Christopher Ambler's Email Addresses & Phone Numbers

I began programming computers at the age of 12 when I walked into a store that sold the original Commodore PET and have never looked back. It is both my hobby as well as my career. In the 80s, I participated in the development of many of the major commercial BBS packages by helping connect them to...

I began programming computers at the age of 12 when I walked into a store that sold the original Commodore PET and have never looked back. It is both my hobby as well as my career. In the 80s, I participated in the development of many of the major commercial BBS packages by helping connect them to what would become the Internet. In the 90s, I was the author of the most-used PC version of UUCP (now thankfully obsolete), developed in early Borland Turbo C (and then C++). I have worked as an architect and developer for Microsoft, Expedia, Demand Media as well as independently and have seen my share of startups from the inside, both successful and not. As the Internet has evolved, I have been involved in just about every aspect of its use and development, from protocols to web-based systems and even the political process, having participated in the formation and evolution of ICANN since 1995. I am equally comfortable with policy, strategy, design and development. I have and still do serve in roles ranging from individual contributor through development management and executive-level technology management. I am an architect by passion, but also an evangelist, public speaker, strategist and writer. If it's happening in the sanbox, I want to play. I play well with others. I am capable of rapidly understanding new languages and technologies. I am not married to any particular methodology or model; though I do have my preferences, I am a strong believer in using the right tool for the right job. I still code for fun. My goal is to innovate, not just iterate. I'm also going to throw these two things out there, take them for what you will. My current irrational goals: 1. I'd like to retire into a new career at some point when I simply don't need the money, and write code for SETI. There's no pay in it. But it's how I'd like to spend my time some day. 2. I'd also like to move to Italy. North of Rome, I think. Again, just saying.Principal Software Architect @ Returning to the registrar industry. I have joined GoDaddy as a Principal Architect on the Domain Find Team. Highlights in my first two years have included: * Re-architecture of Domain Find API, separating API layer from Core functionality and re-implementing the API layer using the Scalatra API framework (written in Scala). Improved performance, reduced resource usage and created a platform with a much simpler maintenance profile. Mentored other developers in the adoption of Scala and functional programming. * Creation and deployment of full CI/CD infrastructure using Jenkins for continuous builds, deployment, and code quality monitoring (Cobertura, Findbugs, Scalastyle, Checkstyle, etc). * Design and deployment of large ElasticSearch cluster to hold aftermarket domain information suitable for aggressive, advanced, real-time searching as part of the Domain Find system. Supporting performance enhancements for mind-blowingly complex queries developed by our data science wizards (seriously, those guys impress me). * Refactoring API to use parallel actor model with Akka and Reactive Architecture. This is turning out to be an incredibly fun project with staggering improvement results, combining more than just a few data sources into a single, parallel lookup and analysis engine. * Refactored integrative and acceptance testing of our API suite to allow for dynamic generation of test cases based on the ever-changing landscape of new top level domains, registries and products. Changes in external data are automatically reflected in testing and errors or deficiencies are surfaced automatically. This is what happens when you let a developer design a testing system. * Lead author on technical specification for new product offering and plans for standard socialization. * Adviser on numerous industry initiatives Contributing author to https://garage.godaddy.com/ and speaking at a number of conferences on technical topics. From March 2014 to Present (1 year 10 months) Technical Advisor @ Advising stealth startup in Silicon Valley. Living the dream. From February 2014 to Present (1 year 11 months) Founder @ Internet development is my hobby as well as career. I formed Insider House, LLC as a vehicle for the development of web sites in those communities where I work and play as well as to develop an idea that will disrupt the web-based community market in a serious way. Insider House empowers passionate communities. With our flagship community hub for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, RockyHorror.org (the largest RHPS community on the web), and our Facebook presence with over 31,000 fans, our mission is to create, operate and grow communities of individuals who are passionate about their interests. Insider House is a hobby project among friends that is actually making money, so we formed the LLC under the theory that friendships are best preserved in writing when doing business together. From January 2009 to Present (7 years) Senior Development Drone @ It's great - now when I met new people and they asked me what I did, I simply told them that I'm a travel agent. No more having to explain software development, and we got to talk about the cool trips we've taken! ;) That said, let's be honest, being a cog in the development wheel didn't work for me. I'm not above admitting when something doesn't feel right, and after a year it was time to move on. From January 2013 to March 2014 (1 year 3 months) Technical Founder @ Technical founder of Image Online Design, the .Web Internet Domain Registry. Originally created as a web design company in 1993 (yes, when the web was still a novel idea), the company had the idea for the expansion of the TLD name space in 1994 and approached Jon Postel and IANA with the idea for .Web shortly thereafter. Asked to prove the concept with "rough consensus and running code," the .Web registry was created. This was a fully-functional registry (the concept of "registrar" hadn't been invented yet, so this codebase acted as both back-end and front-end) hand-coded in HTML and CGI. From 1994 to 2013 (19 years) Senior Software Architect @ Starting as a consultant to eNom, the world's #2 domain name registrar, I was brought in to solve an "impossible problem" in helping eNom capture the market lead in the acquisition of expiring domain names. Within a year I was brought on full-time as a senior developer and strategist. In 2006, eNom was acquired by Demand Media which has since gone public (NYSE: DMD). In addition to development, my roles included technical strategy and interacting with domain name registries, other registrars, and Internet political bodies such as IANA, IETF and ICANN. I have worked both as an individual contributor and on larger teams across projects including the domain name drop, WHOIS systems, web-based registrar systems, domain transfer and verification systems as well as other projects. My contributions include the entire range of services. From January 2003 to October 2012 (9 years 10 months) Software Developer @ Recruited from California to solve a particularly difficult protocol problem in the e-mail data exchange field. My solution was a shipping component of Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5, enabling complex workflow processing, and resulted in the issuance of a patent. Following Exchange, I contributed to the development of the first version of Microsoft Passport before being lured away by a startup, only to watch the .com bubble implode. From July 1997 to July 2000 (3 years 1 month) Christopher Ambler is skilled in: Web Development, Web Applications, Start-ups, Scala, Java, JavaScript, PHP, C#, API Development, Apache, Nginx, HTML, CSS3, Web Design, Agile Methodologies