Star Ford, Developer in Las Vegas, NM, United States
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Star Ford

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Bio

Star has been consulting and developing software for twenty years, with special skills in capturing and communicating requirements, data modeling, and modeling business processes. Her experience largely focuses on media production workflow management, and she has an interest in optimization and complexity reduction in enterprise-level data systems. Her primary platform choices are C# and related Microsoft tools.

Portfolio

Plug.events
C#, .NET Core, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon S3 (AWS S3)...
Divergent Labs, Inc.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Blazor, React, Model View Controller (MVC), ASP.NET...
Kaplan/Purdue University
jQuery, JavaScript, ASP.NET, C#, Crownpeak CMS

Experience

  • C# - 15 years
  • Microsoft SQL Server - 10 years
  • Windows Forms (WinForms) - 10 years
  • ASP.NET MVC - 10 years
  • JavaScript - 10 years
  • ASP.NET - 10 years
  • Entity - 5 years
  • Dart - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Visual Studio, C#

The most amazing...

...optimization I've designed is a Scrabble robot that analyzes every possible play on any board in 0.1 seconds.

Work Experience

Architect | Developer

2020 - PRESENT
Plug.events
  • Led the co-founder team through the requirements process, creating detailed requirements documents.
  • Created a scalable system architecture and designed database and server-tier components.
  • Developed server-side code and integration tests: 18,000 lines in six weeks.
  • Built and maintained server-side and client-side code and deployment tools.
Technologies: C#, .NET Core, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Amazon CloudFront CDN, AWS Lambda, Amazon EC2, Amazon Route 53, PostgreSQL, SignalR, Vue, React

Software Engineer

1996 - PRESENT
Divergent Labs, Inc.
  • Built a tool for tracking lifecycle carbon emissions in food products, to be used by food producers to quantify what-if analyses of different ingredients, packaging, and shipping.
  • Built a web front end for a broadcasting workflow management system, providing the same fluid experience as the existing Windows client, supporting 800 customizable entry forms, drag-n-drop graphical scheduling, and custom reports.
  • Built a complete inventory and eCommerce system for a jeweler, supporting item tracking for one-off items as well as repeats, photos, and site management features.
  • Added features to civnet.co, a civic engagement web system.
  • Build an interactive kiosk using motion sensors to allow hands-free interaction in an immersive museum-like environment. Ultimately, the tool was used to demo an experimental advertising technique.
  • Conceived of and developed slideword.com, a crossword-like game. This was written in Silverlight back when that was considered stable, then in 2020, rewritten in Blazor (WebAssmebly).
  • Designed and developed NotifyPlex.com, a many-to-many messaging utility for use cases such as government transparency. This was developed using "serverless" computing on Amazon Web Services (Lambda, API Gateway, PostgreSQL and other AWS resources).
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Blazor, React, Model View Controller (MVC), ASP.NET, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, JavaScript, Ruby, Dart, C#

Software Consultant

2019 - 2020
Kaplan/Purdue University
  • Added and modified CMS templates and solved longstanding quality issues in the codebase for a set of marketing web sites using CrownPeak CMS.
  • Built a system for developer productivity that allows for local development and debugging (a missing feature of CrownPeak), and optimized page loads.
Technologies: jQuery, JavaScript, ASP.NET, C#, Crownpeak CMS

Senior Software Engineer

2017 - 2019
Amrock
  • Developed an Azure-based document storage solution with OCR and type conversion.
  • Built an error correction tool to compare details of insurance policies to public data sources, to find mistakes like misspelled names, property identification, and missing deeds.
  • Created an analysis tool for fine-tuning the correction algorithms with visual trends and statistics.
Technologies: Azure, Microsoft SQL Server, Angular, C#

Xytech Systems MediaPulse

http://www.xytechsystems.com/showroom/videos/
MediaPulse is a workflow management system for the video and film production industry. I was the lead architect in both the original system with a Windows client and the web front end.

SlideWord

SlideWord is a crossword and anagram game with sliding words. It has an intelligent crossword builder as part of the game so that users can create their puzzles without experience as a cruciverbalist. It was recently taken down due to a lack of marketing or monetization.

NotifyPlex

NotifyPlex is a notification system that I conceived of and developed in 2020. The back end is C# in .NET Core, deployed as AWS Lambda functions, also using other Amazon services (CloudFront, CloudWatch, API Gateway, PostgreSQL RDS, and more). The front end is built in React. It was taken down after a few years of marketing not happening.

Carbonostics

http://www.carbonostics.com/
Carbonostics is a web-based, user-friendly carbon accounting and product lifecycle assessment application that helps food companies do what-if analyses on food products to find out what changes in packaging, ingredients, farming methods, and shipping are the most beneficial to the total carbon emissions.

I did the requirements analysis, math model, database model, and software specifications, as well as coding for this project.

Dart Social Movement

https://github.com/starlys/dart-social-movement
I built an open-source social media platform that operates as a single-page app, with features including document storage and markdown editing, mapping integration for events, avatars, and complex logic for spam control and vote-based assignment of admins. The process included facilitating a group of volunteers to set requirements, then architecture, design, and all coding. The running demo version was taken down after a lack of marketing.
1990 - 1991

Bachelor of Arts Degree in Education

Earlham College - Richmond, IN

Libraries/APIs

REST APIs, Windows Forms (WinForms), AngularUI, jQuery, React, SignalR, Vue

Tools

Microsoft Access, Microsoft Silverlight, Visual Studio, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon CloudFront CDN

Languages

HTML, CSS, Dart, JavaScript, ASP.NET Razor, C#, Scala, Visual Basic, Java, HTML5, TypeScript, Delphi, Ruby

Frameworks

ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET, Entity, Angular Material, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Angular, Blazor, .NET Core, PhoneGap, Telerik Kendo UI

Paradigms

API Architecture, Requirements Analysis, REST, Agile, Test-driven Development (TDD), Model View Controller (MVC)

Storage

Databases, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Azure SQL, Azure Blobs, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)

Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon, AWS Lambda, Crownpeak CMS, Amazon EC2, MacOS, Windows, Azure

Industry Expertise

Healthcare, Accounting

Other

Code Architecture, APIs, Back-end, Web Development, Requirements, User Requirements, System Requirements, Business Requirements, Requirements & Specifications, Architecture, Software Development, Technical Project Management, eCommerce, Ajax, DevExpress, Games, Social Media Platforms, Amazon Route 53, WebAssembly (Wasm)

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