Mike Little's Curriculum Vitae

This page is also available on-line at http://test.zed1.com/mike-little-cv.html

Personal details:

Name:
Mike Little
E-mail:
mikecv at zed1 dot com
Driving Licence:
Full, clean

Technical Expertise:

• Operating Systems: Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Windows, DOS, Various proprietary embedded
operating systems.
• Programming Languages: Java, JSP, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, XML, Perl, SQL, PL/SQL, C/C++,
Visual Basic, Pascal, Delphi, assembler (Intel x86, Hitachi SH3, PowerPC, 6502), Awk, sed, bash, sh,
ksh, PAL, Access Basic, MS Word & Excel macros.

• Applications/Tools:
• Revision control systems: CVS, Subversion (SVN), RCS, PVCS, Perforce, other custom written
systems.
• Various compilers/IDEs/Debuggers for C++, Java, assembler, Pascal. Custom written compilers
• Build and test tools: Make, Ant, jUnit, cppUnit, httpUnit, bugzilla
• Databases - MySQL, Oracle, DB2, Access, various proprietary systems.
• Content Management Systems - WordPress, Drupal, and other proprietary systems.

• Technical Skills:
• Sun Certified Java Programmer
• Certified e-GIF Practitioner
• Technical Architect and designer
• Experienced developer
• Technical lead and Team lead
• Configuration Management
• E-Commerce applications
• Content Management Systems
• Development and testing processes

Career Summary:

I am the co-founding developer of the WordPress project. I started it in 2003 with Matt Mullenweg (now of
Automattic Inc.) and have been developing with and using it ever since.

I run my own web development company specialising in WordPress and have worked on a number of
government WordPress sites, most notably, I have developed a number of sites for the Law Commission, DWP,
COI, and develop and support a site for a prominent Cabinet Office client.

My background is in software development and I have more than 25 years under my belt, many at the most
senior technical architect level. I am a published author and a member of the Usability Professionals
Association.

I am a flexible and committed architect and senior developer. I am eager to learn new skills and competencies.
I am passionate about what I do, the applications I develop, and the solutions I architect. I am an enthusiastic
team player and strive to contribute best practice, standards compliant approaches wherever possible.

• Published author
• A founding developer of WordPress (http://wordpress.org), the open source personal publishing
platform
• Skills in Search Engine Optimisation: I am currently the number 1 'mike' on google.com out of over
270 million.
• Full time developer since 1990
• Over 26 years programming experience in many languages
• Technical Editor
• Worked as technical architect on a J2EE based e-commerce application serving up to 25 web sites and
generating millions of pounds in revenue
• Wealth of technical experience in various areas, and a variety of organisational and managerial roles
• 15 years experience in configuration control and team development practices
• Highly skilled in fault analysis and debugging
• Configuration control of massively parallel development streams
• Produced specifications, design documents and end-user documentation
• Considerable experience of embedded systems

Publications:

Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress

Apress, December 2005

My first book, Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress is a guide to creating
your own virtual meeting place for friends, business partners, and others with common interests. Published by
Apress in December 2005, I co-authored this with Robert T. Douglass and Jared W. Smith. My contribution to
the book is the WordPress section.

WordPress 24-Hour Trainer by George Plumley

Wrox 2010

I was technical editor on this book, earning the thanks from the author for my "indispensable technical editing".

Professional WordPress Design and Development by Hal Stern, David Damstra, & Brad Williams

Wrox 2010

I was technical editor on this book. The authors' acknowledgements include:

"Mike Little's technical review of the book was insightful and valuable.",
and "I would like to thank ... and Mike Little for [his] valuable insights, suggestions, and quick responses to our
changes."
 Work experience:

zed1.com Limited — 1999–present

Private web development and consultancy firm specialising in WordPress.

Role: Director, architect, developer, consultant.

Scope: As a founding developer and at one time a lead developer of the WordPress project and having worked
on numerous websites, many built with WordPress, I decided to concentrate on WordPress, formalising my
previously freelance work and incorporate zed1.com as a limited company in 2008.

I have worked on a number of central government WordPress sites, most notably I developed a number of sites
for the Law Commission, DWP, COI, and develop and support a site for a prominent Cabinet Office client. I have
also built and run sites for schools, education projects, authors, musicians, consultants, many more. I host and
manage a number of small sites for several of my clients.

I also work with a small selection of strategic partners who are some of the best WordPress specialists in the
country.

I have designed, developed, and installed a number of websites from simple static 'brochure' sites often based
on WordPress, to fully fledged, custom CMS-driven, corporate sites. Usually working from a brief and a graphic
design, I architect, design and develop a site to client requirements. I strive to ensure standards compliance,
produce sites to usability best practices, and meet accessibility requirements through separation of content,
from presentation, and from behaviour.

I run short one-to-one introductory WordPress training courses.

Accessible Event Promotions — 2009–present

Marketing and promoting accessible events for disabled and D/deaf people

Role: Director of Services.

We are establishing a company and working out how we can make a living and make a major difference to the
lives of disabled and deaf people. We are working in London and the North West. The company is recently
established and we are developing, consulting and planning with possible partners and funders.

WordCamp UK — 2010–present

Non-profit association promoting WordPress in the UK.

Role: Treasurer.

The Organisation holds an annual conference of WordPress publishers, designers and developers based in the
United Kingdom. We also help with other activities relating to WordPress in the United Kingdom, including
holding local meetings. I run a the Manchester WordPress User Group.

Open Rights Group — 2005–2009

Non-profit consumer and civil rights in a digital age.

Role: Volunteer Technical Support.

I helped set up and manage the WordPress-based website at the core of the Open Rights Group's web
presence. Along with a volunteer team of great geeks we kept things running smoothly.

Now running a non-WordPress site, I've recently taken a back seat.

Northgate Information Solutions (formally SX3), Alderley Edge — 2004–2008

IT services and Business Process Outsourcing

Role: Technical Architect.

Scope: I started as a research & development analyst programmer working with the Technical Architect in the
Public Services division to research and architect the future direction of the division's Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) approach using Java/J2EE development. I also supported and trained Java developers.

I then moved into the Technical Architect role specialising in Java and web-based technologies.

Projects:

Designed and developed a leading edge custom user assistance creation and delivery system using DITA
(Darwin Information Typing Architecture), and an open source application stack and tools. The system provides
single sourcing of all user assistance documentation and an innovative user annotation system for the context
sensitive online help.

Designed and led a project to produce a Portal/Dashboard application. This is to be used by both local
government housing departments and housing associations. Interfaces with Northgate's housing applications,
MS Exchange, external RSS feeds, and an SMS gateway. Built to web standards, WCAG AA, using J2EE and
Ajax.

Designed and developed a proof of concept SMS gateway to allow automated and ad-hoc sending and receipt of
SMS messages into and out of the Northgate Applications.

Researched, designed, and developed a middleware system to generate simple web applications from simple
XML definitions, utilising new and existing Web Service APIs to back-end database systems. This has enabled
non web-savvy developers to create standards compliant web applications simply and quickly.

Eunite/Zendor, Manchester — 2000–2004

E-commerce, fulfilment, and interactive services.

Role: Technical Architect.

Scope: Lead developer and architect on J2EE/DB2 based e-commerce application in use by sister company JD
Williams (JDW), Toys R Us and River Island. Technical lead, guide and mentor to a development team of up to
10.

Results: Introduced revision control and configuration management across all Zendor projects to streamline
the development process and resolve concurrent development issues. Maintenance of up to 8 parallel streams
of development that led to 18 major releases and hundreds of minor releases. Introduced bug tracking and
reporting using Bugzilla, collaborative developer documentation system and improved development processes
using Apache, Tomcat and automated tools such as Ant and JUnit. These quality and process improvements
have made the development process more transparent, easier to manage and introduced a greater level of
control. I was chosen to head the 'Tools and Process' Technical Advisory Group within Zendor and have
prepared and presented various proposals and recommendations for the development, testing and graphic
design departments. Lead developer on a Java/JSP/Oracle based project running on Sun Solaris for a Business-
to-Business (B2B) services client. As a member of the development team, I have also been involved in most
other projects either in a technical lead or developer role: The Restaurant Game (PL/SQL, Java); SourceUK, a
government CMS portal (Perl), First Financial (technical advice, configuration control), Stanley Casinos (security
investigation), and others.

ServicePower Business Solutions Ltd, Stockport — 1999–2000

Enterprise Scheduling Software.

Role: Oracle DBA and Development Support

• Maintained dozens of databases on multiple servers on 4 operating systems. Maintained the CVS source
code repositories, and developed and maintained internal development tools.
• I developed add-on Perl scripts to the CVS software, automating such things as data collection, user
authentication, etc. I also developed a web-based task tracking system using Apache web server, PHP
scripting, and MySQL RDBMS.
• Development Process Working Party: researched new development tools. Responsible for improving
development processes resulting in a considerably more stable development environment, in turn
leading to increased stability of the core company product.
• Part of the Intranet Development Group, responsible for development of the Company Intranet as a
resource for development and support.
• Designed and developed an application in Perl to generate 1 gigabyte of coherent test data for
performance testing.
• Additionally spent time acting as development group 'guru', helping developers with use of CVS, Perl,
SQL, HTML, PHP, Unix shell scripts, and general help with C and C++.

Geoworks Ltd, Macclesfield — 1996–1999

Smart-phone/Communicator and PDA OS Development.

Role: Principal Engineer

• Programmed in C with some PowerPC assembler. I developed the Dynamic Linker Loader for the Eden
Operating System (OS). Gained knowledge of Embedded Linking Format (ELF), low-level multi-tasking,
and virtual memory management. I designed a suite of build tools in C, to complement the Dynamic
Linker Loader.
• I participated in design reviews for portions of the OS. I designed dynamically loadable resources for
the OS and a task selection tool for the Eden OS SDK, acting as a mentor for a graduate engineer.
Developed a PC disk driver for the SDK.
• Assigned to the Roadmap group for the merger with Geoworks. Developed an email application for an
Hitachi SH3-based PDA running the Eden OS.
• Ported the Dynamic Linker Loader to the SH3 chip for this project using a non-ELF solution in C and SH3
assembler. Developed the post-ROM patching solution for this device.
• Build and release manager: coordinating submissions from 15 or so developers. Spent time in
California, working with the client as first contact for fault reports.
• Consultant for the development of the Dynamic Linker Loader and patching solution for SH3-based PDA
project for Epson. Developed functional and system test suites in C for the QA team.
• Developer on a proprietary information delivery server written in Java for a major UK telecoms
company. Installed, configured, and administered several Linux and Windows NT workstations
connected to a Windows NT network.
• Build Manager coordinating submissions from up to 10 developers working on 7 'branches' in two
continents.

Pantek Ltd, Stockport — 1990–1996

Industrial Software House.

Role: Development Manager

• Manager of a team of six. Responsible for the day-to-day running of the department; scheduling,
progress tracking, problem solving. Liaised with customers from initial requirement specification,
 through full functional specification, pre- and post-delivery testing, and post-release support. Acted as
technical support for sales attending pre-sale customer briefings.
• Responsible for department budgeting and forecasting, reporting directly to the technical services
manager.
• Started as trainee programmer progressed through software engineer to managing the Software
Development Department.
• Programmed projects both large and small, singly, and as part of a team. I gained experience in DOS,
Windows SDK, C, assembler, Novell, TCP/IP, Microsoft networks.
• Worked in serial and TCP/IP communications. Developed Visual Basic applications. I completed a C++
training course. MFC/Visual C++ based applications, hardware interfacing and embedded software,
configuration control.
• Designed and specified algorithms and user interfaces. Wrote end-user documentation: manuals and
on-line help. Wrote code from proprietary protocol specifications.
• Introduced coding standards; I was actively involved in the company's application for BS5750 (ISO
9001) standard.
• I also designed and gave one- and two-day training courses.

Prior non-IT positions

Video Box Office, Stockport (1986–1990)

Video rental library. — Proprietor/partner.
Meehan Bros. Ltd, Manchester (1985–1986)
Wholesale clothing. — Warehouse manager.
Action Video Productions, Stockport (1984–1985)
Promotional video production. — Video cameraman, technician, and editor.
Out of Town Promotions/Zebra International, Stockport (1983–1985)
Pop music promotion and management. — Programmer and Sound technician.
Wynd-up records Ltd, Prestwich (1980–1982)
Wholesale/Retail records & tapes. — Shop manager.
TVA (Installations) Ltd, Stockport (1979–1980)
Communal TV, Door entry/security and Warden-call alarm systems. — Engineer/trainer.

Interests and activities:

I am particularly interested in Web facing applications, Usability, Accessibility, Information Architecture,

Configuration Management, XP/Agile development.

I have taught myself C, C++, Java, Perl, PHP, SQL, Pascal, BASIC, and 6502 and 80x86 Assembler and many
other languages for fun and education. I run Linux on most of my PC's at home along with Windows.

Music, of all genres, is one of my passions: I try to listen to as much and as varied music as I can. I especially
enjoy live music and try to support small and unsigned bands and artists.

I have been 'on the Internet' since 1994 and regularly participate in forums and mailing lists. In my pre-
internet days I contributed to a number of local BBSs and, through FidoNet, have helped solve user's problems
all over the world. I am an avid reader of both science fact and Science Fiction. I enjoy cycling, walking, and
swimming.

Note: I have an on-line journal at http://zed1.com/journalized which occasionally has more up to date
information on it.

You can also use the online contact form http://zed1.com/contact-zed1 to send me a message.