Jeff Deskins

Cloud Architect

Nashville, TN
Email: jdeskins@tvstats.com
https://github.com/jdeskins

SUMMARY

Experienced developer with an entrepreneurial spirit that turns ideas into working solutions. Continuously learning best practices for creating high performance web applications. Deployed several projects on both Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Worked several years in television news, including freelance video work for ESPN, ABC News, live satellite shoots for CBS News and CNN during breaking news events.

CORE LANGUAGES AND SKILLS

Languages

Java (13 yrs), Python (5 yrs), Javascript/Node.js (3 yrs), Bash

Skills

Google Cloud Platform (10 yrs) and Amazon Web Services (5 yrs). Docker (4 yrs), Kubernetes (3 yrs), AWS Lambda with Node.js/Python, Serverless framework (2 yrs), Java, Spring, Test-Driven Development (TDD), and frontend development with AngularJS and ReactJS.

ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Created TVstats.com that’s been providing SaaS solutions for television station websites for 20 years. These products are data-driven, scalable, and migrated to Google Cloud in 2008.
  • Invited to be a member of the private Google Cloud Insiders Network based on providing feedback on GCP products in previous years. Test new capabilities as Trusted Tester.
  • Technical Reviewer for several books, including “Test-Driven Java Development” and “AMP: Building Accelerated Mobile Pages”
  • Created the first commercial television website in the state for WOWK in 1995.
  • Spoke in the first session on the Internet at the 1997 National Association of Broadcasters convention, introducing radio and TV station leadership on ways they can use the Internet.
  • Won an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for shooting a documentary on the rural health care crisis in West Virginia by capturing dramatic footage inside emergency rooms and of first responders.
  • Co-founded a video production company that also produced a television show with the most former Miss Americas together for the first time - benefiting the Boys & Girls Club of America.

EXPERIENCE

January 2015 - Present: Cloud Architect

LifeWay Christian Resources - Nashville, TN

  • Provided guidance to teams with their continuous delivery to the cloud and develop cloud strategies that have decreased deployment times from 30 minutes to 3 minutes.
  • Assisted teams migrating to Kubernetes and solved any issues - resulting in over 600 containers across different clusters. Created custom k8s dashboard to improve visualization of Pods and events. (Docker, Kubernetes, ReactJS )
  • Stay on top of industry trends and best practices while hosting demos and showing proof-of-concepts to the teams. Evangelize to leadership a multi-cloud future.
  • Created a common alerting platform using serverless techniques on AWS that many systems across the company now use. Alerts flow through this system and fan out as needed to Slack and other notification systems. (AWS API Gateway, Lambda - Node.js, SNS, DynamoDb, CloudWatch, Slack, VictorOps)

May 1999 - Present: Owner and Developer

TVstats.com

  • Streamlined television station workflows by providing easy-to-use interfaces to manage high school football scores, schedules, and weather closings. This automatically created thousands of team pages and 3x increase in pageviews and ad revenue for scores.
  • Served dynamic content to thousands of users in a short time in a SaaS application with 100ms latency by optimizing and running on Google Cloud. (App Engine Standard, edge-cache servers, memcache, datastore, task queues, and static assets)

November 2012 - January 2015: Health Systems Software Engineer

Vanderbilt University Medical Center - Nashville, TN

  • Implemented a Decision Support Service that streamlined the diagnostic process with blood cancers, saving time for patient and medical center. (Python and FitNesse tests)
  • Updated existing applications with modern technologies which improved load-time performance, usability, and maintainability. (AngularJS and Guice)

November 2001 - October 2012: Advanced Application Developer

LifeWay Christian Resources - Nashville, TN

  • Oversaw development of several innovative projects as Tech Lead, including one that allowed users to splice sections of a song together and generate customized mp3 files and sheet music (PDF) for selected instruments. This resulted in the largest known recording project in Nashville history. (Java, Spring, Hibernate, MySQL, AWS S3, Test Driven Development (TDD), agile methodologies and managed several contractors)
  • Worked with development team for total re-write of LifeWay.com site. (IBM Websphere Commerce, Java, and JUnit tests)

July 2001 - October 2001: Internet Consultant

National Computer Services - Nashville, TN

  • Developed web-based applications for client that streamlined their internal business workflows. (Microsoft ASP, Visual Basic components, DHTML, and JavaScript)
  • Improved page load time on internal web app from 30+ seconds to under 2 seconds by optimizing JavaScript and DOM layout.

April 2000 - July 2001: Senior Internet Developer

Acymtech - Nashville, TN

  • Worked with team building Internet/Intranet sites for clients. (ColdFusion, Microsoft ASP, SQL Server, HTML, JavaScript, Photoshop, and Flash)
  • Added customization to LifeWayStores.com promotions and created administrative backend for their Intranet.

Feb 1999 - April 2000: Internet Consultant

Econotech - Nashville, TN

  • Created an e-commerce product rating system with a backend for rating management and publishing approval. (ASP and VB)
  • Streamlined workflow for bank staff by creating web app for selling flood insurance and generating the required PDF documents. (ColdFusion and SQL Server)
  • Streamlined the Econotech website to dramatically speed up load time by improving Javascript and optimizing images and HTML.

Oct 1998 - Feb 1999: Internet Consultant

Deloitte Consulting - Nashville, TN

  • Automated a manual process by creating a web app on Bridgestone/Firestone's Intranet to allow sales staff to search and view sales statistics at any time while also reducing the time to input new data. (ASP, VB, and SQL Server)
  • Developed a content management application for Deloitte corporation to easily manage and publish press releases through their website.

Nov 1997 - Oct 1998: Sr. Programmer/Analyst

Fruit of the Loom - Nashville, TN

  • Created and designed interactive e-Commerce sites which allowed Fruit of the Loom products to be sold on partner websites. (NetDynamics and ColdFusion)
  • Handled Webmaster duties which included maintaining and updating several sites: Fruit.com, FruitActivewear.com, BVD.com, CumberlandBay.com, FTLCountryFest.com

July 1985 - Nov 1997: Webmaster / Computer Mgr / News Photographer

WOWK-TV - Huntington-Charleston, WV

  • Created the station's first Internet site (May 1995) which was the first commercial station website in the state. Created HTML, forms, images, perl scripts and used javascript for modifying pages without reloading. Self-taught skills needed to make it all happen.
  • Maintained and updated Unix-based Avid/Basys newsroom computer system. Added and trained new users to the system while troubleshooting any problems.
  • Covered many news events as Senior News Photographer, meeting several dignitaries, including Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and many others.
  • Prepared to cover the wide range of possible news events that may happen at any time. Stories included shootings, riots, fires to sports events and other special occasions.

May 1984 - July 1985: Radio News Announcer

WCMI-AM and WCAK-FM 92.7 Ashland, KY

  • Anchored live afternoon newscasts and covered news events for the stations. Wrote local news stories for broadcast which had to be timed to the second, as one of the stations used the Satellite Music Network and the DJs operated from another city.
  • Broadcast live during High School football and basketball games, helping with the scorebook and providing halftime stats and interviews.
  • Monitored the computer-controlled tape decks which used two Commodore 64s to play the commercials at the proper times, introducing me to computer automation.

EDUCATION

1984 - 1987 Marshall University

(Huntington, WV) Graduated with a BA in Broadcasting with a background in Computer Science and Public Relations.

1982 - 1984 Ashland Community College

(Ashland, KY) Branch of the University of Kentucky. General courses and computer science.