Carl Tashian
Aloka Studio
Responsible for all aspects of this small consulting firm: generating leads, proposals, consulting on web strategy, design, and system architecture; producing standards-compliant websites and developing Ruby on Rails web applications.
- Clients include The American Museum of Natural History, Chefs Collaborative, Off Wall Street Consulting Group, The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, Taza Chocolate, and ITP @ NYU.
Participatory Politics Foundation
Responsible for leading a small, distributed team developing OpenGovernment.org (Fall 2010 launch), for liaising with our technology and data partners, for continuous improvement of the infrastructure behind OpenCongress, and for assisting the Executive Director with strategic planning, fundraising, and day-to-day operations.
- Implemented major scalability and stability improvements on OpenCongress.
- Coached the team on agile methods and behavior driven development, Ruby and Rails, and technology scalability.
- Migrated the organization to a CiviCRM platform for fundraising and e-mail campaigns.
Zipcar
As employee #8, responsible for design, system architecture, development, and continuous improvement of technology at the world’s largest car sharing service. Responsible for leading projects, both internal and customer facing, from ideation through launch. Responsible for day-to-day technology operations, including highly available network, system, and Oracle database infrastructure design and administration.
- In a team of three engineers, built and scaled Zipcar’s end-to-end technology platform as the fleet grew from 25 cars in Boston to over 2,500 worldwide.
- Iteratively improved Zipcar’s technology, streamlining customer touchpoints, internal processes, and back-end architecture through every step. A tight feedback loop ensured the smoothest experience for all stakeholders.
- Key projects included a web- and telephone-based vehicle reservation and billing system; a custom embedded vehicle telemetry system and server; supporting intranet applications for call center reps, sales/marketing, and fleet staff; executive and sales reporting systems; new membership workflow; and integration of external services including credit card gateways, EZ-Pass, drivers license verification, and financial reporting systems.
Case Western Reserve University
Responsible for concept, funding, and development of this popular alternative to CWRU’s aging online community system.
- Proposed, secured funding for, and managed this university-wide online community system.
- Developed the entire system with my co-founder, from server programming to the user interface.
- The system increased communication on campus by offering free student webspace, online discussion forums, and a campus calendar.
Hewlett-Packard
Responsible for preparing a new router authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) service, called TACACS+, for worldwide deployment over HP’s network of Cisco routers. Designed and built a web-based administration system.
- Attended HP’s Internet and DNS classes and experimented with network design and routing protocols.