in the USA... Vermont
New Zealand
- Current
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- Team Leader at Navman
- Past
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- Contract Programmer at available for hire
- iTV developer at Walt Disney Internet Group
- Senior Software Engineer at Minds Eye Productions
- Video Game Developer at Self Employed
- Education
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- The University of Edinburgh
- Recommended
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3 people have recommended Pete - Connections
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50
connections
- Industry
- Computer Software
- Websites
Pete Baron’s Summary
Video game designer and programmer for over 20 years.
Developed on a huge variety of platforms going right back to the Commodore 64.
Also experienced in developing Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life.
Recently employed full-time by Walt Disney Internet Group.
Currently employed by NavMan working on personal navigation systems (following emigration to New Zealand).
Pete Baron’s Specialties:
Extreme flexibility, including rapid migration to new platforms and languages. Detailed project break-down and estimation. Timely delivery of quality code solutions. Speed optimisation in assembly languages.
Pete Baron’s Experience
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Team Leader
Navman
(Public Company; Consumer Electronics industry)
July 2008 — Present (1 year 5 months)
My temporary role as PTL has been extended into a permanent position as a Team Lead. New areas of responsibility include HR and more involvement in forwards planning for future product ranges.
As the product cycle is still on-going this role is in addition to my previous duties as PTL for the 'Spirit' project.
Edit (January 2009):
The product cycle ended in Decemeber and the 'Spirit' Navman software has been revealed to the world - to wide acclaim. The new look and scrolling menus are a complete revelation in the Personal Car Navigation industry and I'm very proud to have been part of the team that brought so many changes to market in such a compressed time-frame! -
Team Leader
Navman
(Computer Software industry)
2006 — 2009 (3 years )
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Project Team Leader
Navman
(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; Consumer Electronics industry)
March 2008 — July 2008 (5 months)
Promoted to PTL, my responsibilities now include helping design the architecture for the next generation of Navman products, leading a team of between 3 and 7 engineers as we develop that architecture, and ensuring that all aspects of the development cycle are fulfilled to high quality and on schedule.
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Senior software engineer
NavMan
(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; Consumer Electronics industry)
July 2007 — March 2008 (9 months)
Improving the voice guidance system for the next generation release of the Navman car and personal navigation system.
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Contract Programmer
available for hire
(Computer Games industry)
May 2007 — July 2007 (3 months)
Emigrated to New Zealand!
Self-employed contract programmer. Currently picking up piece-work from Rent-a-coder and previous contacts until a major contract comes my way! -
iTV developer
Walt Disney Internet Group
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; DIS; Internet industry)
2005 — April 2007 (2 years )
Games developer for WDIG working on interactive TV games primarily for the BSkyB set-top boxes (Pace TP2 and etc). Working solo or as part of a team I developed more than 10 games on this platform, including creating the reskinnable engine for the best selling (as of 2006) franchise; Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and one of the most popular single games ever; Monopoly Deluxe.
I frequently had creative input into the game designs, including control systems, game features, level design and puzzle elements.
The Narnia Role-playing game design was based heavily on a paper that I had submitted six months earlier detailing the techniques, desirable elements and advantages of RPG style games on this particular platform.
Please see www.petebaron.com for my full C.V. -
Senior Software Engineer
Minds Eye Productions
(Computer Games industry)
November 1998 — 2005 (7 years )
I developed the PC based "Stratego". Based on the board game it involved some tricky AI work (players begin the game knowing nothing about the opponent's pieces).
For a voice-over system in "The Golf Pro" to sound like an American golf commentator I devised an overall approach (production rules based on my modification of Reverse Polish), implemented tools for conversion and testing (two CDs of voice recordings were chopped into five thousand voice fragments which could be reconstructed in a huge variety of ways; they all had to sound good).
I then took over the PSX "Sheep" project and delivered it to schedule, developed an AI system for the "Starsky and Hutch" video game and converted several games to the "LLG touch screen system" for use in public venues. -
Video Game Developer
Self Employed
(Entertainment industry)
1989 — 1998 (9 years )
Self employed, I worked on a large number of contracts from my first complete video game (Salamander on the Commodore 64) through to my last contract game (Wolverine, Adamantium Rage on the Super Nintendo console).
I would have stayed self-employed but Minds Eye offered me a great deal for full-time work from home :)
Pete Baron’s Education
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The University of Edinburgh
MSc , Knowledge Based Systems , 1994 — 1997
MSc in Artificial Intelligence, specialised in Vision Processing and Intelligent Robotics. Also studied Lisp with Functional Programming, AI in Education, Graphics Processing.
My thesis was entitled "Evolutionary Shape Optimisation Using a Voxel Based Representation."- Activities and Societies:
- Member of the Rifle Club. Participated at Bisley shooting at 400 yds and 1 mile.
Additional Information
Pete Baron’s Websites:
Pete Baron’s Interests:
Motorbikes, Sci Fi, Aviation, Technology, Shooting, Inventing new games, Artificial Life via evolution, Pool/Snooker
Pete Baron’s Groups:
Auckland Pistol Club
Pete Baron’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
