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

Fri Jun 14 12:44:24 PDT 2013

In case anyone was wondering (as I think someone recently did) why we switched the "Reply-To" of the list to the sender, rather than the list, it was because of stuff like this :)

- James

On 14 Jun 2013, at 20:42, Alex Reis <alex at alexmreis.com> wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
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