Robert Metcalf
5223 Humboldt Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55419
US
 
Cell:612-386-0440
Email:robert@metcalf.com
URL:metcalf.com/robert
 

  Proven developer and industry leader

 
  OBJECTIVE:  
  To obtain a position within a fast-paced, creative, entrepreneurial, Internet/Intranet environment.  
 
  TARGET PROJECT:  
  I would lead the technological direction of a company and continue to design cutting-edge software systems. I would have frequent opportunities to further develop my leadership, mentoring, and technical skills, through training, conferences, and challenging assignments.  
 
  HOURS:  
      No Preference  
  PROJECT LENGTH:  
      No Preference  
  SITE:  
      No Preference  
 
  TARGET COMPANY:  
  The ideal company would enable me to use and expand my technical skills in a relaxed and supportive environment.  
 
  SIZE:  
      No Preference  
  INDUSTRY:  
      No Preference  
 
  TARGET LOCATION:  
  US - MN - Twin Cities   
 
OVERVIEW
Robert Metcalf has 20+ years of high technology consulting and development experience. Background includes: developing and managing complex web sites, participant in setting industry standards, multiple patents, startups, and entrepreneurship.

Mr. Metcalf was one of the first Internet entrepreneurs in the upper Midwest. He founded Internet Broadcasting Corporation in November 1993. Was a semi-finalist in the Global Information Infrastructure awards in 1997. Was the CTO for Bigmove.com in San Francisco in 1999-2000. Founded a search engine company in 2000, and returned to Minneapolis in 2002.

ACHIEVEMENTS
2007 Taught two MBA classes at Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA). Flyspy is used as the case study in a core IT Management course.
 
2006 Featured speaker at 2006 PhoCusWright travel conference in LA. The conference includes senior executives and key influencers from numerous sectors of the travel, tourism, and hospitality industry.
 
2006 Taught one MBA course at the University of Minnesota and two MBA classes at Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA). Flyspy is used as the case study in a core IT Management course.
 
2006 Featured speaker at the Minnesota Venture Capital conference.
 
2004 Filed multiple patents applicable to computing airfares and data visualization.
 
2002 Voting member on the Infiniband Hardware Specification committee (sets industry standards).
 
2000 Filed a patent for a visual search engine, which is the technology behind oneKwords, Inc.
 
1998 Filed a patent for an e-commerce/pricing strategy, which matches buyers and sellers in real-time.
 
1997 One of 41 semi-finalists in the GII (Global Information Infrastructure - started by Vice-President Al Gore in 1994) awards. The semi-finalists exemplify the best practices and newest models in the use of Internet and network technologies across the nation.

EXPERIENCE
Dec 2002 - Present Flyspy Minneapolis, MN
Flyspy is a next-generation airfare search engine (see Projects, below).
 
Jul 2001 - Dec 2002 Principal Engineer, VIEO Minneapolis, MN
Lead architect and developer of Infiniband technologies. Infiniband is a very high-speed networking technology. Voting member of the Infiniband Hardware Management working group. Co-authored major portions of the Hardware Management specification.
 
Sep 2000 - Jul 2001 Founder/Developer, oneKwords San Francisco, CA
oneKwords developed a next-generation search engine; one that emphasized a more visual approach to finding information on the Internet.
 
Dec 1999 - Sep 2000 CTO, Bigmove.com San Francisco, CA
Bigmove.com was funded by Hummer-Winblad with the intent of changing the moving business.
 
Nov 1993 - Dec 1999 Founder/Developer, TheInternet Minneapolis, MN
TheInternet.com was a web development firm (see Projects, below).
 
Dec 1986 - Nov 1993 Consultant Minneapolis, MN
Designed and developed many leading edge applications. Clients included American Express, Burlington Northern, Cray, Dun & Bradstreet, Equitable Life Assurance, and First Bank.

PROJECTS - COMMERCIAL
AmboseGardens.com (no longer online)
  Ambrose Gardens is a database-driven web site tailored to Midwest gardeners (planting zones 3 & 4). The site had more than 5,000 plants and contained a full e-commerce system, keyword and parametric searching, and wish list management. Behind the scenes there were tools that integrated with local growers, order processing and fulfillment, and a content management system.
 
Role: Architect and primary developer
Technology: Cold Fusion, Perl, SQL Server
 
Bigmove.com / Masterkey.com (no longer online)
  Bigmove, later renamed MasterKey, was a moving portal site that coordinated all moving activities. What set it apart was the back-end integration with most services providers in the country: electric, gas, and water utilities; phone and cable TV services, US Post Office, etc.
 
Role: CTO, architect, and primary developer
Technology: Cold Fusion, Java, Oracle, XML
 
BMWUSA.com
 
I implemented most of this site, which was designed by Fallon Worldwide. Cold Fusion is/was the predominant architecture, with a large smattering of flash, javascript, and downloadable images.
Role: Lead developer and database architect
Technology: Cold Fusion, Oracle
BMWUSA.com
 
BMWMotorcycles.com
 
Like the BMW automobiles site, the BMW Motorcycle site was designed by Fallon Worldwide and implemented in Cold Fusion and Oracle.
Role: Lead developer and database architect
Technology: Cold Fusion, Oracle
BMWMotorcycles.com
 
CarSoup.com
 
I was brought in to CarSoup to give the site a complete makeover: graphical design, core technologies, back-end processing, 3rd party XML integration, and data center management. Responsibilities included: new site architecture, lead developer, and mentoring 5 developers
Role: Application and database architect, lead developer, data center planning
Technology: ASP, Perl, SQL Server, XML
CarSoup.com
 
ClassAction.com
 
ClassAction is one of the largest Class Action information sites on the Internet. The entire site, including work flow, back-end administration, content management, email management, and spidering (searching news sites for class action-related information) is done in Cold Fusion, PHP, and SQL Server.
Role: Primary application and database developer
Technology: Cold Fusion, Perl, PHP, SQL Server, XML
ClassAction.com
 
Flyspy.com (beta site available for viewing)
 
Flyspy is a next-generation airfare search engine. Think Orbitz + Google. The site produces a complete listing of all flight and schedule options in a few seconds. It makes the information easy to understand by providing charts that allow the user to visualize a vast amount of information. The back-end processes thrice-daily updates from the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) and calculates more than 100 million airfares per day.
Role: Primary application and database developer
Technology: C, Cold Fusion, Perl, PHP, SQL Server, XML
Flyspy.com
 
Holly-Go-Lightly.com
 
Holly-Go-Lightly is an award winning (MSN, W magazine, Vogue, Oprah) e-commerce site with a full suite of e-commerce and content management tools.
Role: Designer and developer
Technology: Cold Fusion, PDF, SQL Server
Holly-Go-Lightly.com
 
MyCStores.com
 
MyCStores (my convenience stores) was developed for the Convenience store (C-Store) industry. It works in conjunction with StoreSurveys.com. The site processes hundreds of thousands of surveys per year. MyCStores is used by store managers to view survey results.
Role: Designer and developer
Technology: Cold Fusion, SAS, SQL Server
MyCStores.com
 
OneKwords.com (no longer online)
  OneKwords (one thousand words) developed a search engine that emphasized a more visual approach to finding information on the Internet.
 
Role: Developer
Technology: C, C++, Cold Fusion, SQL Server, XML
 
Sprint (Intranet)
 
This Intranet functions as a primary sales support tool for 7,000+ Sprint sales people.
Role: Architect and lead developer
Technology: Cold Fusion, Oracle
Sprint.com
 
StoreSurveys.com
 
This site was developed for the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) for its 100,000+ members. Convenience store (C-Store) customers around the country are asked to complete an online survey at StoreSurveys.com. The data from hundreds of thousands of surveys are compiled into an extensive array of reports that are cross-tabulated with other information sources such as the US Census, inflation rates, and demographic information.
Role: Architect and lead developer
Technology: Cold Fusion, SAS, SQL Server
StoreSurveys.com
 
TwinCities.com (Intranet)
 
Various projects, the last one was downloading election results from the MN Secretary of State FTP site every 10 minutes, processing the results, and publishing detailed pages for all 87 MN counties.
Role: Developer
Technology: Cold Fusion, Perl, SQL Server
TwinCities.com
 
Unisys (Intranet)
 
This Intranet for Unisys is a portal for 30 of the world's largest airlines.
Role: Architect and developer
Technology: C, Cold Fusion, Perl, SQL Server
Unisys.com

PROJECTS - NON-PROFIT
Every year or two I pick a non-profit organization and teach them about web technologies. Some of the sites are no more then plain HTML while others accept my offer and become functioning database-driven sites.
 
Deaf.org (no longer online)
  The St. Paul Deaf organization used this site to publish events and organize emails to the greater Twin Cities deaf community.
 
Technology: Cold Fusion, Microsoft Access database
 
GraceAtTheCross.org
 
Grace was done with the lead designer for Nascar.com and PGA.com. The designer and the church are in Atlanta, GA. The church uses the site not only for informative purposes but for communicating events to its members.
Technology: Cold Fusion, Microsoft Access database
GraceAtTheCross.org

TECHNOLOGIES
Hardware: PC, Sun, Cisco, IBM S/390
 
OS: Windows (2000, XP), UNIX (BSD, Linux, Solaris)
 
Networking: TCP/IP, NAS/SAN, Infiniband, device drivers
 
Languages: C, Java, Perl, Visual Basic, Smalltalk, Assembler (x86, S390)
 
Internet: HTML, Active Server Pages (ASP), Cold Fusion (CF), JSP, JavaScript, PHP, XML
 
Databases: Microsoft (SQL Server, Access), MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, IBM DB2

PROFESSIONAL
2004 Engaged by Cargill to mentor senior executives how to think like an entrepreneur and create an entrepreneurial environment within a large organization.
 
2004 Featured speaker at a venture capital conference in Minneapolis.
 
2000 Member of Toastmasters. Very comfortable speaking in front of audiences of all sizes.
 
1997 Featured speaker at Interactive '97 in Denver, CO.

COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS
2000 RAMCO Estimating System. Custom software developed for the commercial flooring industry. Written in C and Visual Basic. Software is now the number one selling product in its sector.
 
1993 Bingo Expert for Windows. Written in Visual Basic and Visual C++ and marketed by Expert Software. Biggest selling Bingo game at the time.

EDUCATION
1980 University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN), graduate-level studies in artificial intelligence, databases, and operating systems.
 
1977 Carleton College (Northfield, MN), studies in Geology.
 
1976 University of Minnesota (Mankato, MN), AA, computer programming.

INTERESTS
Marathon running. Finished two marathons - Grandma's and Twin Cities.
 
Scuba diving. Enjoy warm-water diving in the Caribbean and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. I hope to dive the Great Wall in Belize one of these years.
 
Motorcycle riding. I particularly enjoy long-distance excursions on my motorcycle (picture 1 and picture 2). If you are interested in riding together please contact me. I particularly like the following destinations...

  • Spring - the Great River Road along the Mississippi river
  • Summer - the upper peninsula of Michigan (Black River Harbor)
  • Fall - Hawk Ridge in Duluth

    All of these are day trips.