JASCHA FRANKLIN-HODGE
617.848.5970 - joeshmoe@joeshmoe.com - http://www.joeshmoe.com/

 

Objective:

 

 

Work Experience:

 

3/04 - present          Co-founder/CTO, Blue State Digital, Boston, MA

·         Founding partner of firm that provides web technology and online strategy to top-tier political organizations and non-profits.  Clients include Obama for America, Democratic National Committee, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Richardson for President, American Red Cross, SEIU, AFL-CIO, Save Darfur, and National Geographic.

·         Built technology platform and team, initially as the sole technologist and developer, eventually growing the organization into a 26-person technology team (as of 4/2009)

·         Oversaw the development of a LAMP-based platform that encompassed CRM, mass emailing, donation processing, event organizing, social networking, voter contact, and legislative advocacy tools.

·         Oversaw the architecture and scaling of a technology platform that has processed almost $1 billion in donations, sent nearly 5 billion email messages, facilitated hundreds of thousands of events, and enabled the creation of tens of thousands of local groups.  Managed the primary web infrastructure for Obama for America (Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign).

·         Served as a senior manager for a growing, profitable, bootstrap-funded business.  Established Boston office location, provided overall strategic guidance to the business, and worked with other founders to structure and execute on a successful business model.  Helped grow business to $10M in annual revenue (2008) and over 85 employees across 5 offices in two countries (as of 4/2009)

 

 

9/03 - 3/04          National Systems Administrator, Dean for America (Howard Dean's Presidential campaign), Burlington, VT

 

·         Sole administrator for a 30+ machine, datacenter-hosted network of web, blog, application, media streaming, and contribution servers. These Linux machines ran software such as Apache, MySQL, Moveable Type, PHP and Mason (for custom applications).

·         Architected server complex to ensure security, stability, and reliability under highly volatile usage.

·         Responsible for setting up hardware and bandwidth contracts to facilitate rapid scaling.

·         On call 24x7 to deal with any server problems (hardware failure, hack attempts, etc.).

·         Wrote the software tool (using PHP) that allowed the campaign to automate online fundraising "bats" (thermometers) and have clearer visibility into fundraising progress over time.

·         Wrote tool in PHP to track open and click through rate of emails sent to supporters and press. This enabled the campaign to tailor email messages for maximum effectiveness.

·         Set up and managed the technology behind WDFA (Dean's online talk radio station). Handled webcasting and audio engineering for this nightly call-in show.

·         Supported the developers of products such as Deanlink, Commons, and the Dean state websites. Built a testbed / deployment system for them which enabled over 25 developers to safely and securely work on portions of the Dean web site.

 

11/98 - 9/03       Spinner (acquired by AOL in 06/99) / AOL Music, San Francisco, CA
 

3/01 – 9/03           Director of Software Development

7/00 – 3/01           Chief Engineer
8/99 – 7/00           Manager of Server Engineering

4/99 – 8/99           Sr. Server Engineer

11/98 – 4/99         Server Engineer

 

Designated AOL Top Talent (top 10%) in 2000 and 2001 review periods.

 

Management responsibilities and accomplishments:

 

·         Second-tier manager for four teams: Web Application Engineering (Java), Client Engineering (C++/DHTML), Streaming Server Engineering (C/C++), and Quality Assurance.

·         Oversaw the creation of Radio@AOL, which launch in the AOL 7.0 toolbar in 2001.

·         Managed development of the Winamp music player application.

·         Managed AOL’s implementation of the MusicNet subscription service.

·         Designed and developed a music subscription service in under six weeks for a scheduled Christmas 2000 launch.  Product did not launch due to content rights issues.

·         Responsible for the development of the back-end streaming infrastructure to support all AOL music initiatives.  Back-end has scaled to support 2 gigabits/second of simultaneous traffic making it possibly the largest streaming service in the world.

·         Responsible for the front-end and back-end development of the Spinner Plus radio player.  Oversaw the design, engineering, and release of Spinner Plus 4.0, which shipped in July of 2001.

·         Responsible for all SHOUTcast server development.  Oversaw the creation of a hardware streaming server solution in partnership with Extreme Networks.

·         Ensured that all shipped products met high standards of quality and reliability.

·         Primary job responsibilities include: building out development teams and team member skill sets, developing relationships with other teams (both technical and non-technical) across the company, creating technical implementation plans from high-level business requirements, and ensuring architectural consistency across all software development efforts.

 

Development responsibilities and accomplishments:

·         Designed an implemented a cross-platform (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and Sony Playstation/2) internet radio client library in C. Now deployed in several AOL products. Ported the library functionality to the .NET platform with all code rewritten in C#.

·         Worked extensively in Java, C, and Pro*C to maintain, improve, and expand the Internet's largest radio service.

·         Designed and single-handedly engineered an Internet radio service for Yahoo!. Yahoo! Radio consists of more than 10,000 lines of C, Pro*C, and Perl code. It incorporates a custom socket communications protocol, numerous UNIX daemon processes (with a process control application) and extensive monitoring tools. The fault tolerant architecture has enabled continuous stream uptime in excess of one month.

·         Worked extensively extending and enhancing the sophisticated, database-driven song selection application which drives Spinner's service.

·         Rewrote more than half of the Java code used with Spinner's middleware package (ATG Dynamo) to improve efficiency, reliability, and manageability.

·         Maintained and enhanced a system for scheduling audio advertisements on Spinner's service.

·         Worked to extend and improve the communications protocol used to communicate between Spinner's site and the downloadable player application.

                                                                                                                        

7/96 - 9/98                           Art Technology Group, Boston, MA

·         Wrote and maintained module that allows Dynamo Application Server to be used with Apache.

·         Designed and built a comprehensive, database-driven, web-based bug tracking/QA support system using SQL, Java and HTML

·         Updated and maintained NT and UNIX installers for ATG Dynamo Application Server, Retail Station, and Profile Station.

 

11/93 - 7/96                         Software Tool and Die (The World), Brookline, MA

 

 

Consulting Projects (details available on request):

 

2/96 - 3/96               The Computer Museum, Boston, MA.

11/94 - 8/95             Andiron Press, Brookline, MA

10/94 - 1/95             School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

9/94 - 10/94             The Nieman Foundation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA


Management Skills:

Skilled at building a team culture capable of shipping products on schedule and to specification.  Excellent communicator. Skillful at managing numerous simultaneous on-going projects and issues. Extensive experience hiring candidates for technical positions. Strong leadership and resource coordination skills. Able to communicate well with non-technical business teams. Good understanding of marketing/business issues. Very skilled at translating business problems into technical solutions.  Experienced in providing technical language and technology due diligence for business deals and contracts.


Technical Skills:

Extensive experience programming in Java, C, C#, Perl, and PHP on Windows (Win32 and .NET), Unix (Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris), and the Sony Playstation/2. Strong skills in integrating database back-ends to web front-ends using SQL, JDBC, ODBC, Oracle, MySQL, Java, Pro*C, Perl, and PHP. Expert in building web applications on the ATG Dynamo platform. Experienced in designing and engineering complex TCP/IP socket communication protocols for media streaming. Worked extensively with various secure and non-secure digital music technologies including MP3, AAC, RealAudio, Quicktime, and Windows Media. Thorough knowledge of HTML, DHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Expert in the design and maintenance of large-scale, high-uptime UNIX and Windows networks.

 

General Skills:

Thrive in a fast-paced, high-pressure work environment. Enthusiastic documenter. Always eager to take on new challenges and learn new skills. Extensive knowledge of the technology industry from both a technical and a business perspective.


Independent Projects: 

10/94 – 06/98                       LaughWEB and Laugh Of The Day

 

Created and maintained one of the Internet's largest humor web-sites (LaughWEB). Created and managed the Laugh Of The Day mailing list. When first started, LaughWEB contained about 50 items. By its closure in 1998, it has over 1,000 pieces of humor gathered from all over the Internet. Laugh Of The Day, which had more than 35,000 subscribers, was a daily mailing of humor selected at random from LaughWEB. In April 1996, Newsweek readers selected Laugh Of The Day as one of their five favorite Internet mailing lists. LaughWEB and Laugh Of The Day have been written up in such publications as New York Newsday, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Daily Yomiuri (Japan), The Seattle Times, The Guardian (UK), South China Morning Post, The Observer (UK), and The Cincinnati Enquirer.


Education:

·        Completed one year of undergraduate study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998.

·        Graduated from Brookline High School, Brookline MA in 1997.

 

Awards:

·        2006 Fast 50 (Fast Company Magazine)