Dave

 

As a boy at home in Ontario, Canada, David developed his interest in computers, learning to program some of the first personal computers to hit the market, including the Atari 400 and Apple ][e.  When dial-up modems became available, David learned to connect to mainframes such as the Dow Jones and Compuserve systems.  Starting with manually dialing and logging in to these systems, David then learned to store these logins as macros, and was soon using the online encyclopedias for school project research.  David was also teaching himself to use Lotus-123, one of the first widely available spreadsheet programs, and began using it as a calculator for math and economics homework, often handing in homework printed on a dot-matrix printer.

David's first formal programming studies were at McKeeby Lodge Computer Camp.  Founded by Peter Stark, David's uncle, McKeeby was perhaps the first camp of its kind, combining the beauty and fun of the outdoors with the opportunity to learn in a computer lab.  During his time at McKeeby in the summers of 1984 and 1985, David studied the foundations of functional and structured computer languages, learning Logo, and Pascal.

 

David's first job as a database administrator came in when he was hired to manage the membership and shareholders list for the Norfolk Golf & Country Club, in Simcoe Ontario.  The membership office would send periodic changes to the database, and David would enter them, and provide a new printed list.

 

Years later, after completing University and moving to Vancouver, David would return to computers as a career.

 

At BCIT, David earned an Associate Certificate in Systems Engineering and certification as a CompTIA A+ Hardware Technician and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.  These achievements gained him a position at a busy Network and Systems support company specializing in delivering IT solutions to health care clients, The Connections Group, where David climbed to the position of Manager.

At communicate.com, David worked as a web developer, specializing in the server-side hypertext pre-processor, PHP, and the widely popular open-source database platform MySQL.  Using these tools, David increased traffic and revenues for such high-traffic e-commerce sites as perfume.com and importers.com.

 

David subsequently worked with Synercom-EDI in Vancouver, expanding his skills with PHP and MySQL, working on tixSYS, an online ticketing system used by many of the film festivals in North America.

 

Currently, David works as an independent consultant, in a wide variety of  roles related to e-commerce, web/database development and online marketing.  He has recently acted as project manager and technical team for the Tessitura implementation at Ballet British Columbia.  He also consults on Tessitura integration and customization with the Vancouver Opera, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.

 

Continuing to learn and apply new technologies, David is exploring VoIP telephony and has begun to deploy these and other systems in the cloud for clients, saving them money and time.

David has also founded his own video conversion and transfer services company, providing media digitization and format conversion services to the Lower Mainland.  Clients include public libraries, schools, legal and insurance companies, medical facilities, civic governments and many more.