Louis Ewens

Current

Chief Engineer at ELAREE Media

Past

Technology Consultant at Wegame (Self-employed)
Sr. Director of Architecture and Technology at Delivery Agent, Inc.
Technology Consultant at WeGame (Self-employed)

Director of Technology at Delivery Agent, Inc.
CTO and Consultant (Self-employed)
Principal Scientist; Disney Internet Group at The Walt Disney Company
Online Architect at Electronic Arts
IT Director at MCGI
Online Technology Director at Broderbund Software, Inc.
Project Lead and Principal Engineer at Broderbund Software, Inc.
Freelance Programmer (Self-employed)
Software Engineer and Game Designer at Broderbund Software, Inc.
Software Engineer at Stoneware, Inc.
Computer Advocate and Teacher at Marin Computer Center

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Louis Ewens’s Summary

An entertainment industry professional who brings technical know-how, fresh ideas and a wealth of experience to the table. With a career that spans from the first wave of microcomputers to today’s distributed Internet applications, I specialize in creating new and engaging consumer experiences.

Throughout my career I have been dedicated to quality and innovation. Solving technical challenges with creative thinking is my passion. While I have developed many solo projects, I prefer working in an interactive team environment. I’ve been doing Agile development since before it had a name. My most valuable ability is being able to assess a situation very quickly and accurately.

My current technology tool set of choice is LAMP+MVC using Apache, PHP 5 and MySQL 5. I have a history of creating large-scale internet applications for big entertainment companies. But I also excel in the start-up and small company environment.

Louis Ewens’s Specialties:

Creating highly-scalable, super-stable online entertainment and e-commerce including games, Web 2.0 community, educational and shopping experiences. Back end SOA plus a single code base/run-many/multi-tenant architecture.

Louis Ewens’s Experience

Chief Engineer

ELAREE Media

(Internet industry)

August 2007 — Present (2 years 4 months)

Contract technology consultant for hire, Chief Architect and Engineer; specializing in consumer Internet applications.
Technology Consultant
Wegame (Self-employed)

(Self-Employed; 1-10 employees; Online Media industry)

2007 — 2008 (1 year )
Sr. Director of Architecture and Technology

Delivery Agent, Inc.

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

April 2006 — August 2007 (1 year 5 months)

Responsible for building new technology innovation and intellectual property, with patent pending on the core company technology. I determine and evaluate all technical and methodological approaches, ensuring smooth integration while maintaining consideration of both short-term and long-term perspectives.

Chief Architect of the new entertainment portal, SeenON.com. Part search engine and part community, the site blends the "As Seen In" shopping metaphor into stand-alone consumer entertainment. A custom back end console allows editorial staff to maintain up-to-the-minute control over content.

Following an MVC application pattern on this project allowed a small development team to produce a relatively large amount of online features in a very short amount of time. It also allowed us to easily create a custom, search friendly URL structure. PHP 5's new object-oriented features afford better control of the application logic while facilitating easier code re-use.
Technology Consultant
WeGame (Self-employed)

(Self-Employed; 1-10 employees; Online Media industry)

2006 — 2007 (1 year )
Director of Technology

Delivery Agent, Inc.

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Entertainment industry)

April 2005 — April 2006 (1 year 1 month)

Architect of entire start-up company technology plan including networks, servers, hardware appliances, code base, security systems and database schema. I engineered the internal IT environment (Exchange, Dell, Cisco, Sonicwall) as well as the customer-facing online infrastructure (Sun, Cisco, F5, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Shell Script).

Chief Architect and Engineer of the custom multi-tenant e-commerce system that provides the online shopping presence for ABC, NBC, E! Entertainment, MTV, Bravo, Martha Stewart, GSN, UFC, FOX, Sony Pictures and many other high-profile entertainment clients.

Defined the administrative work flow for managing all e-commerce stores using a single custom back end console. This allowed the company to easily manage an explosive growth curve while deploying a relatively small compliment of staff.
CTO and Consultant

Self-employed

(Self-Employed; Myself Only; Internet industry)

January 2001 — April 2005 (4 years 4 months)

Entertainment technology consultant, CTO, Chief Architect and Engineer; specializing in consumer applications.

Major projects included the prototype for a new e-commerce system at a pre-funding start-up. As CTO I managed development efforts while also acting as Chief Architect and Engineer on the project. Later I represented company technology innovation to investors during initial funding efforts.

For Lucasfilm I was asked to evaluate a proprietary internal web development system. My feedback would ultimately be the decision-making factor for whether the company would pursue the project further. The report included a full technical assessment, work flow and market feasibility study.

At Plan B Enterprises I set the technology course for a new venture "Girls Horse Club," a strategically crafted entertainment property for preteen and young teen girls who love animals. Open Source software allowed this young start-up to quickly build several custom entertainment applications.
Principal Scientist; Disney Internet Group

The Walt Disney Company

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

January 2000 — January 2001 (1 year 1 month)

Reporting directly to the CTO and EVP of Technology, I created strategies to optimize production, communication and operations efficiency between the entire enterprise of diverse properties and services, including Disney.com, ESPN, ABC, ABC News, Movies.com and the Go.com Search Portal.

In this role I was able to use my technical skill and experience to recognize where there were overlapping areas of technology in this large media company. By developing cross-over communication lines and technology propagation between business units, I was able to find areas of optimization that reduced expense while boosting productivity.

One of my major projects was to evaluate software-on-demand products from several vendors in order to find the best fit for Disney. All aspects of these hosted online services were addressed including innovation level, features, customer experience, hosting facilities, DRM, security and cost-effectiveness.
Online Architect

Electronic Arts

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; erts; Computer Games industry)

January 1999 — January 2000 (1 year 1 month)

Founding principal architect of the server technology behind the hit "The Sims" and "Sim City" products. The Sims was the first PC game to integrate online content sharing into the consumer experience. I was responsible for creating the back end magic that happened behind the scenes.

My role included developing the network design, server layout, load balancing, security and storage options for the project (Cisco, Sun, F5, Auspex). I developed a blend of open source, commercial and custom software to define the interactive layers for this huge online community. (Apache, PHP, Oracle, Perl, Shell Scripts) On the planning and management side I produced the online policies, budgets and strategic plans for the entire system.

After the initial release I developed an online localization CMS for use with all Maxis products. This stand-alone application made it easy for the company to manage and translate entire web sites of content into many different languages.
IT Director

MCGI

(Partnership; 51-200 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

January 1998 — January 1999 (1 year 1 month)

Reporting to the CEO, I managed enterprise-wide information technology infrastructure and services. I was responsible for developing the overall vision for the company Information Technology platform. This role included hands-on administration of servers (Solaris, Linux, Windows and Mac OS), network development and maintenance (Cisco), phone system development, and management of all vendor/contractor relationships.

On the software side I establishing the company Intranet presence and services including a custom billable time and expense reporting system.
Online Technology Director

Broderbund Software, Inc.

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Computer Games industry)

January 1997 — January 1998 (1 year 1 month)

Founded the Red Orb Online group to provide web and Internet engineering services to this new entertainment division of Broderbund. I recruited and managed internal staff and projects as well as external relationships and contracts. I worked directly with product and marketing management to form a cohesive vision for online policy and branding efforts.

Principal engineer of Red Orb Zone, the division's proprietary game matching service. Built in C++, this self-contained module closely meshed with Microsoft DirectX on the client side to provide chat and game matching services for any number of online games. It became the standard game matching service for all online titles. I was awarded the 1998 Broderbund Intellectual Capital Award for outstanding achievements.

Built several game specific multi-player communication engines. Dealing with 33.6 modem speeds and excessive packet latency required us to be very creative with how the applications responded under such duress.
Project Lead and Principal Engineer

Broderbund Software, Inc.

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Computer Software industry)

December 1988 — January 1997 (8 years 2 months)

Directed an engineering group focused on developing productivity and educational products. Our products included the innovative “Kid Pix” title and a number of sequels including “Kid Write,” “Kid Cuts” and “Kid Pix Companion.”

As principal engineer I built a custom data-driven engine for a modernized CD-ROM version of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego." Our goal was to create a multi-media version of this bellwether edu-tainment title. The results were a series of titles that are still marketed today. The voice-synchronization techniques I developed for this release later became the standard for all Broderbund titles.

Created, designed and programmed several state-of-the-art entertainment and productivity software products in C, C++ and machine language. See my Moby Games link on this page for more details of this ancient history.
Freelance Programmer

Self-employed

(Self-Employed; Myself Only; Computer Software industry)

March 1987 — December 1988 (1 year 10 months)

Authored and produced "VCR Companion" for the Apple II and IBM PC. This SPA-nominated title was the first consumer-oriented video titling and presentation software product of its kind. Coded entirely in 6502 machine language, it incorporated drivers for playing-back morphing vector images from "Fantavision" and animation output from other Broderbund creativity tools. VCRC featured a custom point-and-click windowed interface that supported joystick and the emerging mouse pointing device. It allowed the user to generate bootable color presentations well before PowerPoint. By invitation from Apple Computer, VCR Companion was featured in the Apple Booth at Applefest Boston.

Co-developed an Apple IIgs conversion of the award-winning "The Print Shop" product line, adding color image manipulation and printing capabilities.
Software Engineer and Game Designer

Broderbund Software, Inc.

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

July 1983 — March 1987 (3 years 9 months)

Designed and authored the "Whistler’s Brother" video game title for Atari and Commodore 64 platforms, taking full advantage of the advanced sound and graphic chips available in these systems. The game was programmed entirely in machine language.

Built and released "The Toy Shop" title on four hardware platforms simultaneously. This consumer printing product took paper toy templates designed on the Macintosh and allowed consumers to customize and print the models. My custom C-based rendering engine allowed the Apple II to build and print Macintosh quality documents.

Programmed platform conversions of game titles, including "Arcade Machine" to Atari. Created boot installers, front-end page designs and copy-protection for 3ed party gaming products published by the company. All were programmed in machine language.
Software Engineer

Stoneware, Inc.

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

August 1982 — June 1983 (11 months)

Implemented one of the first copy-protection schemes for the IBM PC.

Designed and implemented client-end database conversion utilities. These applications allowed the company's "DB Master" product to expand beyond its normal import/export capabilities using the DIF Data Interchange Format.

Created disk duplication and verification software for in-house duplication facilities.
Computer Advocate and Teacher

Marin Computer Center

(Non-Profit; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

1979 — 1980 (1 year )

Taught computer programming and literacy to kids and adults at the first public access microcomputer center. This was way before computers became a mainstream part of society.

The Processor Technology SOL-20 computers were the same model I used in the computer lab at school. By running the "Electric Pencil" word processor and printing to a Diablo impact printer, we were actively demonstrating the future of the modern school and business environment years before it would become a reality for mainstream consumers.