[LRUG] [JOBS] Would anyone like to help Teach Monsters to Read?

Fri Jun 14 12:42:20 PDT 2013

Sorry all for the group reply. Apologies

Alexandre M. Reis
http://alexmreis.com
+32 484 77 99 27

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Alex Reis <alex at alexmreis.com> wrote:

> Hey Antonio,
>
> I'm Alex, a Brazilian developer who lives (legally, for 3 years now) in
> Belgium but prefers to work for clients in the UK ;) I take deep interest
> in what you're building, since my 8 year old son is facing challenges in
> the second grade due to not being able to grasp what he reads, on top of
> having to learn a second language at that young age for his main duties in
> school.
>
> Here's a summary, aka TL;DR:
>
> - 14 years of experience as a dev, 4 with ruby and rails
> - Great at prototyping, coaching, rescuing projects and simplifying
> complex code
> - Available for 20h/week until August, full time afterwards
> - Ruby, Rails, EventMachine, RSpec, Capybara, Cucumber, FactoryGirl,
> MySQL, Postgres, Linux, Chef, Redis, MongoDB, Bootstrap
> - Loves JS, CoffeeScript, Backbone.js, Spine.js and single page web apps
> - Entrepreneur, Lean Startup afficcionado, loves and excels at Product
> Design and development
>
> Publicly accessible previous works:
>
> - http://lovetoride.net (Rails 3.2, Spine.js)
> - http://myrpspace.alexmreis.com/ (Rails 2.3)
> - http://store.wicoms.com (Backbone.js, PHP backend)
>  - http://quotr.herokuapp.com/
>
> Now if this got you interested, read along ;)
>
> == Background ==
> I've been doing RoR since 2008 on and off, but only really managed to make
> the carreer switch in 2012. Before that, I've grown from PHP dev in 1998 to
> a Java developer in 2001, and a Java architect from 2006 onwards, though I
> hate that title - I think all teams work best when everyone's level in
> skills and in the org chart.
>
> == Availability ==
> I'm currently on a contract with Fitzdares, a bespoke bookmaker in London,
> and have worked previously with Luke Saunders - another LRUGer - on
> http://lovetoride.net for the first half of last year. My contract with
> them will probably end in August or so, we're taking a migration project
> live this month and I need to stay around for necessary bug fixes still.
>
> I'd be able to work on Teach Your Monster to Read for 20 hours a week, and
> while this might mean me skipping a few days at night, it will be
> consistent, quality output. I'm usually in London once a month around the
> 20th, I'm in town next week in fact, at Friday the 21st. If that's not
> enough face time, I can always arrange a bit more travelling.
>
> == Development ==
> My main strong point as a developer is in prototyping
> applications/features fast, while making sure they can evolve nicely into
> production systems. Lately I've been doing a lot of CoffeeScript and
> Backbone.js and creating small single page apps for specific workflows.
> Since I've been into single page apps from 2008, I tend to have an edge on
> creating maintainable code bases using JS/CoffeeScript.
>
> Another strong point of mine is rescuing projects - be it writing tests
> and fixing bugs, helping other devs think out of the box, or restructuring
> complex code to make it simple - though for that I advise against taking me
> half time, cos it takes full time effort to make a great job.
>
> == Product Design, UI/UX ==
> I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and though none of my ventures took off yet,
> I've helped others with theirs by coaching them following the Lean Startup
> principles. Some teams I've coached are http://inthis.co ,
> http://ebookplus.com and http://8thcolor.com . I've participated in a
> Startup Weekend in Brussels where my team (Just Delivered) won the "Leanest
> Team" awards selected by Ash Maurya, who also coached us during the weekend.
>
> During my more corporate work on the Java days, I've been known for taking
> a project and making it fit the client's needs, no matter what the
> requirements say. I tend to be good at facilitating discussions around
> features, coming up with simpler ways of achieving the same goals, and at
> UI design and usability. I've had more than one client say I achieved "more
> than they thought possible" on their projects.
>
> Taking a product from concept to an actionable list of User Stories /
> things to do is one of my greatest skills as well. I've worked for 2 years
> with the belgian startup D Square and took them from a research MATLAB
> project to a full blown multi-user cloud Java app. They had a vague idea of
> what their software would do, and by involving early adopter customers and
> their team, we achieved a product that is now used by some of the biggest
> oil and chemical companies in Belgium to monitor and troubleshoot their
> production processes
>
> I can also sling some Photoshop and Web Design, having done quite a bit of
> design on my own. One of the most recent examples of that can be seen in
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/6vh80p95p3kmqvq/landing_page_participant.png ,
> a landing page for one of my previous ventures that didn't fly.
>
> == Agile, TDD, BDD ==
> I'm really passionate about software development, and care deeply about
> the code I write. I believe in Software Craftsmanship and Agile, but think
> of Agile practices as more of guidelines than rules. I love employing TDD
> when it fits, but only where it makes sense too. I'm a versed user of
> RSpec, Cucumber, Capybara, FactoryGirl and friends, and think if there's
> any truth in code documentation, it's in passing, readable tests.
>
> == DevOps / Sys admin ==
> From 2001 to 2003 I did Linux server administration as well, and keep
> doing it to this day for the servers that run my own apps. I know the
> bootup process like few, know my way around Apache and Nginx and can handle
> pretty much any requirement on a server.
>
> I've been using Chef and Capistrano lately to deploy anything that is not
> on heroku, and have recently helped a client migrate from a Solaris bespoke
> server to a Amazon EC2 / Ubuntu / Chef setup. They're now running 2
> instances of the application, saving money and happy they can just run a
> single command to spin up more servers.
>
> == Thanks! ==
> If you read all the way to here, my most deep thanks for your time and
> patience! My rates are usually around £300 a day or £40 per hour, but let
> me know what your budget allows for and I can adapt. If you need any
> further information, feel free to contact me about it, I'd love to hear
> back from you!
>
> Best regards,
>
> Alexandre M. Reis
> skype: alexmreis
> http://alexmreis.com
> +32 484 77 99 27
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Antonio <
> antonio at teachyourmonstertoread.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I’m looking for some development support on this project:
>> http://teachyourmonstertoread.com
>>
>> It's a free game to help children with reading, set up by a charity
>> founded by Peter Usborne (from Usborne Publishing). The product is
>> doing really well, has a solid and expanding user base and has won a
>> number of awards and commendations.
>>
>> The web-based part of the system is built in Rails and is fairly
>> straightforward - it generally deals with teacher and children
>> accounts, passwords and so on plus a few other bits and pieces.
>>
>> I’m looking for someone to take over development of this system and
>> help us add and refine the functionality. It has quite a few people
>> using it so I’m looking for someone reliable.
>>
>> Ideally someone who’s got basic front end skills would be great too -
>> and someone that’s into their UX a little is always great.
>>
>> It’s not a huge amount of work - probably a day or two a month by my
>> estimation - and the best thing is we’re really flexible on timings so
>> it would suit someone who’s looking to fill in a bit of time here and
>> there.
>>
>> Note that I’m based in London - I’d be happy to work remote as long as
>> there could be an occasional meet in person.
>>
>> If anyone’s interested please get in touch with me at
>> antonio at teachyourmonstertoread.com.
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Antonio
>> Producer: Teach Your Monster to Read
>> http://teachyourmonstertoread.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Chat mailing list
>> Chat at lists.lrug.org
>> http://lists.lrug.org/listinfo.cgi/chat-lrug.org
>>
>>
>
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