Lars Pind

Crass sales pitch:

My specialty is software applications that help you run your business:

• Knowledge Management: I was part of a team of 2 implementing one of the world’s most successful knowledge management projects at one of the world’s largest companies, Siemens.
• Collaboration: I was a lead architect on the team developing ACS, probably the most powerful web community and application toolkit out there.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): I built a production planning and control system for a 25-people production of shop fittings.
• Project tracking: I designed and implemented a time and project tracking product which was marketed by a software company and deployed in numerous installations.
• Process management: I did a powerful workflow management system to help companies ensure the consistency of their processes.

I’m equipped to do most of the work involved in developing great software:

• Functional specifications: I know how to ask the right questions, so you can make sure we develop the software that meets the needs of the business and the people. And I can write it up, so there’s a chance it’ll actually get read and used.
• Interaction and human interface design: I was the Chief UI Architect on a team with 50 software developers building a web-based content management and commerce application.
• Architecture and design: I have a keen eye for the big picture: The right set of components, sensible interactions between them, performance and other implications.
• Implementation: Know what you want? I have deep experience with a range of databases, languages, platforms, tools, web and GUI, Windows and UNIX. And I know how to write code that’s robust, readable, maintainable, and fast.
• Software project management: I know how to make sure things don’t run off track, misunderstandings are cleared up early, and things are delivered on time.
• Code reviews: If you’ve already written software, but you’re unsure how to proceed with it, I can review your code for architecture, robustness, maintainability, and performance, and give you a detailed and readable report telling you where the problems are and what the best way to proceed is.
• Human interface reviews: I can find usability problems in your software, either by reviewing it myself, or conducting a usability test for you. And in addition to giving you a report that’s readable, I can also implement the changes for you.
• Training: I can do informal training with you and your team in any of the areas I work with.

How we’ll work together

I usually work in small and targeted 1-5 week engagements.

I work out of my office in Copenhagen, Denmark, but a number of my clients are in the US.

I’ve been working remotely under various circumstances for a couple of years, and know how to stay on top of the communication even when we don’t meet face-to-face. I’m available for travels, too.

Need to hear more?

I have 15 years of experience in this field.

Here’s what a few select people have said over those years.

Herbert Huber at Siemens ICN, says:

”... what made us repeatedly bring him over from New York to Munich, was his ability to come up with creative, alternative and effective solutions to hard problems.”

Bruno Mattarollo, Systems Administrator at Greenpeace International, says:

“I am extremely pleased with the work done by Lars. It was highly professional, very detailed and fast! The recommendations proposed were very accurate and useful. The recommendations document coming out of the code review Lars did is a very valuable document for us. Thanks a lot!”

Richard Buck, SVP of Development at ArsDigita, says:

“He was very well respected as a developer, having led the design and implementation of our first workflow product, and he was also a keen UI and usability thinker. He had done much of our earliest work in collaboration, and his experience and insights were always helpful. I enjoyed working with Lars and would definitely hire him again.”

Kaj Grønbæk, Associate Professor at University of Aarhus says:

“Lars has shown an excellent performance on these programming tasks. He has also shown to be very clever at learning new tools and techniques that he was not familiar with on beforehand.”

Convinced?

Email me at lars@pinds.com

Here’s what my clients and employers have said about me. I’ll be happy to provide you with contact information for these people.

Herbert Huber, Siemens ICN, Feb 12th, 2002:

Lars Pind helped implement our ShareNet knowledge management system at Siemens ICN. He impressed me with his ability to quickly understan the problems we were trying to solve, his flexibility in coming up with solutions to those problems. In general, he worked on or ahead of schedule, being quick to realize solutions.

But most importantly, what made us repeatedly bring him over from New York to Munich, was his ability to come up with creative, alternative and effective solutions to hard problems.

Bruno Mattarollo, Systems Administrator, Greenpeace International, Feb 1, 2002:

I am extremely pleased with the work done by Lars. It was highly professional, very detailed and fast! The recommendations proposed were very accurate and useful. They made us think about all the implications of the analysis, an analysis that was anything but superficial.

The recommendations document coming out of the code review Lars did is a very valuable document for us. We are using it to plan the next phase of the project, and it has proven to be very helpful and has made our job much easier and more accurate.

Thanks a lot!

Richard Buck, SVP of Development, ArsDigita, Dec 13, 2001:

Lars Pind worked for arsDigita for 2 years. He worked for me as chief UI architect for the past 9 months. During a recent and large reduction, I consolidated people by office, eliminating both the New York and Berkeley offices with which Lars had worked. Under no other circumstances would I have let Lars go, and I considered for quite some time asking him to stay on from his home office, rather than losing his UI instincts and his broad experience in collaboration and knowledge sharing. He was very well respected as a developer, having led the design and implementation of our first workflow product, and he was also a keen UI and usability thinker. He had done much of our earliest work in collaboration, and his experience and insights were always helpful. He got along well with everyone in the office.

I enjoyed working with Lars and would definitely hire him again.

<!—

Bruno Mattarollo, Greenpeace International, Feb 1, 2002:

Coming Feb 1, 2002…

—>

Kaj Grønbæk, Associate Professor, University of Aarhus, Dec 16, 1998:

Lars Pind has been employed as a student programmer on a research project within the area of open hypermedia. The project has in particular been focusing on development of open hypermedia infrastructures for augmenting the Web with new collaboration services.

Lars has been responsible for programming of the inter-process communication (IPC) infrastructure, as well as core functionality for one of the structure servers being developed. Lars has shown an excellent performance on these programming tasks. He has also shown to be very clever at learning new tools and techniques that he was not familiar with on beforehand.

Henrik Munk-Andersen, DSI Planova A/S, Aug 12, 1997:

Lars has developed and implemented a new software application for production management in our factory producing shop fittings in wood.

The process involved everything from discovering and documenting the procedures of the organization, researching the market for appropriate production management applications, researching development tools and platforms, and specification, design, implementation and testing the system.

Development was started on January 2, 1997 and was ready for production on May 1 same year. The system is fully in use as of today.

Lars has proven to be both fast and effective in getting a firm grasp on things, in particular in understanding our company, our products, and our market.

In the design of the system, he has been good at integrating the needs of the company with the needs of the users and the technical implementation. In this respect, he’s been especially talented at getting behind the words and understanding our user’s real needs, and then finding the best way to fill that need.

During the whole project, he’s been an independently working, engaged, and pro-active coworker, who was also a great team player.

Henrik Lykke Hansen, DSI DATA A/S, Jan 12, 1994:

We’re pleased to provide Lars Pind our strongest recommendation. He was employed at DSI DATA as a systems consultant in our consulting division, developing client applications. It is of vital importance that our consultants are able to both understand and empathize with the needs of the client, and to translate that into a practical solution.

Lars embodies this skill, though we won’t say that he is yet fully developed. While employed, he’s had the opportunity to work on projects of varying characteristics, from the highly structured, to the completely unspecified.

What we especially value about Lars is his ability to:

• Work with a team
• Concretize the task
• Conduct client negotiations with kindness and tact
• Reaching a goal (from unstructured needs to useful solution)

And last, but not least:

• Being able to learn with a smile

For these reasons, we give Lars our warmest recommendations, in a world thirsting for profitable and understandable solutions.

Convinced?

Email me at lars@pinds.com

___PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE______________________________________________

FOUNDER AND CEO 2002
Collaboraid ApS, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Founded Collaboraid (http://www.collaboraid.biz), a software 
  consulting company specialized in collaboration and learning software,
  based on the OpenACS platform.
- Clients include MIT Sloan, Greenpeace International, and Heidelberg
  University.
- Currently 3 people and profitable

CHIEF UI ARCHITECT 2001
ArsDigita Corp., New York City/San Francisco, USA
- Designed the user interface for the entire ACS product, including a
  web content management system, personalization system, and the
  product catalog.
- Defined a framework for the entire user interface of the application,
  based on goal-directed design, personas, goals, and classic usability
  engineering principles.
- Defined and coached a process of user interface and interaction
  design, used by software developers and program managers throughout
  the company.
- Worked with graphic designers to design a compelling and effective
  graphic appearance to the interaction design.
- Helped define a new collaboration software product from scratch.

SENIOR DEVELOPER 1999-2001
ArsDigita Corp., New York City, USA
- Extended ShareNet, one of the most successful knowledge management
  solutions ever, for Siemens, along with a very small team of other
  developers.
- Designed and implemented a highly praised workflow system, including
  a web-based graphic editor.
- Designed major parts of several major architectural overhauls of the
  ACS web application toolkit.

PROJECT PROGRAMMER 1998 
Department of Computer Science at University of Aarhus, Denmark
- Research project in Open Hypermedia Systems for the Web.
- Programmed an asynchronous, multi-threaded inter-process 
  communication infrastructure, tying together the 3-tiered 
  architecture, in Java.
- Programmed the core of two key modules in the architecture in Java.
- Developed a simple web server in Java to query the database.

CONTRACTUAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPER/ANALYST 1994-1997
Dansk System Inventar A/S          
- Developed mission-critical product planning and control system 
  for Dansk System Inventar A/S, Svendborg, Denmark.
- Analyzed the field of production planning and control.
- Designed a flexible software architecture and database.
- Managed the development project with two fellow programmers.
- Developed the system as lead developer.
- Still being maintained and used - more than 6,000 items.

SYSTEMS CONSULTANT 1992-1993
Dansk System Industri A/S, Kokkedal, Denmark.
- DSI developed the market-leading Danish office suite, DSI-SYSTEM.
- Solved specific problems for clients on location, often under 
  tight time constraints.
- Designed and developed tailor-built and off-the-shelf database 
  systems.

FREELANCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER 1988-1992
- Developed system for Dansk System Inventar A/S, Svendborg, Denmark to 
  let their customers worldwide place orders electronically; translated 
  to several languages, distributed to customers worldwide,   still in 
  daily use as of today. 
- Developed DemoMaker, an early text-based presentation program; sold 
  to several clients, used at fairs and shows.

___EDUCATION____________________________________________________________

UNIVERSITY OF AARHUS, Denmark
B.S., Computer Science., GPA 3.8.
- Research project in Open Hypermedia Systems for the Web. 
- Programmed the core of two key modules in the architecture.

UNIVERSITY OF AAHURS, Denmark 
Minor at Department of Information Studies 

___COMPUTER SKILLS______________________________________________________

- Languages  : C, C#, Java, Perl, Tcl, PHP, SQL, HTML, JavaScript,
               Pascal, Delphi/Object Pascal, (La)Tex.
- Internet   : AOL Server, Apache, IIS, HTTP, TCP/IP, XML.
- Platforms  : Unix (Solaris, Irix, Linux), Windows, MacOS.
- Databases  : Oracle, PostgresQL, IBM DB/2, MySQL, InterBase, Access.

When you simply want to find something very specific on the web, loading up a web site, clicking a few times to find the right form, then filling it out, and clicking the button, can be a little cumbersome.

To relieve the burden a bit, I’ve created a handful of useful shortcuts that you can type directly into your browser’s address bar —or if you have the address bar placed on your Windows task bar, you can just enter them there, at any time.

They all work like this: You type in pinds.com/f/<i>(type)</i>/<i>(search term)</i>. For example, if you want to search for a word, instead of <i>(type)</i>, you say word or simply w. The search term is the word you want to find. Oh, and for the record, the initial /f is for “find”.

So think of this as “pinds-dot-com-slash-f(ind)slash-w(ord)-slash(whatever)”. And you don’t need to type in http://www.. The www. part isn’t necessary, and your browser should supply the http:// part automatically.

Here are the ones I have at the moment:

Word lookup in an English dictionary (W)

To find the definition of an English word in Merriam-Webster, try this:

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/w/definition">pinds.com/f/w/definition</a>

Book lookup on Amazon.com (B)

To find out about a specific book, try this:

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/b/steve jobs second coming">pinds.com/f/b/steve jobs second coming</a>

Google search (G)

Google’s front page is pretty small and fast, but given how frequently most people use it, that one page load saved is still something:

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/g/shortcuts">pinds.com/f/g/shortcuts</a>

Krak’s map of Denmark (K)

This one’s a big winner, if you happen to need maps of Danish addresses. Krak’s own web site is so terrible, it takes several big page loads and clicks of obscure buttons to get to a map. And they require you to manually separate the address in street name, street number, postal code, and city, even though doing so automatically is a five-minute programming task. Sigh.

You can now simply say something like this:

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/k/oesterbrogade 119, 2100">pinds.com/f/k/oesterbrogade 119, 2100</a>

Everything before the comma is interpreted as the street, everything after the comma is interpreted as the city.

For the street, you’re free to include the street number (house number) or to leave it out, as you see fit.

And for the city, you can use either 4-digit postal code, city name, or both.

One caveat: You must use oe in place of ø, ae in place of æ and aa instead of å, or my web server will mess up.

More examples:

• <a href="http://pinds.com/f/k/toldbodgade">pinds.com/f/k/toldbodgade</a>
• <a href="http://pinds.com/f/k/,ringe">pinds.com/f/k/,ringe</a> (note the comma before the city name)
• <a href="http://pinds.com/f/k/a.p.moellersvej 35, svendborg">pinds.com/f/k/a.p.moellersvej 35, svendborg</a> (note the “oe” instead of ”ø”)

Movie on IMDB (M)

Want to find out about a movie?

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/m/reptilicus">pinds.com/f/m/reptilicus</a>

Map of New York City (N)

If you happen to need a map of some place in New York, it’s even easier:

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/n/10 christopher">pinds.com/f/n/10 christopher</a>

Danish Word in “retskrivningsordbogen” (D)

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/d/regn">pinds.com/f/d/regn</a>

Post Denmark Tracking (pdt)

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/pdt/CU299600286DK">pinds.com/f/pdt/CU299600286DK</a>

All About Copenhagen (Alt Om København) (aok)

<a href="http://pinds.com/f/aok/bopa">pinds.com/f/aok/bopa</a>