Owner at Locomotivity
Asheville, North Carolina Area
- Current
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- Owner at Locomotivity
- Founder at Shovelpunks, Inc
- Past
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- Lead Software Engineer at Electric Sheep Company
- Principal Software Engineer at NetBlue
- Master Software Engineer at SPSS, Inc.
- VP Software Engineering at Primary Knowledge
- Technical Lead at Hearst New Media
- Senior Software Developer at Poppe Tyson
- Associate Director at adobe theatre company
- Education
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- New York University
- Southwestern University
- Recommended
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3 people have recommended Lance - Connections
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208
connections
- Industry
- Computer Software
- Websites
Lance Ball’s Summary
I have been a working software developer for 14 years. After getting a Masters in Computer Science from NYU, I started building web sites for Fortune 500 companies like T. Rowe Price, Chase Manhattan Bank, and ING Barings. By 1999 I was VP of Software Development at Primary Knowledge - a New York City dot com startup. In 2000, I went to work for SPSS, Inc. leading the development of large scale, distributed web services and desktop application software written in Java.
In 2004 I moved to Asheville, NC and telecommuted for various NYC and Silicon Valley companies. For the last year I have been developing social networks and building websites in Ruby on Rails for clients in Asheville, NC. I love the power and flexibility of Ruby, Rails, Javascript, and CSS combined with clean design, architectural simplicity, and disciplined testing.
Over the past fourteen years, I have worked independently, led small teams of 2 or 3 people, and served as the lead developer and project manager for 20-person teams distributed world-wide. During this time I have developed strong technical skills in process, design, development and analysis. In addition to consulting, I also teach analysis, design and implementation courses in the Computer Science department at Mars Hill University. Currently I am most interested in web 2.0 technologies, streaming collaboration, open source, agile development processes, distributed software systems, and fun and challenging problems.
Lance Ball’s Specialties:
My experience includes large-scale architecture; working with geographically distributed teams; current software development methodologies such as XP, Scrum, and Test Driven Development; data-warehousing concepts and practices; and data mining and predictive analysis concepts.
Lance Ball’s Experience
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Owner
Locomotivity
(Information Technology and Services industry)
January 2009 — Present (7 months)
Locomotivity is a coworking space in Asheville, NC.
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Founder
Shovelpunks, Inc
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
April 2008 — Present (1 year 4 months)
I and the two other Shovelpunks founders are launching Greenthumbr (http://greenthumbr.com), a resource for gardeners and others who want to kill fewer plants by their own hands. Shovelpunks is a company dedicated to the development of green or otherwise eco-friendly internet applications.
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Lead Software Engineer
Electric Sheep Company
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)
July 2007 — April 2008 (10 months)
Design and implementation of an advertising network in 3D virtual environments, with Second Life being the first. Wrote code for OnRez Viewer, a custom implementation of Linden Lab's Second Life viewer. Contributed to custom virtual world backend code in Java.
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Principal Software Engineer
NetBlue
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)
February 2007 — July 2007 (6 months)
Principal software engineer responsible for back end ad server and database systems.
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Master Software Engineer
SPSS, Inc.
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; SPSS; Computer Software industry)
August 2001 — January 2007 (5 years 6 months)
Technical lead on large-scale, enterprise class software products. Working with geographically distributed team using agile development methodologies. Primary development language is Java.
Review and recommend 3rd party products and open source tools for internal use. -
VP Software Engineering
Primary Knowledge
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)
April 1999 — July 2001 (2 years 4 months)
Managed the growth and development of a team of software engineers for a dot com startup. Oversaw all software development projects, and led the development effort for a large scale distributed data transformation system. Primary development languages were Java and C++.
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Technical Lead
Hearst New Media
(Public Company; Publishing industry)
March 1998 — April 1999 (1 year 2 months)
Led development projects for Hearst's Women.com web site.
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Senior Software Developer
Poppe Tyson
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
November 1996 — March 1998 (1 year 5 months)
Developed web sites for Fortune 500 companies as a part of the Poppe Tyson advertising group. Primary development language was Perl.
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Associate Director
adobe theatre company
(Computer Software industry)
1991 — 1998 (7 years)
Lance Ball’s Education
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New York University
MS , Computer Science , September 1996 — May 1998
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Southwestern University
BFA , Theatre , 1986 — 1990
Additional Information
Lance Ball’s Websites:
Lance Ball’s Groups:
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Ruby on Rails -
The RFP Database -
SPSS Alumni -
Green Corporate Network
Lance Ball’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
