Andy Lester
Manager, senior software engineer, speaker, writer

815-245-1738
http://petdance.com/resume/

Work Experience

Follett Library Resources, McHenry, IL (2007-)

Follett Library Resources is the leading wholesaler of library books to the K-12 market in the U.S. The TITLEWAVE website is an online application that helps librarians select materials for purchase. Its strategic importance to the company cannot be overstated.

Senior Programmer

Socialtext, Palo Alto, CA (2006-2007)

Socialtext makes wikis for the enterprise. I've worked both as release manager, and most recently leading Socialtext Open, the open source release of Socialtext's wiki package.

Member of Technical Staff

My time at Socialtext was mostly working with the open source release, Socialtext Open.

Follett Library Resources, McHenry, IL (2001-2006)

Web Applications Manager (2002-2006)

After being promoted to manager, I helped scale the department upward to include six programmers and a system administrator.

Project Leader / Sr. Software Engineer (2001-2002)

When I started at FLR, there was one programmer, one system administrator and no repeatable process. Releases were made by FTPing tarballs to production servers, and version control was made by occassionally zipping up snapshots and saying "Hey, Bob, don't touch foo.html for the next half hour".

Follett Software Company, McHenry, IL (1991-2000)

FSC is the leading creator of library automation software for the K-12 market. If you checked out a book in a school library in the past 20 years, chances are it was done with a Follett Software circulation system.

Sr. Internet Engineer (1996-2000)

In the winter of 1995, the company president charged with me modernizing the external website and creating an intranet.

Software Engineer (1991-1996)

For five years I worked in DOS writing library automation software in C, and later on the Macintosh in C++.

S.D.C. Associates, Elk Grove Village, IL

S.D.C. owned and operated 70 retail clothing stores under the names Just Pants, Button Up and What a Deal!

Programmer (1986-1991)

Open Source

The Perl Foundation (2005-now)

TPF is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the Perl programming language through open discussion, collaboration, design, and code.

Perl community

I've been active and vocal in the Perl community for quite a while now, including:

Presentations & papers

Downloadable versions of slides from my presentation are usually available online.

Pittsburgh Perl Workshop

Preventing Crisis: Project estimation and tracking that works, 9/23/2006

OSCON 2005

Practical Perl Testing, with chromatic, Ian Langworth and Bill Odom, 8/3/2005

Preventing Crisis: Project estimation and tracking that works, 8/4/2005

OSCON 2004

Advice For Open Source Job Seekers, 7/29/2004

OSCON 2003

Automated Testing Of Large Projects With Perl, 7/10/2003

YAPC::NA 2006

Get Out Of Technical Debt Now!, 6/26/2006

Pragmatic Job Hunting, 6/28/2006

YAPC::NA 2005

Preventing Crisis: Project estimation and tracking that works, 6/29/2005

YAPC::NA 2004

Perl Wizardry Without An Editor, 6/16/2004

The Open Source Programmer's Guide To Getting A Great Job, 6/16/2004

Automated Testing Of Large-Scale Projects, 6/17/2004

San Francisco Perl Mongers

Get Out Of Technical Debt Now!, 8/15/2006

Preventing Crisis: Project estimation and tracking that works, 4/15/2005

Uniforum Chicago

The A-Z Guide Of CPAN Modules For New Authors, 10/11/2005

Preventing Crisis: Project estimation and tracking that works, 3/22/2005

Perl Security With Tainting, 8/10/2004

Perl Wizardry From The Command Line, 2/10/2004

Automated Testing Of Large Projects With Perl, 8/12/2003

Automated Testing With Perl, 2/11/2003

WebGUI Users Conference 2004

Introduction to Perl Programming

Advanced Perl Programming

Testing With WWW::Mechanize

Chicago Perl Mongers

101 Things Every Perl Programmer Should Know, 4/10/2007 and 4/24/2007
(This talk was the inspiration for the site perl101.org.)

New Modules For a New Year, 1/9/2007

Perl Security With Tainting, 8/3/2004

The Open Source Programmer's Guide To Getting A Great Job, 6/8/2004

Module Building 101, 1/7/2004
(This talk inspired me to write Module::Starter.)

A Field Guide To The Perl Command Line, 11/4/2003

Automated Testing With Perl, 5/19/2003

Minneapolis Perl Mongers

Automated Testing Of Large Projects With Perl, 4/14/2004

St. Louis Perl Mongers

Introduction to Automated Testing, 1/14/2004

Grand Rapids (MI) Perl Mongers

Get Out Of Technical Debt Now!, 9/28/2007

The A-Z Guide Of CPAN Modules For New Authors, 10/25/2005

Automated Testing Of Large Projects With Perl, 9/25/2003

Publishing

O'Reilly

Mac OS X Tiger In A Nutshell: Updates on entire book. Co-author credit. (2005)

Perl Best Practices: Technical reviewer (2005)
"I would like to express my deepest gratitude... [t]o Andy Lester, for inspiring with his deep understanding of, and passion for, the best coding practices." -- p. xxi

Mac OS X Panther In A Nutshell: Updates to Unix command chapter (2004)

Spidering Hacks: Author (2003)

Google Hacks: Technical editor (2003)
"And to Andy Lester, our technical editor, goes much appreciation for his thorough nitpicking." -- p. xiii

Unix Power Tools, 3rd ed.: Technical reviewer for 10 chapters (2001)

O'Reilly Network

Programming/technology/management blog (2003-)

CMP Media LLC
The Perl Journal, frequent author
The Perl Review
Editor, technical editor, and author in various issues (The Perl Review online) (2002)
Apress

Pro Perl Debugging: Technical review and co-author/writing mentor. (2005)

Pro Perl: Technical review (2005)

Microsoft Press

Code Complete, 2nd Edition: Review on about half (2004)

Sybex

Perl, CGI & JavaScript Complete, 2nd ed.: Update author for Perl sections; updated book for Perl 5.8.0 (2003)

Sams

XML Primer Plus: Technical review (2002)

Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours: research, development & first draft for chapter 22, "Awk & Perl", plus technical review (2002)

Barcharts Inc.

SQL quick reference chart: Never published (2001)

Perl quick reference chart: Technical review, and rewrote about half (2000)

Education

I've been taking classes towards a Business Management degree. Relevant classes include:

In addition to attending numerous conferences and user group session, I've also taken Edward Tufte's "Visualizing Data" seminar, and Stephen Covey's "Living The Seven Habits."

Technical Skills

Perl

Fluent languages: Past experience Operating systems & software