Constant Orbit
What I Do
I'm Denis Haskin, aka Constant Orbit. I provide consulting and software development to a wide range of businesses. My broad experience allows me to support clients through the entire process of developing and delivering a product, from idea generation to design to wireframes to implementation to deployment to maintenance.
I have proven experience delivering successful web products in both startups and enterprises. I have excellent communication, analysis, leadership, and mentoring skills. I'm comfortable wearing a variety of hats, but I really do this because I love writing code, and seeing software go all the way from the napkin or whiteboard sketch to delighting end-users.
DESIGN
- Wireframes
- User Stories
- Responsive Design
- User-centered Design
BUILD
- Ruby on Rails
- Angular
- Node.js
- Bootstrap, JQuery, CSS3, HTML5
- Agile & Iterative Practices
- Java, python, etc under duress
DEPLOY
- Heroku
- Amazon Web Services
- Chef, Capistrano
- E-Commerce Integration
MANAGE
- Automated Monitoring
- Alerting
- Auto-scaling
- Content Management
REPEAT
- Predictable, consistent results for multiple customers
Projects
ShareableMetrics
Designed specifically for communications and PR professionals, ShareableMetrics is self-service software that tracks shares of earned, paid and owned PR content. ShareableMetrics tracks everything from major media placements to single influencer tweet to deliver the most comprehensive social sharing analytics and insights. I built the entire application stack for this product from scratch, including highly-scalable URL and statistics collection & management and a responsive sophisticated UI.
SWP Proposals System
I was the lead and primary developer on the Strong Workforce Proposals system for the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office. The CCC is the largest system of higher education in the nation, with 2.1 million students attending 113 colleges. Using Angular JS and Node.js I built, under extremely tight time budget, a system for the interactive collaborative compilation and review of funding proposals for the $200M Strong Workforce program.
ioImprov: Val 2.0
I'm currently in progressing building Val 2.0, a student evaluation system for ioImprov, the premiere improv theater and studio in Chicago and Los Angeles. The new system will retire out-of-date technology and provide much-needed additional functionality for the improv schools to track student performance and progress. The new system is fully responsive, built on Angular 2 with a Rails API backend.
ZMX Music
ZMX Music enabled thousands of artists to make their music available in print, more conveniently & at lower prices than ever before. Artists have a new revenue stream, fans have the opportunity to get high-quality sheet music for artists and songs they love. I was the CTO of ZMX Music until it ceased operation due to the changing music publishing market.
MTA Bus Time
I was consultant to the team at Cambridge Systematics and OpenPlans that adapted the open-source OneBusAway project to support New York City's 6,000-vehicle bus system. The project was deployed on schedule and continues to grow as more boroughs are added. I was responsible for much of the devops work, including chef deployment & configuration, monitoring infrastructure, as well as service alerts integration and other front- and back-end work.
Fashion Playtes
I was the founding VPE/architect of Fashion Playtes, and with a very small tech team built the initial product in Ruby on Rails, with a Flash fashion-designer front end. I rapidly built and launched a full-featured e-commerce site at which girls could design and order their own custom clothing.
About
I have been involved with software and computing for my entire career, most of it writing software. I admit it, I love writing code.
But what I love even more is being privileged to collaborate with incredibly talented, committed people from all walks of life, to go from a vision to reality. Software development is really about communication. It doesn't matter how technically adept you are unless you can engage other people openly and honestly to build a product of lasting value.
I practice incremental development: working with a client to identify the minimum viable product, build that as rapidly as possible, get it out there for real use, and then iterate, building on success after success. The only measure of progress in software is working, tested, deployed code.
Contact
Drop me a line
Enough about me, let's hear about you. I'm always interested in hearing about project opportunities; even if I am unavailable, I can connect you with other folks in the development community.
Credits
Site design is based on the excellent Flat & Scroll theme by Basicoh, which I licensed at {wrap}bootstrap.
Photo credits:
- Headshot - the incomparable Alyssa Johnson
- Concert photo - CC BY 2.0, Anirudh Koul
- Cranes, Berlin, Germany. March 2013. - me
- Train station, Lübeck Hauptbahnhof, Lübeck, Germany. March 2013. - me