RIA Carrollton (formerly Computer Language Research)
Carrollton, Texas
Professional Stuff
All work and no play makes Mike a dull boy!
This page is dedicated to my profession and passion, multimedia programming.
RIA Carrollton (formerly Computer Language Research)
Carrollton, Texas
I am currently a Senior Software Engineer/Multimedia Specialist in the Education Services Group of RIA. I'm really kind of a jack of all trades doing whatever needs to be done to support the team and the company.
I have an intense interest in the techie side of multimedia and the web and a great deal of authoring and infrastructure building experience in Authorware, Flash, and ASP. I also maintain the hardware and software of our development and staging servers.
I've had the great honor to have extended experience working with some of the most talented Instructional Designers and Graphic Artists in the industry. They don't come any better than these guys, folks.
I've had numerous opportunities to acquire leadership skills through project leading and mentoring. One of the things I champion is a bi-monthly Knowledge-base meeting where representatives of all the skillsets come together to share and enlighten each other and then carry that information back to there own teams.
Most every day brings new challenges and the need to learn new things to "get the job done". I learn as much about everything just as fast as my little brain can take it in! *crackle fizz pop* Most recently, I've worked with many talented individuals figuring out how to reverse engineer a production web site and add enhanced functionality, in addition to maintaining the Web-base e-learning system I helped build, and constructing a Flash-based demonstration and tutorial system infrastructure.
It's all very challenging and exciting involving HTML, VBscript, Javascript, Active Server, SQL Server, web farms, Authorware, and Flash and linking things so they can all talk and work happily together.It's very intense and exciting work and looks to stay that way for a good long while! :-)
Occationally, on the side, I've done a little Authorware teaching at a local community college. And then there's the odd bit of multimedia consulting and programming. Both of which are very rewarding! :-)
I'm also currently working on a little project X on my own. I'll let you know when that's ready for prime time. Stay tuned!
Electronic Data Systems World Headquarters
Plano, Texas
The above photo is the brand new EDS World Headquarters building. Isn't it beautiful? It's a masterpiece of architecture. We didn't work there. We were in a building across the street just beyond the right border of the photo.
I worked with a fantastic team of talented individuals within Curriculum Development to produce Multimedia Computer-Based Training (CBT) for the 95K+ employees of EDS, now an independent company.
My group did business within EDS for about 5 years. We began with nothing but Mac IIci computers and then migrated to Pentiums and PowerMacs. It's was a wonderful job and a great place to work. I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning! (Aw come on, Mike. What's the real scoop? No, really, it's true!) I continually learned all kinds of new things including Advanced Authorware, Director, HTML, Javascript, Shockwave, Video producing and editing, project leading, and on and on.
My title was Advanced Systems Engineer at EDS for 11.6 years where I specialized in multimedia CBT.
What does an Advanced Systems Engineer do in multimedia, you ask? Good question! Basically, I used my computer science, programming skills, and hardware knowledge to figure out the tricky bits like complex interactions, software simulations, establish and maintain the underlying software infrastructure, and figuring out all those pesky little technical details and aberrations and what the heck to do about them. Not to mention a good deal of mentoring, consulting, and where appropriate a good deal of whining! ;-)
At the time I was downsized out of EDS, I was the lead Authorware Author and Video Editor on a high end CBT project that would teach Capital Budgeting Concepts. I had just finished a web-based CBT project which included computer software simulations in Shockwave for Authorware destined for the EDS Intranet. This wasn't guided practice mind you; we emulated the actual windows software. Oh, what a challenge *that* was! Prior to that I worked on two purely Authorware CBT projects where I was the responsible for the infrastructure and acted as project leader mentor. Before that I led the high-end multimedia CBT project, Interpreting Basic Financial Statements, which won a People's Choice Award at the 1996 Macromedia Users Conference and Exhibition, a Southwest Regional Silver CINDY Certificate, and an International Silver CINDY award.
Many of our projects had a global audience, which makes development more complicated and interesting with cultural sensitivity, globally acceptable content and graphics, and textual translations of some portions like the glossary. It would be interesting do to a video and dub audio for languages some day!
Previous to those I worked on several other multimedia CBT projects for EDS as an Author, Systems Engineer, or Project Leader. I worked with a group to direct and coordinate installation and configuration of the first LAN environment in the EDS education facilities, taught the EDS Systems Engineering Development curriculum (Phase II) for 2 and a half years, and worked on a back office processing system to process Wall Street trades.
I hope to keep updating this area as I and my team continue to learn and grow. In the meantime, you can grab a copy of my Resume in a format suitable to your document viewer. Someday it will be an interactive Shocked Flash piece for the web... but not today. ;-)
My Resume:
- MS Word 2000 format, Zip file
- MS Word 2000 format
- RTF format, Zip file
- RTF format
- Plain Text, Zip file
- Plain Text
Related Links
ASP Objects - A Quick Reference
Macromedia Users Group of Dallas
