Professional Overview

Development manager with several years experience in web development. Capable of managing small and large teams, with particular concentration in agile development methodologies and Scrum in particular. Organized, pragmatic, conscientious, disciplined.

I believe in an empowerment style of management, encouraging and equipping those around me. I like doing the little things; I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. I care more about who I work with than what I'm doing. I learn best when discussing and collaborating with others. I value disciplined thought over current fads, consistent action over motivational talk, relationships over self-promotion.

I also have a few projects that I develop and maintain. These tend to be dynamic web-based projects that allow me to try out new things or apply my skills to an area where I see some kind of need.

Status

I am currently busy with full-time contract work. I am a Certified Scrum Master and am always interested in hearing about opportunities with Scrum or similar agile methodologies.

Please see my LinkedIn profile for more information on my professional experience.

Skills

My technical skills center around the following:

Web development and scripting using Perl, PHP, Python and XHTML/CSS in Unix/Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX environments
Data-driven client-server applications using content management systems such as Django, Drupal, Zope, or Apache/mod_perl with a backend RDBMS (PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MSSQL)
Computer graphics applications using C/C++ and OpenGL

Professional Experience

I have 26 years of experience as a developer, including 20 years management experience. During this time I have been involved with a number of projects which are detailed on my projects page.

Endorsements

"Working with Mike was a pleasure. He is dedicated, intelligent and honest. His skill at managing developers is impressive. He keeps a team cohesive and productive while engendering loyalty from the team members. This combination of development experience and people skills is rare."
Jesse Sherlock, Sr Developer, Reinvent Inc.

"Mike gets tasks completed well and is an exceptional communicator and organizer. It was a sincere pleasure to have Mike working for us over the many years and I have no hesitation in recommending him to any employer"
Kevin Ham, CEO, Reinvent Inc.

"Mike is patient, dedicated and competent. He is probably the the most relentlessly hard working and effective person I have had the pleasure of working with. He is also an excellent people manager. I would not hesitate to recommend Mike for any technical management position."
Alan Hodgson, Systems Operations Manager, Reinvent Inc.

"As someone responsible for exploring new opportunities for 365 Corporation's sports sites from 1999-2002, a football (soccer) statistics site run by Mike Goetz as a personal project was brought to my attention. It was a beautifully simple idea: to use the basic statistics of a match to generate a host of data that enabled fans to look at a team's form in a variety of ways. On my recommendation, the company approached Mike and made him an offer to buy the site from him, and incorporate it in Football365, then take him on to the staff to maintain and develop the site, and similar projects for other sites. I managed Mike from an editorial point of view; on technical matters he reported to others in the company. Mike was easy to work with, but never satisfied with fulfilling the outline he was given, instead always offering improvements. I worked with Mike from 1999 to 2001. The site we bought from Mike and he ran for us is still an integral part of Football365.com today (visible at stats.football365.com). Football365 is now part of BSkyB, the British television arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp; I still contribute to the site on a freelance basis. Few such projects survive online from that time, but Mike's vision remains more sophisticated than the presentations of similar statistics elsewhere nearly a decade on."
Philip Cornwall, Sports development editor, 365 Corporation

Academic Experience

I completed my MSc in December of 1998 at the University of East Anglia as part of the Computer Graphics Project research group. My thesis was entitled The Application of Surface Reconstruction Techniques in Endodontics and dealt with the use of computer graphics in dentistry. If you're interested, have a look at my research page.

I completed my undergraduate degree in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University in 1996.

Further Information

You can read my resume online. If you would like more information on any of the above, please get in touch via the feedback page.