Alan Richmond: Employment History

Mecklermedia/Internet.com

internet.com, the E-Business and Internet Technology Network, is a leading provider of global real-time news and information resources for Internet industry and Internet technology professionals, Web developers and experienced Internet users.

Location: Charlottesville VA, USA (home office) Dates: 3.98. - 3.99 Position: Managing Editor
Duties:
Management: Continued to run Web Developer's Virtual Library after sale to Mecklermedia (now Internet.com). Liaised with head office in Westport, CT. Grew site's monthly page views from 1 to 3 million, resulting in much-increased advertising revenue. Coordinated remote staff and authors from home office.
Presentations: Helped identify speakers (e.g. Jacob Nielsen) for the 1998 Fall Internet World show in NY; participated in the Stump the Experts panel.
Publication: Recruited new authors, looking especially for top talent. Continued to write new articles myself. Prepared new features and their press releases. Added links to new articles at appropriate locations and announced new features.
Maintenance: Maintained & enhanced the Web Developer's Virtual Library. Monitored relevant sites (Internet.com, W3C, etc). Updated The Library of WWW Development. Moved new/updated files to public server. Validation errors were found and fixed. Ensured all graphics and other files were copied over. Checked the new pages on NS and IE, with & w/o style sheets. Located and fixed broken links.
User Support: Maintained WDVL/Stars discussion list and replied to questions. Responded to user emails and corrected reported problems.

CyberWeb SoftWare

CyberWeb SoftWare was Alan and Lucy Richmond's company formed for the purposes of providing web design services and operating the Web Developer's Virtual Library website commercially.

Location: Lanham MD, USA. Dates: 2.95. - 2.98 Position: President; web engineer.
Duties: Developed 1000+ pages of content for Web Developer's Virtual Library; coordinated other authors and helpers. Developed maintenance utilities, style sheets, and other web support. Operated the 'Ask Dr.Web' team. Provided web development information & expertise to the growing web community. Prepared & presented tutorials on advanced web development topics at nationally & internationally organized conferences & in association with local universitites. Assisted in the publication of web development books by writing chapters & technical editing & reviewing. Maintained & enhanced Web Developer's Virtual Library. Designed & implemented a re-usable web interface to relational catalogs.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The HEASARC is a source of gamma-ray, X-ray, and extreme ultraviolet observations of cosmic (non-solar) sources.

Location: Greenbelt MD, USA. Dates: 3.93 - 8.95. Position: Principal Systems Engineer & Group Leader for Hughes STX at the HEASARC.
Duties:
Group leader for 6 personnel: provided supervision & guidance for the group; monitored the technical performance of staff in the group; reviewed deliverables & enforced applicable standards & procedures; provided presentation of the group's activity in the monthly review meetings; performed annual reviews & recommended salary actions.
Research and development of heterogeneous analysis and data base environments, to provide generic software tools that can be used by all of the elements of the Office for Guest Investigator Programs (HEASARC, GRO, ROSAT, ASCA, and XTE).
The major task was the creation of a multiplatform graphical user interface to drive data analysis systems and data base access, e.g. bulletins, catalogs, proposal and analysis tools to support guest observers and collaborators. Created NASA's first WWW-rdb interface for access to astrophysics satellite observation catalogs & data products: W3Browse.
Designed and developed a web-based Remote Proposal Submission (RPS) system, and a web-based interface to astronomical resources: WebStars.
Gatewayed several astronomical tools to the WWW. Founded & led Space Science Web Group. Created A Basic HTML Style Guide. Presented work on XVT & WWW at the ADASS conferences (III and IV). Made a number of presentations about the WWW at GSFC. Installed & experimented with several WWW, WAIS, & Gopher servers.

European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

Operating a powerful source of light in the X-ray range, the ESRF is a large experimental facility for basic and applied research in physics, chemistry, materials and life sciences.

Location: Grenoble, France. Dates: 11.90 - 3.93 Position: Software Engineer; Head of Data Acquisition Group.
Duties: Liaised with experimentalists & technicians; allocated & monitored tasks of 4 software engineers. Implemented software & documentation standards; developed documentation utilities (Yacc/lex/awk) & a standard ESRF style (FrameMaker, LaTeX). Founded Software Practices Group & led the development of General Programming Standards. Wrote Software Development Manual. Introduced SPR (Software Problem Reporting) system. Developed MXaf application framework to support GUI development (C, BX/Motif), & SPR tool (C++, Motif/X, TCP/IP, dbm, Oracle, & e-mail). Developed GUIs for beamline, attenuator, & slit control (BX/Motif). Rewrote Proteus user interface toolkit (C++, Motif/X), to facilitate porting classical applications to X-windows on UNIX workstations.

NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a cooperative program of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to operate a long-lived space-based observatory for the benefit of the international astronomical community.

Locations: Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility, Garching, Germany; Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA. Dates: 7.85 - 5.90. Position: Senior Software Systems Engineer.
Duties: Developed user interfaces at front & back ends for HST scientific operations, on VMS & UNIX (C, OMNIBASE SMARTSTAR (SQL) on a Britton Lee IDM 500). Enhanced the Proposal Entry Processor software (PEP), e.g. addition of Solar System Target List (Yacc). This system is the astronomer's primary interface for specifying proposed observations & ensuring that the proposals are syntactically correct & apparently feasible. Wrote HST Resource Usage Tool (Yacc). Designed & developed STARCAT to allow astronomers to browse the the ESO/ST-ECF Archive, e.g. catalogue of HST observations, & to request images archived on optical discs. It presents forms enabling the user to enter constraints on the search process (SQL). Developed a user interface toolkit, Proteus (C, curses, LaTeX), to support STARCAT & other applications worldwide. Led ESO working group on software standards, & the European Space Information System (ESIS) working group on User Interface Requirements. Attended US National Conference on Software Reusability.

Joint European Torus

JET was the world's largest magnetic confinement fusion experiment which aimed at confirming the scientific theory of fusion and the scientific feasibility of nuclear fusion for power generation.

Locations: Culham, England, & the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics, Garching, Germany. Dates: 8.79 - 6.86. Position: Freelance Consultant.
Duties: Generated requirements (by consultation with the physicists & technicians), designed & developed user interfaces & control & data acquisition software for plasma diagnostics; installed & commissioned at JET. Designed & developed real-time & interactive components of the control & data acquisition data base system (TRASYS) (FORTRAN on Norsk Data 100's with SINTRAN III). The major components of this work were user interfacing, & database construction for CODAS (JET's Control & Data Acquisition System).

Tractebel

Location: Brussels, Belgium. Dates: 4.78 - 7.79. Position: Consultant Programmer.
Duties: Extended display management, database, & monitoring systems for Doel 3 nuclear power stations (FORTRAN on Gould SEL with RTM OS). Employed by TRASYS at JET, Culham.

Wimpey Laboratories

Location: Hayes, Middlesex, UK. Dates: 9.75 - 3. 78. Position: Scientific Analyst.
Duties: Supported users, specified requirements, designed, documented & programmed civil engineering applications. Constructed scientific laboratory database systems, e.g. off-line storage of test results for graphics plot (FORTRAN on PDP 11's with RSX/11M OS, & on ICL 1900's with GEORGE 3 OS).

Resumé/CV | Publications

Location:	Lanham MD, USA.	Dates:	2.95. - 2.98	Position:	President; web engineer.
Duties:	Developed 1000+ pages of content for Web Developer's Virtual Library; coordinated other authors and helpers. Developed maintenance utilities, style sheets, and other web support. Operated the 'Ask Dr.Web' team. Provided web development information & expertise to the growing web community. Prepared & presented tutorials on advanced web development topics at nationally & internationally organized conferences & in association with local universitites. Assisted in the publication of web development books by writing chapters & technical editing & reviewing. Maintained & enhanced Web Developer's Virtual Library. Designed & implemented a re-usable web interface to relational catalogs.

Location:	Grenoble, France.	Dates:	11.90 - 3.93	Position:	Software Engineer; Head of Data Acquisition Group.
Duties:	Liaised with experimentalists & technicians; allocated & monitored tasks of 4 software engineers. Implemented software & documentation standards; developed documentation utilities (Yacc/lex/awk) & a standard ESRF style (FrameMaker, LaTeX). Founded Software Practices Group & led the development of General Programming Standards. Wrote Software Development Manual. Introduced SPR (Software Problem Reporting) system. Developed MXaf application framework to support GUI development (C, BX/Motif), & SPR tool (C++, Motif/X, TCP/IP, dbm, Oracle, & e-mail). Developed GUIs for beamline, attenuator, & slit control (BX/Motif). Rewrote Proteus user interface toolkit (C++, Motif/X), to facilitate porting classical applications to X-windows on UNIX workstations.

Locations:	Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility, Garching, Germany; Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.	Dates:	7.85 - 5.90.	Position:	Senior Software Systems Engineer.
Duties:	Developed user interfaces at front & back ends for HST scientific operations, on VMS & UNIX (C, OMNIBASE SMARTSTAR (SQL) on a Britton Lee IDM 500). Enhanced the Proposal Entry Processor software (PEP), e.g. addition of Solar System Target List (Yacc). This system is the astronomer's primary interface for specifying proposed observations & ensuring that the proposals are syntactically correct & apparently feasible. Wrote HST Resource Usage Tool (Yacc). Designed & developed STARCAT to allow astronomers to browse the the ESO/ST-ECF Archive, e.g. catalogue of HST observations, & to request images archived on optical discs. It presents forms enabling the user to enter constraints on the search process (SQL). Developed a user interface toolkit, Proteus (C, curses, LaTeX), to support STARCAT & other applications worldwide. Led ESO working group on software standards, & the European Space Information System (ESIS) working group on User Interface Requirements. Attended US National Conference on Software Reusability.

Locations:	Culham, England, & the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics, Garching, Germany.	Dates:	8.79 - 6.86.	Position:	Freelance Consultant.
Duties:	Generated requirements (by consultation with the physicists & technicians), designed & developed user interfaces & control & data acquisition software for plasma diagnostics; installed & commissioned at JET. Designed & developed real-time & interactive components of the control & data acquisition data base system (TRASYS) (FORTRAN on Norsk Data 100's with SINTRAN III). The major components of this work were user interfacing, & database construction for CODAS (JET's Control & Data Acquisition System).

Location:	Brussels, Belgium.	Dates:	4.78 - 7.79.	Position:	Consultant Programmer.
Duties:	Extended display management, database, & monitoring systems for Doel 3 nuclear power stations (FORTRAN on Gould SEL with RTM OS). Employed by TRASYS at JET, Culham.

Location:	Hayes, Middlesex, UK.	Dates:	9.75 - 3. 78.	Position:	Scientific Analyst.
Duties:	Supported users, specified requirements, designed, documented & programmed civil engineering applications. Constructed scientific laboratory database systems, e.g. off-line storage of test results for graphics plot (FORTRAN on PDP 11's with RSX/11M OS, & on ICL 1900's with GEORGE 3 OS).