John R. Southern

Current

Principal at Hardwerke (Sole Proprietorship)
Partner at Krunkwerke
Principal at Softwerke (Sole Proprietorship)

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Past

Web Application Developer at Corporate Coordination Office, Ministry of Education - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Policy Research & Analysis Branch, Ministry of Community & Social Services - Government of Ontario
Plone Consultant at Research & Outcome Measurement Branch, Ministry of Children & Youth Services - Government of Ontario

Web Application Developer at Community Services I&IT Cluster - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Communications Services Branch, Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Community Services I&IT Cluster - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Business Solutions Branch, Ministry of the Attorney General - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Business Solutions Branch, Ministry of the Attorney General - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Community, Youth & Social Services I&IT Cluster - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Ministry of Government Services - Government of Ontario
Web Application Developer at Policy Research & Analysis Branch, Ministry of Community & Social Services - Government of Ontario
Project Manager / Software Developer at Ministry of Government Services - Government of Ontario
Project Manager / Software Developer at Ministry of Government Services - Government of Ontario
Project Manager / Software Developer at Office of the Corporate CTO, Management Board Secretariat - Government of Ontario
Project Manager / Software Developer at Office of the Corporate CTO, Management Board Secretariat - Government of Ontario
Software Developer at Kaval Wireless Technologies Inc.
Web/Database Application Developer at NuComm Marketing Inc.
Technologist at Bayer Inc.
Peer Tutor at Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology
System Administrator at KL / Carlson Wagonlit Travel
Work Study Student at Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology

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19 more...

Education

Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology
W.D.S.S.

Recommended

3 people have recommended John R.

Connections

197 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

John R. Southern’s Summary

Creative solution developer, project manager and trainer with experience across the spectrum ranging from embedded software and hardware development to production of marketing collateral and training materials.

Interested in projects which will engage both my technical and creative skills, with a particular bent toward Internet-enabled technologies.

John R. Southern’s Specialties:

• agile project management
• content management
• information architecture
• information design
• model driven development
• object oriented analysis and design
• online collaboration tools and practices
• open source technologies
• Plone
• Python
• technical documentation
• test-driven development
• training
• UML
• user interface design
• wired and wireless networking
• W3C standards-based development
• ZOPE

John R. Southern’s Experience

Principal
Hardwerke (Sole Proprietorship)

(Sole Proprietorship; Computer Hardware industry)

December 2006 — Present (2 years 8 months)
Partner

Krunkwerke

(Partnership; Design industry)

December 2004 — Present (4 years 8 months)
Principal
Softwerke (Sole Proprietorship)

(Sole Proprietorship; Computer Software industry)

January 2004 — Present (5 years 7 months)
Web Application Developer

Corporate Coordination Office, Ministry of Education - Government of Ontario

(Government Administration industry)

February 2009 — April 2009 (3 months)

Executive Leadership Space site - further enhancements to an existing site which provides support for members of the Executive Leadership Team.
Web Application Developer

Policy Research & Analysis Branch, Ministry of Community & Social Services - Government of Ontario

(Government Administration industry)

February 2009 — April 2009 (3 months)

MCSS Resource Centre - Phase 3...
Plone Consultant

Research & Outcome Measurement Branch, Ministry of Children & Youth Services - Government of Ontario

(Government Administration industry)

February 2009 — April 2009 (3 months)
Web Application Developer

Community Services I&IT Cluster - Government of Ontario

(Government Administration industry)

March 2009 — April 2009 (2 months)
Web Application Developer

Communications Services Branch, Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs - Government of Ontario

(Government Administration industry)

February 2009 — April 2009 (3 months)
Web Application Developer

Community Services I&IT Cluster - Government of Ontario

(Government Administration industry)

October 2008 — December 2008 (3 months)

Executive Leadership Space site - enhancements to an existing site which provides support for members of the Executive Leadership Team.

• fine-tuning of information architecture
• visual enhancements to home page navigation
• addition of calendar-oriented navigation for meeting content
• preparation for migration to Plone 3 (from 2.5)
• training of site administrator and support staff
Web Application Developer

Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 10,001 or more employees; Government Administration industry)

July 2008 — November 2008 (5 months)

JVN KITS – development of an application to support document management and collaboration between members of the Justice Video Network (JVN) team and project stakeholders. The Knowledge and Information Tracking System (KITS) provides the ability to manage:

• locations (buildings, floors, rooms)
• projects (business cases, performance measures, readiness checklists, requisition orders, design documents, material lists, timelines, issues, change requests, contacts)
• equipment (manufacturers, models, documentation, pricing, vendors)
• services (construction, installation, maintenance, pricing, service providers)

The site was developed as an Apache/Zope/Plone 3 based solution, with custom Archetypes-based content types.

Training – preparation of video-based training materials to support users of the site, detailing each of the various usage scenarios. One-on-one and group training sessions were also hosted, during the development and knowledge transfer phases.
Web Application Developer

Business Solutions Branch, Ministry of the Attorney General - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 10,001 or more employees; Government Administration industry)

April 2008 — June 2008 (3 months)

BeST Dashboard – development of an intranet-based portal to support collaboration between members of 3 development teams in the Court Business Systems Branch. The site ties together project, procurement team member specific documents, events and support materials. Using a timeline-based dashboard, team members and project managers are kept informed of past, current and important upcoming events related to the development projects that they’re engaged in.

The site was developed as an Apache/Zope/Plone 3 based solution and involved creation of custom skins and Archetypes-based content types.

Training – to support users of the site, video-based training materials were prepared detailing each of the various usage scenarios. One-on-one and group training sessions were also hosted, during the development and knowledge transfer phases.
Web Application Developer

Business Solutions Branch, Ministry of the Attorney General - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

December 2007 — February 2008 (3 months)

Migration to Plone...

Ontario Court Forms site - migration of an existing Internet site which was constructed as a JBoss application.

Municipal Courts site - migration of an existing extranet site which resided in an NTS Content Management System.

Both sites were migrated to an Apache/Zope/Plone 3 based solution and involved creation of custom skins and Archetypes-based content types.

Training - upon successful completion of the migration a training session was hosted for the site administrators and members of the development team. The goal of the session was to familiarize participants with the new sites regarding how to use and manage them.
Web Application Developer

Community, Youth & Social Services I&IT Cluster - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

July 2007 — November 2007 (5 months)

MCSS Resource Centre - Phase 2...

This phase focused on preparation for the production launch and post-launch enhancement development. Work also dealt with three other areas: training, video materials and support infrastructure.

Training - sessions were hosted for all team members responsible for production support which included administrators, developers and help desk personnel.

Video materials - a narrated overview to introduce the site and its areas of functionality, along with a shortened version were produced for the launch.

Support infrastructure - to enable team collaboration, a support portal was created. It provided areas for sharing documents, issue tracking, a wiki, a project status blog, a project calendar and RSS feeds for syndication of project information. Two additional ZOPE/Plone servers were set up to provide development and UAT environments and an SVN-based repository was implemented for maintaining custom code and documentation under revision control.
Web Application Developer

Ministry of Government Services - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

July 2007 — August 2007 (2 months)

Migration of Legacy Sites...

Although most of the legacy sites from the pilot phase of the Collaboration Tool Service development had been migrated over to the new production infrastructure - at least, those which had decided to continue operating - there were still a few remaining. One of these sites was for supporting the bi-monthly meetings of a cross-ministerial, executive-level IT leadership council.

Challenges involved with this migration included the fact that the legacy site was running on significantly older versions of Python, ZOPE and Plone than that which was currently deployed in the target production environment. Hence, the migration strategy had to take into account the effects of and limitations imposed by these differences.

The task of completing this migration was the focus of this contract.
Web Application Developer

Policy Research & Analysis Branch, Ministry of Community & Social Services - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 11-50 employees; Government Administration industry)

January 2007 — April 2007 (4 months)

MCSS Resource Centre - Phase 1...

The Social Services Resource Centre is a site which strives to enable more effective collaboration between ministry policy analysts through sharing of documents, events, seminar materials, links and other items of interest to this user community. The goal for phase 1 of development was to build, then launch the site internally.

Development - the site (which uses the Plone-based Collaboration Tools Service) involved customization including enhancements to the default CTS skin, such that its appearance was aligned with that of the ministry's new Thriving Communities initiative. This necessitated the creation of custom content panes and portlets for the presentation of and access to content within the site.

Documentation and training - one-on-one and group training sessions were provided, to facilitate knowledge transfer to site administrators and end users. Additionally, online documentation was prepared, to further support both groups.
Project Manager / Software Developer

Ministry of Government Services - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

April 2006 — November 2006 (8 months)

Launch of the Production Service OPS-wide...

With 3 successful phases behind us, the service had matured to the point where it could soon be offered throughout the entire Ontario Public Service (OPS).

Over the next 3 months, our development team - which had moved to it's new home with the Application Services group in the Ministry of Government Services - prepared for the launch. The two newest team members moved to their new home with CCAS, which had now taken ownership of the service. One of them became the service manager.

On June 26 the Collaboration Tool Service was formally launched. It has since become pivotal to realizing significant cost-savings within the OPS, in addition to being a great achievement for open source software within the Ontario government.

The final phase focused on documentation, training and knowledge transfer as full-time employees were now available for us to transfer the project management and development responsibilities over to.
Project Manager / Software Developer

Ministry of Government Services - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

July 2005 — April 2006 (10 months)

Build-up to Operation Ready State...

After yet another successful development phase and more funding, the focus shifted to progressing toward preparing a production service offering to be owned by the newly formed Common Components, Applications and Services (CCAS) group.

As before, responsibilities included project management, documentation and site creation. However, new members - to be part of the nascent CCAS group - were added to the team. This marked the beginning of the knowledge transfer portion of the project.

Near the end of this phase, additional hardware was purchased in preparation for increased demands on the soon-to-be-launched service. This too required creation of additional architectural and technical documentation, for which I was responsible.

It was also during this phase that Cabinet approved an official policy on Open Source Software - a move which was critical to the ability to offer a production service based on the chosen tools.
Project Manager / Software Developer

Office of the Corporate CTO, Management Board Secretariat - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 201-500 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

August 2004 — April 2005 (9 months)

Build-up to Full Production Ready State...

Due to the successes of the previous phase of the collaboration tools project, additional funding was made available to continue development of the pilot service.

Continuing in the dual-role of project manager and co-developer, responsibilities once again included management and development of enhancements to the service. During this phase, the focus was on building the service up to the level of being full-production ready. As such, tasks involving preparation of architectural, system management and user documentation became important.

By this time, interest in the project had spread throughout the OPS. There were requests - which the team fulfilled - for creation of more than 20 additional collaboration sites; for stakeholders in numerous ministries throughout the Ontario government.
Project Manager / Software Developer

Office of the Corporate CTO, Management Board Secretariat - Government of Ontario

(Government Agency; 201-500 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

March 2004 — April 2004 (2 months)

Build-up to Proof of Concept State...

In 2003, a series of pilot projects involving the use of web-based collaboration tools began. One set involved proprietary tools and a second focused on the use of open source tools. Response to the open source solution was very enthusiastic, resulting in funding for additional research and development.

Working in the dual role of project manager and co-developer, I was responsible overseeing the planning and development of a set of 5 pilot sites. The goal of these pilots was to further test the viability of open source in supporting online business needs, and to test a comprehensive suite of tools to support and drive online collaboration.

The suite of tools included:

• wiki pages/webs
• blogs
• issue tracking
• instant messaging
• threaded discussion forums
• shared bookmarks
• RSS syndication of content
• public/private collaboration spaces

The chosen platform consisted of Suse Linux, ZOPE, Plone and Jabber.
Software Developer

Kaval Wireless Technologies Inc.

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Wireless industry)

July 2000 — January 2004 (3 years 7 months)

InView Management System (IMS) - work involved creating page mock-ups, then implementing them via DTML pages, DTML methods and CSS. This was then combined with other team members' work to create an AJAX-based application, capable of managing LinkNet systems via a custom ZOPE product. Later, I helped add support for SNMP and SMTP-based event notification.

LinkNet Gateway Module (GM) - assisted with development of software which maintained data feeds between the IMS server, LinkNet GM, and the LinkNet Service Modules, both using Python and embedded Linux.

Kaval Intranet - I gained my first exposure to ZOPE and wikis though helping build the company intranet site which became pivotal to enabling collaboration among engineering team members. Later, I helped to develop a ZOPE product for managing ISO 900x engineering change orders.

LinkNet Builder - assisted with development of a web-based product configuration tool, for the sales team using Python and the Twisted framework.
Web/Database Application Developer

NuComm Marketing Inc.

(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Telecommunications industry)

September 1999 — July 2000 (11 months)

Web Application Developer - responsible for development of a content management system for maintenance of ISO-9001 quality documents on the corporate intranet. The other primary responsibility was to assist with development of a database driven, web based reporting system for sharing sales reports with end customers via an extranet site.

Database Developer - responsible for management of entire lifecycle of client sales campaign leads: data format conversion, scrubbing, loading into outbound dialing systems and processing of completed call data for generation of daily sales reports. After documenting all departmental job procedures, I set about successfully automating a majority of this process (using Access macros and Visual Basic code), resulting in marked improvements in both efficiency and quality. Other daily responsibilities involved the management of Mosaix (M3000 and M5000) and EIS call processing systems - for outbound and inbound call centre operations.
Technologist

Bayer Inc.

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Chemicals industry)

January 1998 — September 1999 (1 year 9 months)

TTIMS Administrator - as a Technical Training and Information Management System (TTIMS) admin, my responsibility was to assist with implementation and daily management. The system was implemented to provide competency management and training and equipment document management - was vital for supporting instrument mechanics and electricians whom had recently been cross-trained in one other's trade.

Electrical and Process Control System Design - responsibilities included preparing engineering construction packages, checking and modification of CAD drawings (instrument loops, PLC logic and ladder diagrams) and assisting design engineers.

Control System Support - provided support for plants using Honeywell TDC 2000/3000, Foxboro IA Series and Intellution FIX systems, in addition to GE Fanuc PLCs.

RFID System Support - developed custom test equipment using Microsoft Visual Basic and Microsoft Access to help troubleshoot problems with RFID-based product tracking system.
Peer Tutor

Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology

(Higher Education industry)

September 1994 — December 1997 (3 years 4 months)

Working for the student resource centre, I provided peer tutoring to fellow students on subjects which included:

• electronic circuit analysis and design
• microcomputer programming
(C, 8085 and 68000 assembly language)
• mathematics
• software applications: WordPerfect, Lotus 123
• Unix, MS-DOS
System Administrator

KL / Carlson Wagonlit Travel

(Leisure, Travel & Tourism industry)

June 1995 — December 1997 (2 years 7 months)

Database Development - the Group Tours department had a very large client base which required the development and maintenance of a custom Access database. This database contained records of clients and the trips which they had purchased. In preparation for outbound tour groups, the information was used for generation of passenger lists, baggage tags and custom itineraries. Post-travel, the information was used for targeted mailing of materials regarding future trips.

Network Administration - responsible for network planning, construction and management (including Internet access).

Employee Support and Training - on a daily basis, I was also responsible for providing the agents with training and support with many matters related to the computer systems on which they relied.
Work Study Student

Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology

(Educational Institution; 501-1000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

September 1994 — May 1997 (2 years 9 months)

Daily responsibilities included:

• cleaning and maintenance of computer labs
• assembly and repair of PC's and peripherals
• dismantling old equipment (including the decommissioning and dis-assembly of a beautiful old VAX 11/780 system)
• installing cable (including CAT5 and optical fibre)
• preparation of custom cable assemblies
• installation and troubleshooting of computers on Novell Network

Additional Information

John R. Southern’s Websites:

John R. Southern’s Interests:

digital photography, digital videography, electronic music, genealogy, geotagging, LEGO MINDSTORMS, world travel, vintage computers, vintage electronic musical instruments