Innovator & Engineer

Algorithms, Angular.js, Backbone.js, Business Planning, CSS, Data Management, Innovator, Javascript, jQuery, Knockout.js, LESS, Machine Learning, MongoDB, MySQL, Node.js, PHP, Postgres, Product Management/Project Management, Ruby on Rails, Strategy, UX, Vision

What People Are Saying

... he’s got a skillset that I’ve only seen in Microsoft program managers; able to see the business, user, and technical sides of a solution simultaneously, and doggedly pursue it to completion.

Matthew Dunn, CIO Intrawest

Pete identified an opportunity I and my Development Team had not even considered, and developed a “smart” tool that greatly improves our business processes.

Greg Whelan, General Manager Bravo Business Media

[Pete's] forte is continuous process improvement, his strength: the implementation of positive change that increase the productivity and effectiveness of the department.

Chris Strome, Senior Public Relations Officer Whistler/Blackbomb

I have always considered Pete as a 'go to' guy when you need to get something done right the first time. Pete is a quick study, has a strong operational understanding of our business, and most importantly possesses a huge level of individual creativity. All these things make Pete a great choice for a myriad of roles and I would highly recommend him accordingly.

Greg Whelan, Senior Manager Guest Service at Mountain Creek Resort

Pete is an excellent team member who is reliable and adapts quickly to changing situations. Pete is able to keep a calm professional manner even during periods of high stress. His helpful nature makes it easy for Pete to assist others and to cooperate fully on any group endeavours.

Chris Strome, Senior Public Relations Officer Whistler/Blackbomb

An Innovator and Engineer with a dash of Artist, able to envision the future and use technology to make that future a reality.

With a diverse background in everything from Marketing to Engineering, including founding two companies and developing industry leading technologies,I’ve got the diversity and passion to take on interesting projects and be an engaged member of a team. An appreciation of great UX/UI coupled with a Data Geek soul, I’ve worked with both front-end and back-end systems to make data interactive and create value through data-management usability.

Industry Leading Technology

After recognizing a market opportunity, teaching myself to program and launching my first company (a Pandora like customised radio service), I built the world’s largest concert database, HearWhere. Quickly recognized by the media as a unique and inventive service, the first concert listing site which let visitors sample artists music, as well as having an advanced artist popularity algorithm. I built an API around the data base and provided concert listings to Maxim Magazines music arm Blender.com among others.

Creating Modern Interfaces Since Forever

Not long ago, I realized that I have never built a conventional website. I’ve always developed back-end APIs to serve javascript heavy front-end single page sites. Originally working with plain-old Javascript and then moving to jQuery, and in the past few years, managing front-end work with a selection of modern frameworks including Backbone, Knockout, JQUI/Intel App Framework and Angular.js. I’ve worked on mobile HTML5 Applications wrapped in PhoneGap/Cordova which are in both the Google Play and Apple app stores.

Data & Design

In my previous experience, I’ve worked with large datasets and understand the importance of design both from a UI/UX perspective as well as data/information design. In developing a data-management system for Bravo Media, the task was to take a horrendously painful data-entry task and make it simple. With HearWhere, the data-design task was in the presentation of thousands of concerts to music fans in a way that helped them discover the artists they should go see or want to see.

Innovator

I’ve worked with start-up companies in the past, as well as managing start-up projects within larger companies and building my own projects and businesses. As my letters of reference will attest, finding creative solutions and understanding both business and user implications are where I really sink my teeth into a project.

If you are interested in learning more, or have an opportunity you think I may be a good fit for, please contact me.

Experience

Innovator: Thorough experience in envisioning and creating new products and experiences and improving business processes through technical and non-technical design.

Developer: Built industry leading technology which had stumped multiple highly paid teams, including developing the world’s largest database of concerts, effective musician popularity algorithms and data-management systems.

Continuous Improvement

January 2014 - Favor – a collection of open-source developer tools with a focus on building node-webkit apps and an IDE with a focus on modern javascript tools. End result will be an IoT framework easing development and management of applications. Developed using Node.js and Angular. All modules currently Pre-Alpha - https://github.com/favor
July 2013 – Coding the Matrix, Coursera Linear Algebra and Machine Learning course, completed with 81.2% final grade.

Relevant Work Experience

Product Engineer

NICTA / Data61.CSIRO, Coviu & Doarama Projects

Node.js, Angular.js, Mercury.js, Scala, WebRTC, WebGL, Webpack

May 2014 - Present (1 Year, 11 Months and counting...)

Australia Science and Technology Research Agency, worked on both the Coviu webrtc for medical practitioners project, and Doarama a GPS 3d virtual world web app.

Achievements
  • Developed the VirtualCounter web application allowing government call-center agents to have a web-call with members of remote communities, and capture government forms digitally. Included development of a call-queuing system for use in call-center environments which was implemented at Kiama Council for a WebRTC trial.
  • Developed ACDC, a module for creating highly dynamic angular applications serving different angular modules, templates and styles depending on user status, rights or other parameters. ACDC manages angular dependency injection, and serves the right pages to the right users in real-time.
  • Discovered and developed patent for a method of maintaining a WebRTC connection through page refreshes, resulting in a smoother user experience and improved connection stability.
  • Developed server-side of Coviu application managing users and teams ability to create web-calls in the Coviu app, as well as application usage tracking.
  • In the first 3 months working on the Doarama project
    • Improved performance of Doarama 3d viewer by many orders of magnitude - 3+ minute load time down to 20 seconds
    • Increased time on site by 20%
    • Decreased bounce rate by 15%
    • Increased Page views by 15% (so far, expecting 200% increase after next major release)
Responsibilities
  • Product Manage and Develop VirtualCounter, Coviu and Doarama applications
  • Define and prioritize features
  • Manage development pipeline
  • Work with UX/UI designers to create exceptional experiences

Javascript Developer

Sydney Startup

Angular.js, Backbone.js, Ruby on Rails, PhoneGap

November 2013 - January 2014 (2.5 Months)

Unfortunately, the start-up I joined in November 2013 is going through some difficult times and they’ve had to let go of the development team. The company has not yet made their status public, so I am keeping their details private until they make an announcement regarding either new funding or closing.

Achievements
  • During my short time at this start-up, I added one major location based component to their app, which was released on all platforms (Web, Android and iOS). It was a key feature to the offering which users had been requesting.
  • Improving usability, mostly through fixing of bugs including improved notifications count on mobile devices.
Responsibilities
  • Continued development of new features and movement of key functionality from legacy Backbone.js app to newer Angular.js version of the app.

Senior Software Engineer

IndustrieIT

Ruby on Rails, Knockout.js, MongoDB, Phonegap

January 2013 - June 2013 (6 months)

IndustrieIT is a medium sized Sydney based consulting company working with multiple national Australian brands and major government initiatives.

Achievements
  • Continued development of features and ongoing maintenance for a national Australian brand's Ruby-on-Rails/MongoDB website and API
  • Focus on national Australian Brand’s HTML5/Phonegap app which is available in both the Apple and Google Play app stores.
  • Designed innovative log-in system to increase CRM system sign-ups, implemented app features which had been previously postponed due to difficult implementations.
  • Created product upsell system on mobile application and server-side API to recommend related products and increase revenue per order.
  • Reconfigured mobile app to enable ‘menu browsing’, the most requested feature for over a year which the initial development team thought would be too difficult to implement.
Responsibilities
  • Ongoing maintenance and development
  • Weekly sales reporting and reconciliation
  • Product improvement recommendations

Founder

Kitchon

Ruby on Rails, Backbone.js, PostgresSQL

November 2010 – January 2013 (2 years – 10 months)

Recognized unique opportunity in recipe market and undertaking a very challenging initiative to enable computers to help us be better cooks. Still in development after many iterations of user testing, constantly learning more about design and machine learning in order to accomplish this very challenging task.

Achievements
  • Early prototypes of cooking app which merges multiple recipes together to create a complete meal.
  • Early praise by recipe publishers and potential content partners.
  • Have achieved success where many others have failed or given up in the past, included natural language parsing of ingredients.

Emprendador

Start-up Chile

Ruby on Rails, Backbone.js, jQuery, Javascript

November 2011 – June 2012 (8 months)

Start-up Chile is an initiative operated by the Chilean Economic Development Agency to foster Entrepreneurship in Chile, with the goal of making Chile the Technical Hub of Latin America.

Achievements
  • Started the Santiago chapter of OpenCoffee.
  • Worked with Chilean design graduates giving them experience working on web projects.
  • Started the Start-up Chile technology 'tribe', a group of talks presented by other Start-up Chile technologists to foster learning across more than 100 start-up companies.
  • Provided business and technical guidance to both local and global start-ups
Responsibilities
  • Foster innovation and entrepreneurship in Chilean Communities
  • Link Chilean Entrepreneurs with my extended Global Network

Product Manager, Data Management Architect & Developer

Bravo Business Media

Ruby on Rails, MySQL, jQuery, Javascript

May 2011 – October 2011 (6 months)

Bravo Business Media (sold in 2012), was a drop-ship platform provider focused on the household lighting and fixtures market.

Achievements
  • Gathered business requirements, and envisioned a solution to painstaking highly labour intensive data management system.
  • Delivered a web-based solution resulting in 75% reduction in processing time and considerable accuracy improvement.
Responsibilities
  • Find a way to improve the data management process.
  • Deliver a web-based solution to ongoing data-management challenges.

Founder

HearWhere

PHP, MySQL, jQuery, Javascript, Flash

June 2008 – December 2010 (2 years 7 months)

HearWhere was the world’s largest concert database, serving concert listings world-wide both on the HearWhere website and through an API to global brands including Maxim Magazine’s music arm, Blender.

Achievements
  • Taught myself to code resulting in development of the world's largest concert database and search engine with more than 8 million concerts.
  • Developed artists popularity alghorithm for recommending best touring artists by region.
  • Developed high-availability API serving and licensed capabilities to Maxim magazines Blender.com.
  • First concert listing site able to sample artists music while browsing currently touring artists.
Responsibilities
  • Design and develop a business to provide world-wide concert listings
  • Ongoing planning, project management and development of website and API
  • Sales and partnerships to provide concert listings to other websites

Mobile Strategy & Project Manager

MusicIP

September 2006 – April 2007 (8 months)

MusicIP was a start-up focused on music recognition technologies providing capabilities similar to Apple’s Genius and Track ID technologies.

Achievements
  • Developed technology strategy and recommendations for placing acoustic matching technology on phones and mobile devices (pre-iPhone).
  • Product Managed web-properties for SAAS product
  • Envisioning and managing design and development of the companies acclaimed 'playground' music discovery web-app.
Responsibilities
  • Understand the technical challenges of music recognition on resource constrained devices.
  • Map out the major players in the embedded music space, understanding their business propositions and likelihood of success in order to target the best strategic opportunities.
  • Enable developers to easily access the desktop capabilities of MusicIPs recognition technology.
  • Product Manage a web-based solution to showcase MusicIPs music matching technology.

Recommendations

Several years ago an unsolicited proposal arrived at the office of the CIO for Intrawest Corporation. The proposal described an opportunity to improve the company’s already best-of-breed customer service in its resort operations business by making information assets already in existence accessible to employees. I recall being struck in particular by two things. One was the maturity of architectural vision in the proposal; the writer recognized that the product information in point-of-sale systems embodied critical definitions about the resort business at any point of time, and consequently that this information could and should provide a coherent basis for service information. The second thing was the approach: the writer, an employee at Copper Mountain resort in Colorado, had the vision to outline a problem and a solution that would benefit the company broadly.

As a result of that, Pete Field was brought to Intrawest’s corporate headquarter and asked to spearhead an enterprise knowledge platform project. The purpose of this letter is to provide my positive perspective on Pete’s abilities and accomplishments on that project, and to offer to provide further reference for him should it prove helpful to him.

Pete took charge of the ‘IWeb’ project, as it was called, and in the nearly two years he managed the project, combined the vision that his proposal had promised with attention to detail, persistence, and an outstanding work ethic to produce an innovative solution to the company’s needs. In the course of the project, he also encountered most of the pitfalls that can make enterprise solution development so frustrating. He’s to be especially complimented for grinding through all those frustrations unflappably. As CIO, I was more closely involved with the iWeb project than most projects, but never doubted that Pete was the right person to head it up.

I would characterize Pete’s thinking on the iWeb project as being commercial software caliber work. He spent considerable time on the difficult early work of analyzing the real challenges of knowledge and information management in the unique environment of that company and business, and envisioned an elegant, usable solution to those challenges. He evaluated commercial technologies and identified an appropriate, cost-effective solution, negotiating an extremely favorable price for Intrawest in the process. And he project-managed the undertaking through a very long gestation to a successful internal launch.

As a result, he’s got a skillset that I’ve only seen in Microsoft program managers; able to see the business, user, and technical sides of a solution simultaneously, and doggedly pursue it to completion.

Pete has vision and, probably more vitally, the grit to pursue it. I’m sure he would say he learned a host of lessons on the iWeb project that would make him even more effective today. I think Pete has the makings of a successful entrepreneur, especially in the areas of innovation which interest him so keenly. He also has an unusual degree of patience and a perspective on his own work that is refreshing. He expects himself to do big things. So do I.

If I can provide any further perspective on Pete, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Matthew Dunn

President, Socratech, Inc. (Former CIO, Intrawest Corporation)

I have known and worked with Pete Field on various projects since 1999. These projects have been diverse, from developing an outdoor attraction at a summer resort to the most recent, developing an online data normalization tool. The reason for this ongoing business relationship is due singularly to Pete’s broad skill set and how he applies it to the project at hand, ingeniously employing creative thinking with intelligent perspective. Simply put, Pete does not think like most people.

My current business, MyLightingShowroom.com, provides turnkey website technology for brick and mortar distributors in the US and Canada. The platform includes a database of 200 plus Lighting Manufacturer’s products. Normalizing and ingesting these product files is a labour intensive task due to a lack of common structures and formats. I wanted an web based tool that would greatly improve the efficiency of the normalization process and to produce a consistent output file that matched our database structure. This type of tool does not currently exist in our industry and after some preliminary conversations with Pete he explained the process was programmatically possible and he was eager to take on the challenge.

When first hearing of Pete’s plan for building such a system, our Director of Development, Don Ferruggia, said “This is a very interesting idea. In concept, it allows you to load data files directly from manufacturers without prior reformatting. Subsequent files, after the first use for any particular manufacturer, will process much quicker.” Since this is a never ending process, Pete identified an opportunity I and my Development Team had not even considered, and developed a “smart” tool that greatly improves our business processes.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend Pete Field for Start Up Chile – he demonstrates the qualities any incubator would want: intelligence, creativity, non-conformity, boot strap experience, and an unflagging entrepreneurial spirit.

Sincerely,

Greg Whelan
General Manager, MyLightingShowroom.com

Contact

Pete Field
2/274 Campbell Pde
Bondi Beach, Sydney, Aus, 2026