Kevin Foster Email & Phone Number

Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

Forest Park, Oh

Architected, and worked with a team of outsourced developers to build, a new version of the company’s primary web application (a configurator for Custom-Fit Automotive Aftermarket Accessories). The first version of the configurator had been built in procedural PHP with no overarching design to speak of, and in addition to being very brittle and totally unscalable, had become increasingly unstable and difficult to maintain. It became necessary to rethink the entire application from the ground up.The new version was built around a set of cloud-based JSON APIs communicating through a jQuery/custom JavaScript middleware layer with an AngularJS single page app that is easily embedded in any web page with a few lines of JavaScript. (The same APIs are also being used by several large players in the online automotive retailing space to power their own custom UIs for the configurator).The APIs are hosted on Amazon EC2 instances, and are the entry point to a back end developed using Zend Framework 2, Doctrine 2, and MySQL, that is also cloud-based, using various Amazon Web Services (S3, RDS, and Route 53, to name a few). See configuretech.com for a demo of the configurator.

Developed a web application that started as a simple Facebook fan page app and grew to incorporate Customer Engagement, Email List Management, an MMS Service, a Mobile Site, and a web-based administration portal. Built on top of the CodeIgniter Framework and MySQL, it used various APIs to tie the customer engagement module, email list management, MMS Service, and the web and mobile sites to the Facebook app with a single sign-on.Developed several custom applications on the Facebook Platform for a UK startup, one of which attracted over 100,000 users and achieved an adonomics.com valuation of over $32,000 in under 80 days from launch.

My primary task at ConfigureTech in 2010 was to build a set of XML-based APIs that would allow clients to use ConfigureTech’s data and workflow to integrate ConfigureTech’s configurator seamlessly into their websites by building their own custom User Interface on top of those APIs. The resulting APIs were used by a number of large websites (e.g., AutoZone.com, AutoAnything.com, and AutoAccessoriesGarage.com) between late 2010 and late 2015, when the new version of the configurator application discussed above went live. All clients who were using these APIs adopted the new cloud-based JSON APIs when they became available.

Created several plugins for a social networking site based on the elgg framework to implement a number of user experience enhancements, such as a Twitter-like status stream, a sitewide newsfeed, Facebook-like friend management and "wall" commenting features, among others

• Created a custom recipe management system (implemented as a WordPress plugin) for the recent redesign of the California Raisins Marketing Board website (http://www.calraisins.org/)• Crafted several custom WordPress plugins and custom page templates, and created a custom WordPress theme from multi-layered Photoshop comps for Sephora Cosmetics’ "Buxom Confessions" Product Launch minisite• Collaborated on a reporting system for an industrial machinery monitoring system that would create a real-time measurement report based on user-chosen criteria and generate a PDF on the fly that could be downloaded, printed, mailed to a team of colleagues, stored on the server, or all of the above

Designed and maintained departmental website and co-designed templates for the WebCT course sites for the department’s 50-plus courses each semesterCo-designed an online graduate-level course in graphical user interface programming ("GUI Building") which won the WebCT Exemplary Course Award in 2003Co-authored a paper ("The RSVP UniBrowser: Bringing Humanness and Interactivity to e-Learning") which was presented at the International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies in 2001Co-developed the "UniBrowser"; a JavaScript-powered interface which was used to display videostreamed class presentations along with their supporting materials

Ms In It, Human-Computer Interaction

(Incomplete: studies interrupted when my position at the college was eliminated in restructuring initiative.)

Master Of Music, Composition