John Cowan - Candidate for Ontologist/Ontology- Metadata - New York City ONLY!
John Cowan
Phone: 212-777-1676
New York NY 10003
QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY
- Senior level programmer, document analyst, and ontology developer with experience in full-lifecycle work across multiple technologies. Very flexible, fast learner, proven ability to adapt to new technologies.
- Seeking full-time employment in New York City or the immediate area; work-from-home possible, but less desirable.
INDUSTRIES
15+ years in financial services
6 years in news wire services
3 years at Google
3 years in online publishing
TECHNICAL SKILLS
· Programming languages: Very strong knowledge and experience with XML (including Atom, XSLT, XML Schema, RELAX NG and Web Ontology Language) and Unicode. Java (13 years), Python, Perl (5 years), C, UNIX/Linux shell and standard toolkit, SQL, C, Visual Basic and many others. Strong knowledge of the UNIX/Linux API including sockets. In-depth knowledge of UNIX/Linux OS and development tools including system commands, 'awk', 'make', 'sed', 'sccs', version control tools, shell scripts, etc. Automated many development and testing steps using Shell Scripts to reduce the development time.
· Operating systems and environments: Solaris (5 years), Linux (13 years).
· Functions: Document design, schema design, programming, standards development, presentation, R & D, systems design (structured, object-oriented, flow-based), database design, design walk-through and review, code walk-through and review, program testing, product testing, documentation, occasional systems administration as needed.
SPECIAL XML ORGANIZATIONS
· Member of the W3C XML Core Working Group and their predecessors, the Infoset and Linking Working Groups. Editor of the XML Infoset and XML 1.1 W3C Recommendations.
· Member of the former OASIS Entity Resolution and RELAX NG Technical Committees. Provided the base draft for XML Catalogs from which the committee built the OASIS standard.
· Individual member of the Unicode Consortium and regular participant on the Unicode members-only mailing list, Unicore.
OPEN SOURCE
· Sole author of Moby Latin and Whacking Latin, keyboard drivers for Windows that allow users to easily type almost 1000 different characters.
· Sole author of TagSoup, a SAX parser written in Java that makes HTML look like well-formed XML to applications. Full details available at http://www.tagsoup.info.
· Contributor to Chicken Scheme, Chibi Scheme, and Q/Pure programming languages.
TEACHING/PRESENTATION
· Taught popular and well-received tutorials at the XML Conference, 2001-05 and at Extreme Markup Languages 2004–2006 on Unicode, RELAX NG, W3C XML Schema, and the proposed XHTML 2.0 standard.
· Presented at Balisage 2013 (successor to Extreme Markup) on document transformations based on source and target schemas.
· Peer review for papers submitted to the Extreme Markup/Balisage conference, 2005–present.
Publications/Books:
The Complete Lojban Language Logical Language Group, 1997.
What Is Lojban? (editor). Logical Language Group, 2003.
Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (co-editor). Scheme Language Steering Committee, 2014.
Website:
Blog:
Recycled Knowledge. <http://recycledknowledge.blogspot.com>, 2005-2014.
WORK EXPERIENCE
LexisNexis June 2010 – March 2014
Senior Content Architect / Ontologist
· Designed a schema in RELAX NG and XML Schema for government agency documents.
· Designed and documented modular entity schemas that specify the standard LexisNexis representations of information about judges, legislatures, expert witnesses, and commercial organizations. These schemas were delivered in three variants: for editorial use, for the master repository, and for the internal document bus. Reviewed and updated modules written by other team members, and led the reviews of my own modules.
· Enhanced a widely used schema module for legal citations to handle cases where text explaining the purpose of the citation appears in separate sections of a document).
· Wrote and supported several internal tools for crude XML analysis, generating "version 0" schemas reflecting what is actually present in large samples of existing documents (up to a million documents per run). Rewrote the internal schema used by the content team to document our schemas. Led the development team for the Lexis Content Ontology, a high-visibility, high-pressure, loosely specified project with a hard deadline for its first version. Learned essentially from scratch the principles of ontology design, how to convert logical data models from PowerDesigner, and the Protégé OWL editor. Delivered six major sub-ontologies based on the entity schema modules and data models, contributed to all other sub-ontologies, and reviewed all team results, making possible the on-time delivery of the ontology.
· Developed a strategy for migrating all schema development source control from the LexisNexis legacy system (IBM ClearCase) to Subversion. Identified platform requirements, wrote installation and migration plans, and communicated strategy to the architecture team. Supported the migration effort by assisting the other team members with conversion to the new style. The new system has been essentially problem-free for over a year. Another LexisNexis team has converted to Subversion following the plans I wrote.
· Updated the schemas and conversion instructions for business directories and news items to handle non-U.S. sources.
· Implemented a continuous-build server for schemas analogous to those used for code.
Google 2007 -2010
Developer Advocate (Internal) Full time March 2009 – 2010
Half time July 2007 – March 2009
· Led Google Data API orientation, design review, code review, pre-launch, and new technology evangelism meetings, as well as answering one-off questions, for about 25 Google service teams, including Google Book Search, Calendar, Contacts, Spreadsheets, and Webmaster Tools.
· Wrote and maintained a variety of checklists so that others could lead these meetings in future.
· Wrote code and configuration files for a sample Google Data API to be used by Google engineers to help them develop their own APIs.
· Wrote internal programmer documentation, including feature design documents and HOWTOs, on issues like specifying postal addresses and handling unauthorized requests among others.
· Maintained the extensive (25-page) internal Google Data API FAQ.
· Wrote extensive and detailed reviews of many internal proposals.
· Interviewed 35 candidates for software engineering jobs at Google.
Senior Programmer/Analyst Half time July 2007 - March 2009
· Designed a backward-compatible standard format for all the errors reported by the Google Data API engine and the various services that expose GData feeds, and provided a central internal registry of those errors.
· Made extensive modifications to the internal Google Data APIs engine to bring it into full compliance with HTTP, specifically to support standard concurrency control. These changes have now been rolled out to essentially all Google Data APIs.
· Wrote Google's XML Document Format Style Guide, published at http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/xmlstyle.html.
FLWOR Foundation February 2007 - July 2007
Senior Programmer/Analyst
· Developed the core design for Zorba, an open-source implementation of the W3C XQuery standard.
· Wrote a prototype storage layer.
Associated Press (AP) April 1999 – February 2007
Senior Programmer/Analyst
· Maintained orphaned code for the AP newsroom ticker sign in Python, and installed an extensively rewritten version in the newsroom of the New York Daily News (an AP member).
· Debugged socket timing problems in NNTP-based news distribution system
· Converted large CVS repository to Subversion and created appropriate developer notification facilities.
· Wrote a specialized NNTP client in Python to allow UNIX/Linux-based customers to reliably pick up AP news feeds
· Wrote and adapted bulk emailing software for AP editors to easily send notifications to customer editors about stories of special interest.
· Wrote continuously running XHTML validity checker for stories fed to ASAP, AP's youth-oriented news site.
· Designed and documented procedures for appropriate use of Subversion branches.
· Participant in design team for a complete rewrite of large customer-facing news distribution application. Contributed many new design ideas around RSS/Atom, code snippets, fast dynamic generation of HTML. Designed and documented procedures for associating AP stories with maps and other geographics.
· Participant in news classification team.
Reuters Health April 1999 – December 2005
Senior Programmer/Analyst
· Developed the infrastructure and software using Perl, Unix shell, and Java for the publication side of Reuters Health, a Reuters subsidiary.
· Wrote essentially all the code responsible for distributing Reuters Health news stories from the editorial group to the customers over a five-year period.
· Provided all the system administration services, testing, and documentation as well.
· Provided extensive support to editorial, permissioning, and sales groups within Reuters Health.
· Provided sales engineering and post-sales customer support on the full range of technical issues.
EMPLOYMENT PRIOR TO 1999
Chemical Bank/Chase Manhattan Bank – 10 years
Merrill Lynch & Co. - 3 years
Kidder, Peabody & Co. – 5 years
EDUCATION:
University of Pennsylvania: started work on Ph.D. program in Social Systems Sciences.
City College of New York: Major in Communications & Mass Media.
Completed all of B.A. with honors, except thesis.
Attended Case Western Reserve University: Major in Physics.
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