Deryck Hodge's VisualCV

View My VisualCV Online: http://www.visualcv.com/deryck

Deryck Hodge

Software Dev, Gamer

Work-From-Home Motivational Self-Photographer

I am a software developer with a love for the web, games, social spaces, new media, and free/open source software.

I am married with two beautiful daughters, ages 9 and 5. I have worked remotely from a small town near Auburn, Alabama since 2006. Outside of work, I love playing music, any kind of game, a good film, and British postmodern fiction.

The photo used above was posted to Flickr as a joke about that day's mood for work and gets reused regularly by others, like in this Lifehacker piece about staying motivated while working from home. Oh the irony. I'm actually quite passionate about the benefits of working remotely.

I have a broad development background, covering clients, servers, mobile, and the web. I am also well experienced in development on Linux/Unix and Mac OS X.

My areas of experience and expertise include:

Python, JavaScript, PHP, Bash, C, Objective-C
SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL
HTML, XHTML, CSS
JSON, XML, SOAP, XML-RPC
Apache, mod_python, mod_wsgi
Django, Zope
memcached
YUI, jQuery, Dojo
Bazaar, Mercurial, Subversion
XP, Scrum, and Lean methodologies

Canonical

Sep 2009 - Present

Squad Lead, Launchpad

I am currently a squad lead for one of the teams working on Launchpad. I have line management responsibilities for a group that has had from 4 to 6 developers on it. I serve as a tech lead of sorts for the squad, doing code reviews, focusing design and implementation discussions, and managing relationships with stakeholders within and without Canonical. I am a hands-on coder in the team as well, doing feature development or maintenance work, depending on the squad's focus.

Beyond my individual team duties, I have worked to improve UI development across all Launchpad squads, focusing on testing tools, sharing JavaScript coding best practices, and leading experiments in design process change.

Apr 2009 - Sep 2009

Software Engineer, Launchpad

I started my work at Canonical by working on the bugs application in Launchpad. I worked on a wide variety of issues for the app, mostly focusing on UI, JavaScript interactions, and API development before being promoted to squad lead.

Greenspun Interactive

Jun 2008 - Apr 2009

Senior Programmer

Greenspun Interactive handles development of online properties for The Las Vegas Sun, The Las Vegas Weekly, 702.tv, Vegas Deluxe, and more.

My role was that of social media and web platforms programmer. I was tasked with finding unique ways to deliver our content to users and readers. I worked on community-publishing and user-submission tools, web APIs, Facebook Platform apps, Google Gadgets/OpenSocial, and iPhone app development.

The Washington Post Company

Oct 2006 - Jun 2008

Lead Developer

I was the lead developer in the newly formed Product Development group. Our group was responsible for creating new features across all properties -- Washingtonpost.com, Newsweek.com, and Slate -- as well as creating new sites and applications. I wore many hats while at the Post and, in addition to coding, my work included managing a small team of programmers, maintaining and administering our servers and systems, and shepherding ideas from concept to final product.

Moments I'm proud of from my time at the Washington Post include:

representing our company as we participated in the Facebook Platform launch
working with Google during developer testing of OpenSocial's launch on Orkut
developing green living site Sprig in conjunction with the new ventures group
launching the first hyper-local web site from the Post, LoudounExtra
helping develop and launch onBeing, a documentary web site that was nominated for an Emmy for "New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming"

Naples Daily News

Jun 2006 - Oct 2006

Programmer

I was only with Naples Daily News for a short stint before joining the Post, but while I was there, I worked in the New Media group on database-backed applications for sports, elections, and local guides for churches and real estate.

Auburn University Libraries

Jun 2004 - Jun 2006

Web Developer, Webmaster

I worked as the primary web developer and webmaster for the collection of sites maintained by the library system at Auburn University. I developed the main library web site's publishing system, shepherded the site through two redesign implementations, managed Apache and Samba for the libraries, and chaired the 17-member Web Advisory Group.

Auburn University - College of Liberal Arts

Fall 2002, Uncompleted MA, English

I was a graduate teaching assistant and have 9 hours toward an MA in English.

Auburn University - College of Liberal Arts

Spring 2002, Bachelor of Arts, English

My undergrad degree is in English with a minor in Political Science.

Free and Open Source Software is an important part of my life as a developer.

I was a Samba Team member from April 2004 until January 2010, when I maintained samba.org and related Samba web sites and infrastructure.

Django was used extensively in my work at Naples Daily News, the Washington Post, and Greenspun Interactive, and during that time I contributed regularly to the community, writing bug reports and patches, and regularly helping in mailing list discussions. I still follow development closely and have some of my own projects using Django, though I don't personally contribute much to the project itself any more.

Samples of my own projects and code include:

gravatarlib -- A Python library for working with Gravatar profiles and avatar URLs. (View the code)
lpmedic -- Launchpad Bug Medic, a little tool to help triage Launchpad bugs. (View the code)
paperlate -- A collection of Django apps useful for building web sites that aggregate content from around the web. paperlate was never turned into much. It powers a fan site I did for Heroes called Heroes Sightings. (View the code)
gcli -- A Google command line Interface and pure Python library using Google's now discontinued SOAP search API. Old code, but an interesting tool for fun with cli-based Google searches. (View the code)
jsutils -- A JavaScript library written for my Google-drive web development tutorials. Intended to demo JavaScript concepts and not meant to be a real production JavaScript library. (View the code)