Information about David Lane

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David Lane
Email: contact form
Roles: Director, System Administration, Development, Marketing Manager, Client Relationship Manager, Business Development
Preferred Computing Environment:

Ubuntu Linux, KDE and/or GNOME desktops, Emacs, Bash, SSH, PHP5, Subversion, Xen, OpenVPN, Apache2, Postfix, GIMP, Inkscape, OpenOffice 2, lots of terminals open

Qualifications:

MSc Mechanical Engineering 1994, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
BSc Physics 1992, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, USA

Professional Background:

Developed image processing and mathematical simulation software in Fortran and C during Physics degree. Learned graphical programming in C on IRIX (Silicon Graphics variant of UNIX) as a postgraduate.

Worked as a research scientist and software engineer developing prototype image processing and photogrammetric tree measuring system for the NZ Forest Research Institute (NZFRI) on Linux in C++ (using Trolltech's Qt widget set) starting in 1994.

Became (in addition to research role) South Island IT Manager for NZFRI in 1997.

Founded Egressive in 1998 to offer commercial support for Linux to businesses in Canterbury, NZ. Built and supported Linux solutions, provided system integration with other business computing technologies.

Because Linux servers were so reliable and required so little support, converted background in C++ application development to PHP web application development to pass the time.

Co-founder of OpenStrategies Ltd and OpenStrategies Holdings Ltd in 2001. Managed development (along with coding duties) of OpenStrategies' web application in PHP with the PostgreSQL database along with XML/XSLT from 2001-2003. Started working with Drupal CMS and web application framework in earnest with version 4.6 in 2005.

Co-founder of the Effusion Group - a cluster of open source businesses sharing physical and virtual infrastructure - in 2002.

Managed Egressive's growth from 1 person to as many as 8 employees and contractors and am currently acting in that role while continuing to provide support, consulting, development, and managerial services. Also primary marketer and in charge of business development for Egressive.

Personal Website: http://davelane.name
Biography:

Born on east coast of the US (near New York City) in 1970, grew up in New Jersey. Went to university (Haverford College) near Philadelphia 1988-1992, postgraduate (University of Washington) in Seattle, Washington 1992-1994.

First post-university job - as a research scientist - was working for the NZ Forest Research Institute based at Lincoln University in Canterbury, NZ - in 1994. Returned to the US in 1996 while awaiting results of NZ Permanent Residence Application - continued to work for the NZFRI as a visiting scholar at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Returned to NZ to work for NZFRI full time, based at Canterbury University, early 1997. Founded Egressive 1998, left NZFRI to pursue Egressive full time early 1999. Attained NZ Citizenship in 2003.

Currently living with my partner Jos (Jocelyn) Kidd in Linwood, Christchurch, NZ.