Craig Blaszczyk
London
I have spent the last 2 years taking Network Locum from prototype website to a launched product, including the integration of Network Locum with various external partners (by designing, implementing and documenting an API in NodeJS) and creation of an app by an external contractor.
One of my proudest accomplishments was migrating the infrastructure from a monolithic Django website to a micro-service based I architecture, with services written in NodeJS, Flask and Django. I also restructued our process of doing development by introducing git-flow and one-click deployment to production
I also helped to lead the company wide take-up of Lean practices, including AB testing, failing fast and failing often and getting out of the office to talk to users. I would love to hear about other companies which have also has success in using these ideas in the real world.
Other things I like:
- UX and mobile first design, including user flows and user-led design
- Agile & lean development principles
- Recruiting and managing technical teams
- Wearing many hats - from architect, to sys ops, first line support, front end developer or painting and decorating
- Front end development (for example using Bootstrap 3)
- Integrating with external services - like Twilio, KISSmetrics, GoCardless and Stripe.
- Making everyone in the company a developer by teaching them how to use pull requests for things like copy changes
- Getting the whole company involved in supporting customers.
- Speaking Portuguese and English
- Playing board games, watching Star Trek and reading comic books
- My 1 year old cat