Ray Slakinski

• Lead developer for http://flavors.me • Lead developer of HiiSpider, a technology to index 3rd party APIs • Developed a Twitter stream listener to update flavors.me users tweets in real time • Developed a Cassandra store schema with supporting python backend for Flavors.me Streams • Created a pagecache system that served gzip compressed pages out of Memcached from nginx • Migrated of the Flavors.me dataset from SimpleDB to a Cassandra cluster • Migrated an Amazon SimpleDB based queuing system to RabbitMQ • Created plugins for use with our server monitoring provider CloudKick to monitor custom parts of our applications. • Initiated a plan to move from custom server setup scripts to Opscode Chef • Migrated of the Flavors.me dataset from SimpleDB to a Cassandra cluster • Researching and developing new SEO strategies for flavors.me, and goodsie.com • Championed the move from Subversion to Git and to GitHub • Interviewed by Robert Scoble in an episode of building43 on behalf of HiiDef • Appeared on Leo Laporte’s TWiT as a guest, representing HiiDef

• Founding employee, lead developer and architect • Scaled website from 0 to over 17M unique visitors • Migrated portions of the Mahalo dataset from MySQL to a Cassandra cluster • Created a revision system to record and revert changes editors were making to articles • Implemented a task queue system to offload work from our webservers • Developed a url shortener system, which also tracked click-throughs • Worked closely with both development and network operations teams • Evaluated and made recommendations to enhance Mahalo's SEO • Devised and acted on a plan to move Mahalo from MediaWiki to a custom solution • Developed and documented APIs for third party developers to use Mahalo’s data • Created and used tools to handle scale deployments

• Co-created and developed a website for voting on popular media • Architected the site from the ground up • Designed and created features using Ruby on Rails web framework

• Co-created and developed iPodderX, the first desktop podcasting application • Appeared on Rogers G4techTV Canada’s “Call For Help with Leo Laporte” and “Tech Books” as an expert on podcasting • Built and maintained the cross platform application engine using Python • Worked with 3rd party companies on licensing deals

* Created automation testing tools * Developed tools to control a number of desktops to perform quality assurance tests * Wrote Windows installation packages for software using InstallShield * Maintained source repository using Borland Software’s StarTeam * Maintained a wiki and forum software to foster better communication in the development team

* Was technical lead for software support of: Winfax, The URLabs product line, and Procomm * Developed online tutorials using Macromedia Director * Became technical advisor for this group

* Software support for a large number of Windows & Macintosh software * Performed Quality Assurance duties * Developed a number of in-house tools to automate various tasks

Personal Website, Company Website

The software iPodderX/Transistr - that I co-wrote - has received a number of glowing reviews.

podcasting, syndication technologies (rss/atom), python, scaling, nosql database technologies, wikis, & other great new technology