www.DavidRussell.net.nz

Current Skills and Work History

DavidRussell.net.nz

My Skills & Work History

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My current skills are :

Technical Consultant in the area of Lotus Technologies:

Knowledge Discovery Server
(this means ... Knowledge Management)
Lotus Notes & Lotus Domino
(this means Groupware and Collaboration and Business Efficiency)

Team Leader:

Coaching and assistance with technical skills
Competence Centre management
Moderator and Chairperson

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Specialist:.

Developed a tool-set of CRM modules.
These are customised to suit the company's business process.

Work History :

1966 - 67	Burroughs (NZ) an American company Service Representative
1968 - 74	Watties Industries (NZ) Computer Operator Real Time Programmer
1974	Dunedin City Council (NZ) TP Analyst Programmer
1975 - 1977	South British Insurance (NZ) TP Analyst Programmer
1978 -> 2004	Rendeck a European private company which then got taken over by ....
	Computer Task Group an American company and then they changed their name to ....
	CTG and then in 2004, the wheel turned again, and a management buy-out of the Netherlands company returned the name to.... Rendeck

When Lotus launched their K-station (a Knowledge Management Portal), their marketing people checked back with some of the participants in the software Beta program... this resulted in the following quote from me, being used in the Lotus product publicity .....

"I consider K-station and Discovery Server to be as evolutionary and revolutionary as Lotus Notes was when it came out. With features like people awareness and the level of user personalization built in, these products may help solve our clients' knowledge-sharing challenges and position CTG as one of the leaders in the knowledge management marketplace."

-- David Russell, Senior Service Manager, Groupware/Workflow Expertise Centre, CTG

Since discovering Lotus Notes in 1993, I have really been fascinated by this tool, platform, .. whatever you want to call it. Since that year, I have been performing liaison to Lotus for their Business Partner Program. And I have attended numerous seminars, workshops, etc. in order to keep walking the "leading edge" that this technology offers. I have attended all the major Lotus conferences (called Lotusphere) since 1995. Attending Lotusphere gives me such a "kick" that I am on a buzz for the next six months !! Being able to translate what I learn there to the day to day requirements for my Notes Team and our customers, is such a gratifying experience.

I was fortunate enough to be a participant in the pilot seminars for a really exciting concept that some people within Lotus Consulting developed ... a methodology (or framework) for performing groupware projects. They called it the Lotus Accelerated Value Method. As I mentioned, I attended all the seminars (which officially makes me a Team Player ... the seminars did not go into such a depth that you could call yourself an expert.) I have used this philosophy in all projects and application development activities since then. And still have good contact with some of the AVM architects.

There is an amazing on-line community of Lotus Business partners, which uses Lotus technology to build the on-line community place. I am very proud to be a member, have learnt a lot from some of the best Lotus skilled people on this planet, and have occasionally also contributed. Although IBM provides the on-line infrastructure, the Forum is self-policing, and self-defining, and has evolved its own culture over the more than ten years that it exists. There is an interesting analysis of the life and culture of this Forum in this document written by Carol Anne Ogden. Through this forum, and also the internal forums that we had at CTG, I have developed my skills as an on-line moderator. (Skills which I have also developed in several IRC channels, where I am Owner, or Moderator. Operator being the IRC term used for this concept.)

Here is a summary of my work experience :-

Mr. Russell has been employed in the field of Information Technology since 1968. In that time he has obtained broad experience in the fields of Transaction Processing (TP) systems, data communications, electronic mail, groupware, Knowledge Management, and Internet/Intranet.

Experience:

Lotus Notes Application Architect for several multinationals. Primarily in the area of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Mr. Russell designed, developed, and implemented several application systems.

Lotus Notes Consultant for various multinationals. Mr. Russell provided on-the-job training, architectural advice, assessment on existing Notes applications, assessment of the Domino/Notes environment, and general design consultancy.

Network advisor and Electronic Mail Consultant for various multinationals. Mr. Russell designed, planned and implemented several Lotus Notes and cc:Mail electronic mail systems.

Network advisor for various multinationals. Mr. Russell has conducted Network Assessment studies, reporting on functional, technical and organisational aspects.

Site Coordinator for a large international project. Mr. Russell set up an office including the technical LAN/WAN infrastructure for a central development site. This site was related to local development sites in France, Germany and the USA.

Network advisor for a government ministry. Mr. Russell carried out an investigation into the required data communications strategy for the ministry. As Project Leader he then guided the implementation of the ministry's network, including aspects such as building cabling systems, LANs, and a national WAN connecting 23 different cities.

Systems Manager for a government department. For a period of three years, Mr. Russell managed the Operations, Help Desk and Network departments of the Computer Centre, with a staff of 14 people.

System Programmer for a government department. Mr. Russell was responsible for the installation and implementation of the system environment of two large ICL computers and the support of the development and operations staff.

Prior to these activities, Mr. Russell worked for a period of 14 years as analyst and programmer for various Transaction Processing and real-time applications, and general development and programming projects.