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Chris Dent

Berkshire UK

Objective

To design and develop scalable networked systems for the social and collaborative use of information.

Summary

A systems designer and builder with deep knowledge of the fundamentals of networked resources: protocols, tools and techniques. Committed to providing individuals and teams with access to information and processes that enhance and extend understanding.

Qualifications and Expertise

• Strong social and technical leadership by example.
• Project and product management.
• Synchronous and asynchronous distance collaboration and collaborative tools, especially wikis and other hypertext systems.
• Agile and XP development techniques.
• Perl, Python, JavaScript and Java in many Unix-like environments (BSD, Sys V, Linux, OS X). Other languages and environments used as required.
• Automating build, testing, deployment and monitoring of distributed systems.
• Information architecture, classification theory, categorization.

Portfolio

• TiddlyWeb

  An open source web-based storage system with a robust HTTP API and extension model, built in Python; can be used as a flexible server-side implementation for TiddlyWiki.

• TiddlySpace

  "discoursive non-linear web notebooks" built on TiddlyWeb; collaborative TiddlyWiki.

• Wiki-Data

  Business entity data reference, built on TiddlyWeb.

• Raamable

  A weekend hackathon produced a Google Maps resource for support crews in the Race Across America

• Socialtext

  Lead or senior developer for several features in one of the leading enterprise wikis: syntax extensions for transclusion and inclusion; Wikiwyg, a JavaScript visual editor for wikitext; Miki, a lightweight presentation of wiki content for mobile or text environments; Unplugged, an offline tool for wiki content; REST API; SOAP API; performance analysis and enhancement; testing infrastructure; release management process.

• UITS Knowledge Base

  Lead designer for an architecture to achieve horizontal scalability.

• Helium

  An agent and event-based information management tool. See class notes.

• Creating Conceptual Access: Faceted Knowledge Organization in the unrev-ii email archives

  A paper describing an augmenting tool for creating faceted access to email archives.

• The Computer as Tool: From Interaction To Augmentation

  A paper about some of the problems present when we design systems that support interaction rather than tools for performing tasks.

• PurpleWiki

  A wiki system that implements granular addressability and transclusion using Purple Numbers.

• Hypertext and Knowledge Enhancement

  A class project using hypertext to explore knowledge about hypertext.

• McFeely and Kiva::User

  A job-queuing system for managing users and configuration on multiple servers. Enabled an ISP to grow from one server supporting 1000 users to many servers supporting as many users as required.

Also see GitHub.

History

• 2008-present

  Director at Peermore Limited

• 2008-2010

  Wikisym program committee

• 2004-2007

  Lead Developer, Information Access at Socialtext

• 2003-2004

  Software Developer at Indiana University

• 2002-present

  Cofounder of Blue Oxen Associates

• 2001-2002

  Master of Information Science (MIS) from Indiana University

• 1997-2000

  Director:Systems at Kiva Networking

• 1995-1997

  Messaging and Networking Specialist at Indiana University