Michael Foord - Curriculum Vitae

Past, Present, and Future

Name:	Michael Foord
Date of Birth:	12th August, 1974
Contact:	michael@voidspace.org.uk
Location:	Northampton, UK
Telephone:	07731 383732
Status:	Married
Natonality:	British
Other:	Full Driving License
Address:	27 Brook Street, Northampton, NN1 2PE
Date:	This document created May 2006
Updated:	Last update January 2008

CV Contents

This document is available, in RTF format, from Michael Foord - CV.rtf.

Introduction

My name is Michael Foord. I currently work at Resolver Systems in London, as a senior software engineer developing primarily in Python. We are creating a desktop application for the financial services industry, using the .NET framework. The application is written with IronPython and C#.

I am also writing a book called IronPython in Action, for Manning Publications. It will hopefully be published this year.

EDUCATION. QUALIFICATIONS & TRAINING

Name of Institution	From - To	Qualifications	Grade	Date
Higher Education Cambridge University, Corpus Christi College Cambridgeshire.	1993 - 1994	BA (Hons) Law 1st Year	Completed	1994
A Level Education St. Georges VA School, Harpenden, Hertfordshire.	1990 - 1992	A Levels Maths English Physics	Grades A A A	1992
AS Level Education St. Georges VA School, Harpenden, Hertfordshire.	1990 - 1991	AS Levels General Studies Science in Society	Grades A A	1991
GCSE Education Verulam School, St. Albans, Hertfordshire.	1986 - 1990	8 GCSEs Maths Physics Chemistry Economics English Lit. English Language History Technology	Grades A A A A A A A A	1990
Qualifications Amateur Radio Exam	1988	Amateur Radio Exam	Credit	1988
Training	1996 - 2005	Negotiation Customer Service Assertiveness / Time Management Various Product Specific	Pass Pass Pass Pass

Employment History

Python Programmer

Job Title:	Senior Software Engineer and Community Champion
Employer:	Resolver Systems
From - To:	April 2006 - Date
Hours:	32 Hours Per Week

Summary of Duties

Working as part of a small team of programmers, creating a spreadsheet development environment (a programmable spreadsheet) aimed at the financial services industry.

This is programmed almost entirely in IronPython (for the Microsoft .NET platform) with some C#. It uses Windows forms for the presentation layer. The whole team has played a part in the architecture decisions and constant refactoring to maintain code quality and readability.

Because of my contacts with the Python and open source community, I am also the team 'Community Champion' (Technology evangelist).

We use agile development techniques like pair programming, test driven development (both unit tests and functional tests), continuous integration and iterative development. At the time of writing Resolver is thirty thousand lines of production code and one hundred and twenty thousand lines of code in the test framework.

This has involved some work directly with the Win32 API, primarily for automation in the functional test suite but also for remoting and a few other areas.

Community Liaison Worker & Service Development

Job Title:	Community Liaison Worker & Service Development
Employer:	Jesus Army Charitable Trust, Northampton Jesus Centre
From - To:	2004 - Date
Hours:	8 hours per week

Summary of Duties

Responsible for the development of the centre and its integration with the local community
Responsible for the expansion of the range of groups and activities run at the centre
Nurturing contacts, liaising, interacting and communicating effectively with the local community, businesses and organisations
Policy and development work
Supporting volunteers in developing and running new activities
Fundraising
Responsible for preparing reports for the management committee
Responsible for monitoring and evaluating the client service statistics
Responsible for co-ordinating the promotion and publicity of the centres services

Sales Manager

Job Title:	Sales Manager
Employer:	TBS - Independent Builders Merchants
From - To:	1995 - April 2006
Hours:	32 Hours Per Week

Summary of Duties

Managing the sales team at the Daventry depot of TBS, including:

Day-to-day management

Sales reporting

Appraisal, training and personal development of staff

Management of performance

Ensuring excellent customer service from all team members

Working with customers on project requirements including:

Initial contacting phase

Specification and product requirements

Quoting and Price negotiation

Project management of orders including post delivery follow up

Negotiating with customers and suppliers
Monitoring the stock profile
Researching and advising on new products
Responsible for winning new business and new customers
Resolving problems and disputes including customer service

Telesales

Job Title:	Telesales
Employer:	Independent Financial Adviser/St.Albans
From - To:	1992 - 1993
Hours:	40 Hours Per Week

Summary of Duties

Telesales for a Pensions Adviser, including:
- Cold calling
- Follow up calls
- Sales and marketing

Technical Services

Job Title:	Technical Services
Employer:	Small Computer Shop / St.Albans
From - To:	1992 - 1993
Hours:	40 Hours Per Week

Summary of Duties

Upgrading Archimedes computers
Technical support and advice via the telephone
Minor repairs to computers and peripherals

COMPUTING EXPERIENCE

My History with Computers

I am passionate about computers and I possess excellent technical ability. I have been using computers since the days of the BBC B 32k (early and mid eighties). I even messed around designing my own computers with the Z80 processor and single board computer designs. I did some assembly language programming on the Amiga (the Motorola 68000 chipset), this was my first experience making operating system calls. I learned HTML, to manage my own website, several years ago.

Current Programming

About five years ago, I started to learn Python for a project I was involved in. Python is a cross platform, object oriented, and dynamic language. It comes included in almost all distributions of Linux. It is often used as a web development language and for shell scripting - but it is also well suited to larger projects and desktop applications. It is used extensively by Google - and is one of their four preferred languages. I appreciate the elegant design philosophy of Python, and the clean programming style it encourages.

I have now been working with Resolver for a year, with IronPython and C#. I have learned a great deal about project architecture and have increased my appreciation of readable code.

Fields of Expertise

My areas of experience include :

Object Oriented Programming
Programming styles including:

MVC (plus observer and command patterns)

Event Oriented Programming

Recursion

Stack based programming

Source Code Control (Subversion)
Unicode and character encodings
Text parsing and processing
Technical writing: documentation, articles, and tutorials
Parsers and grammars (mainly with PLY)
Windows Forms and the .NET framework
wxPython and Tkinter Python GUI toolkits
C# and the .NET framework
Testing (including Test Driven Development and agile methodologies)
Databases (some T(SQL))
HTML and XHTML
CSS
XML

Speaking Engagements

ACCU Conference, Oxford 2008
Expert Zone Developer Summit (Stockholm 2008)
Microsoft TechEd Conference (Barcelona, November 2007)
Mix UK Microsoft Developer and Designer Conference 2007 (London)
Developer Day 6 (Microsoft Community Event, Reading 2007) and DDD Ireland (2008)
PyCon (Dallas in Texas, February 2007 & Chicago, March 2008)
Academic Student Conference (Krakow in Poland, March 2007 & 2008)
RuPy, Ruby and Python Conference (Poznan in Poland, April 2007 & 2008)

Technical Writing

As well as writing IronPython in Action for Manning publication, I've written various articles and tutorials on Python. (See the articles section of my website for examples).

Some of my writing has been published by PyZine the online Python Journal. This includes :

An article on writing web clients in Python
An article on writing CGI (web) applications in Python
An article on Unicode and character encoding issues

My article on ConfigObj (an configuration file parsing library) was published in the (print) publication Python Magazine.

A short article of mine was published in the UK MSDN Flash (Microsoft Developer Newsletter): Getting Started with IronPython. This was one of the first articles they published by a non-Microsoft employee.

Open Source Projects

I currently manage several open source projects. Almost all the code I have produced is available for download from my website. Last year my projects were downloaded around forty thousand times. They include:

Movable Python - http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/movpy/

Movable Python is a distribution of Python (for Windows) that does not need to be installed. It includes a development environment and is typically used from USB flash drives or for creating demo versions of applications. In 2005, it was downloaded several thousand times from sourceforge.
rest2web - http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/rest2web/

This is a website creation tool. It combines (X) HTML templates with the ability to store content in reST format. It generates static HTML pages. reStructured Text is a WYSIWYG, plain text format. It is much nicer to maintain content in reST than in HTML.

rest2web generates breadcrumbs (navigation trails) and sidebar menus automatically, along with all sorts of other optional features. The latest addition is a gallery plug-in.
ConfigObj - http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/configobj.html

This Python module presents application configuration data as a single object. It reads and writes config files using an ini style syntax - with single line commands (methods). Sections can be nested to an arbitrary depth and members are accessed using normal Python dictionary syntax.

It has many powerful features (value substitution, integrated type checking of config file entries) - but its main feature is that it is very easy to use.

ConfigObj is now used in Bazaar, the distributed version control software used by the Ubuntu Linux distribution and Turbogears one of the largest Python web frameworks.

SKILLS. ABILITIES & QUALITIES

Interpersonal

Committed, intelligent and quick to learn.
Confident, clear and effective communicator at all levels
High degree of customer care skills, including quality of service
Excellent written (e.g. reports, essays, letters) listening, presentation and verbal skills (both telephone and face to face), including an accurate eye for detail
Excellent relationship building skills, with the ability to obtain individuals trust quickly
Good knowledge and experience of using non-verbal communication systems,
Excellent networking and negotiation skills
Willingness to learn new skills and develop myself, my knowledge and experiences

Organisation

Prioritising and multi-task planning of work load
Information resource and research, ranging from committee papers to advice
Organisation and administration of training, campaigns and events
Self-sufficient and self-reliant with office administration for myself and others
Good time, office & diary management, including flexibility
Applying a systematic approach to solving complex problems
Developing and implementing administrative procedures and policies
Perform well under pressure and enjoy a challenge
Ability to identify my own training needs

Team

Ability to play any role within a team and I have worked in a range of positions where teamwork is essential and would be an asset to any development team
Excellent at working on my own initiative, although knowing when to ask for help
Strong skills such as:- initiator, motivator, proactive approach, problem solver and a finisher

PERSONAL INTERESTS

I enjoy meeting, mixing and socialising with new people. My past-times include Python development, and writing, as well as keeping up-to-date with current affairs.