and year end reviews and talent assessment profiles
Portal & Middleware Support Lead
- Lead
- Mentoring
- Middleware
- Established and stabilized new matrix-based Middleware team including base documentation, cross training, RACI matrix and rotating support schedule for Tomcat, Weblogic, OC4J and Apache tech stack
- Coached core team and additional development teams on Agile and release cycle best practices
- Introduced Continuous Integration to Portal Team with a framework for full IT development roll-out
- Spearheaded full conversion to Hudson deployment tool with a successful transition to support team
- Actively contributed to Portal Advisory Board governing direction of functionality and features
Technical Lead - Project DELTA
- Portal
- Leadership
- Architecture
- Vendor management
- Increased daily visitor hits by 4.5 times in year over year analysis against previous through student engagement, functional services offered, faculty and staff input and iterative releases
- Standardized on JSR-168 specification leveraging both existing investments in the standard and future portability to alternative portal products
- Leveraged ability to translate complex technical solutions, patterns, architectures to peer groups and project stakeholders including Director and VP level summaries
- Conducted technical training across multi-team and department scope of new portal
Team Lead - Programmer/Analyst
- Led Web & Portal Services group (5 FTE with 2 contractors) supporting internal web applications and external Marketing Group public sites/web properties
- Provided feedback to management of training needs for individual members as well as peer-reviews and review input
- Guided team in day to day issues escalating where needed to management
- Provided issue resolution or escalation, mentoring, ensuring the tools and environments needed were available along with daily operating processes and needs
- Addressed cross functional team training needs