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Last Updated: 2004/09/06 05:00:46 Bleeding edge developer using the latest technologies. Experience in extreme programing development environments. Well-known author and writer of ISO standards. Strong leadership personality as team leader, mentor and design lead. Always looking for technical challenges and something new. Wide range of interests and skills other than programming. Personal Details Justin Todd Couch Address supplied on request (Seattle, USE). email: justin@vlc.com.au, (Preferred method) web: http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/ phone: +1 (206) 340 8900 (Bus) DOB: 8 October 1972 Interests: Martial Arts: Hapkido, Tae Kwon Do, Aikido and Tai Chi Chaun Music - Performance on Bassoon, Clarinet, Sax, solo, orchestral and show work. Mechanical repair work. Hold a number of CAA qualifications for glider repair (Composites) and maintenance. Rebuilding of old cars and motorcycles etc. Motorcycles - touring and track. Employment History Dec 2002 - Present Yumetech, Inc Chief architect of a small contracting company specialising in Open Source Software development. Architect and maintainer of a number of specialised codebases for 3D graphics visualisation ( Aviatrix3D, Xj3D). Responsibilities are split into two major categories: 1. Prototyping systems and applications for various standards bodies, such as the W3C, and ISO in conjunction with the Web3D Consortium. 2. Architecting enterprise integration applications that seek to add visualisation capabilities to existing frameworks. Typically involves collections of J2EE, XML and various web services capabilties. Nov 2000 - Dec 2002 Freelance contracting Consulting for Innovit. Work involves re-architecting their current 2-tier prototype application to use a true n-tier architecture (J2EE) and be scalable for large production environments. Part time consulting for Yumetech, Inc. Chief architect of the Open Source Xj3D project that is writing the next generation VRML browser for the Web3D Consortium. September 2000 - Nov 2000 Bookalive.com, Senior 3D Architect Startup delivering online electronic bookstore solutions. Role involved architecting and design a 3D store environment with the supporting back end to work in an ASP business model. Large scale database and automated content processing were the major features of the system. As the role was also early in the life of the company I was also responsible for putting together the office network structure for mixed PC/unix, firewalls and VPNs. Startup folded after insufficient funding. June 2000 - October 2000 mBox.com Contracting Re-writing the existing Perl based web page generation with Servlet based code. This involves integration with existing databases (JDBC) and LDAP systems (JNDI). At the same time the code is to become more portable, configurable and designed to run on distributed/load balanced systems. The second project involves implementing an automated batch payment system for the users. This requires interfacing with electronic payment gateways as well as architecture/design of the complete system. Mar 2000 - July 2000 rBuzz.com Software Architect. Responsible for introducing Java development to a startup that was previously C++ oriented. Design and implementation of embedded multimedia devices based on Linux and Java using JDK 1.3, XML and JMF. The application was an electronic billboard displaying images, video, animation and audio. Part of this involved leading a small team of developers, all new to Java to develop the software. Jan 1998 - Feb 2000 ADI Ltd, Systems Group, Command & Control Information Systems. Senior Software Engineer. Team Leader and principle software architect on the Special Recovery Command Support System (SRCSS) project. This has involved rapid product development and feedback with very close customer involvement (usually 1 week turn arounds on release). SRCSS is a mission critical planning and visualisation system for the Australian Special Forces group with particular emphasis on the Sydney Olympics and then used by other special forces groups such as the USA and UK. The product became operational 6 weeks after delivery of first prototype (Feb 1998) and has remained that way since during development. It embodied all aspects of Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Extreme Programming environments in a project that had very few formal requirements and yet exceeded all expectations. The role encompassed software architect, team leader, R+D and mentoring roles - often concurrently. Additional work inside ADI included public talks for recruiting, interviewing of potential employees and consulting for other internal projects. July 1996 - Dec 1997: ADI Ltd Systems Group, Engineering and Development, Software Engineer Working as internal consultant to the Systems group on Internet related technology I spent a lot of time travelling to various parts of the country. Most of the work involved prototyping exercises and briefings on a large range of Internet related technologies, particularly Java and VRML. When not travelling, I was working on porting SCO unix mine warfare applications to Java/WinNT. The culmination of this work was the SRCSS tender in Aug-Nov 1997 where I lead the development team in an extreme effort to develop tender code. The result was over 180,000 lines of code designed and developed in less than 8 weeks culminating in a successful bid. Project involved rapid integration of many 3rd party products such as Lotus Notes, Oracle and MS Office applications. Standards and Authoring Work Due to my large amount of work in the VRML and Java arena, I have been able to work on a number of books and publications: Java 2 Enterprise Bible (HungryMinds). Co-authored with Daniel H. Stienberg Java 2 Bible (IDG) Complete. Update of Java Bible, Co-authored with Aaron E. Walsh and Daniel H. Stienberg Java 2 Networking (Java Masters Series - McGraw-Hill) Jan 1999, sole author Late Night VRML 2.0 with Java (Ziff-Davis Press) co-author with Bernie Roehl Laura Lemay's Web Workshop: VRML 2.0 and 3D Graphics (Sams.net) co-author with Kelly Murdock Web Publishing Unleashed - Professional Reference Ed (Sams.net). - Chapters 39/40 Java Unleashed - 2nd Ed (Sams.net) - Chapter 36 Tricks of the Java Programming Gurus (Sams.net)- Chapter 15 Pure Java Developers Journal (Cobb). 2 part series on writing Java Plugins (Nov and Dec 1997) I am also maintainer of the Java 3D FAQ as well as the Java 3D Community website. I am actively involved in the development of the X3D ISO standards in several working groups. Realtime shading extensions and Medical Visualisation are the current active specification areas. I was actively involved in the development of the VRML97 ISO standard. As part of this, I was chair of two Working Groups (EAI, NextGen Scripting) dealing with VRML and Java integration and actively involved in at least three others ranging from Intellectual Property concerns, Integrated 3D media and enterprise applications. I resigned from all VRML work on 4th Feb 1999, returning to X3D development in late 2002. As author of a current ISO Standard (ISO/IEC 14772-2 VRML97 External Authoring Interface) developed through the working group process, I am the first and only person to provide extended capabilities to the VRML specification through the ISO process. As part of this, I now have an intimate understanding of the standards process at a formal level both in writing and processes. External Work I have a large collection of Open Source (GNU) Java and VRML/Java libraries and applications some of which have become de facto standards in this area. Military: 1990 - 1999. Hold AUSTEO Secret level clearance (Expired July 2000). Lieutenant in Army Reserve (RASigs). Final posting with Special Air Services Regiment (SASR) Army Battle Simulation Group (ABSG) as system administrator. I have been working with ABSG since 1993 on various projects involving writing wargaming software (Cannon Row and Janus) and sysadmin work in various aspects. From 1991-1995 I was an enlisted soldier working with 4/3 Battalion in Intelligence and Operations at Battalion and Brigade level operations before committing full time to ABSG and becoming commisioned. Skills Core: Large-scale systems architecture and design, Team leading and mentoring. Java (J2SE): core JDK 1.4 (betas), JNI, Java3D   Server side (J2EE): EJB, XML, JNDI, Servlets   5+ years of commercial development experience OO Design and analysis documented with The UML. VRML - large scale application development, some modelling. C - 2.5 years commercial experience X11/Motif Sysadmin of Solaris, SCO Unix, Ultrix, Digital Unix, Linux, NT. TCP/IP. Design and implementation of applications and protocols using networking. Military Wargaming/Simulation. Familiarity: LDAP database design and implementation RDBMS design and implementation (Oracle). SQL C++ Realtime design/analysis Cisco router config. IRIX sysadmin. Education Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical - Information Systems). University of Sydney 1995 Bachelor of Science (Computer Science). University of Sydney 1993 Work Preferences: I judge the place that I work at by the dress standards. The management is concerned about results, not appearances. I prefer to work with a highly skilled, extremely open environment where constructive criticism is encouraged as well as the odd practical joke. A place where you can depend on your team members to get a job done, no matter how trivial. Finally, a most important consideration is that the employer will explicitly not attempt to acquire work that I do externally (this is the standard conditions by law unless waivered). The main source of my international reputation comes from book/tutorial writing and writing open source code libraries that I develop in my own free time or in conjunction with my authoring activities. I do not wish to harm this by an employer attempting to claim IP rights or in any way limit this work outside of the usual accepted bounds. I will be requiring a formal waiver of these claims with any job offer. References can be supplied on request.