Keith Hanson - Software Development Consultant, Vanguard Vision Technology, LLC

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Work Background

Vanguard Vision Technologies, LLCFreelance Code Wizard

Jul. 2023United StatesWith almost 20 years in tech, I've done a lot—from writing code to managing tech strategy as a CTO for a mid-sized city. I've seen firsthand how new technologies can change how we work and live, and have seen firsthand what happens to organizations who do not adopt those advances. Right now, I'm focused on the practical uses of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs). These technologies have the power to change how we do everything, much like web services and mobile apps did in the past. If you're looking to understand and use these technologies in your work, I can help - AI and LLMs are becoming more accessible for custom solutions every single day. From creating tools that understand human language to automating your workflows or even creating your own private LLM, I can help you find or build a custom solution that fits your needs quickly.

BroadbandThing.comFounder

Jan. 2023 - Jul. 2023Shreveport, LABuilding on the open-source work I spearheaded within my government role, I have created a lower-cost and simpler-to-deploy device that uses broadcast SSIDs all around the city to map adoption gaps. This technique helped me to obtain grants and justification for utilizing funds to bring free internet options to some of the lowest areas of adoption. My hope is to continue making impact by helping other CIOs, Digital Equity advocates, and those concerned about the Urban Digital Divide create high impact initiatives driven by the data our devices can create.

Decentralized Wireless AllianceCommittee Member

Feb. 2022 - Jan. 2023Shreveport, Louisiana, United StatesServing as a committee member with Municipal insight and reviewing grant applications for the Helium network's non-profit foundation, DeWi.org

City of ShreveportChief Technology Officer

Jan. 2019 - Dec. 2022Shreveport, Louisiana AreaAs the first Chief Technology Officer, my department and I have (so far) been able to: - Reorganize staff and modernize positions, pay, and upward mobility for my department - Reduced HR complaints originating from IT to nearly zero by improving culture and transparency within IT - Corrected toxic attitudes by reassigning staff to roles they loved or removing those who wouldn't change - Increased collaboration between silos of government with a focus on benefitting the people of Shreveport - Created data science, GIS, and Smart City divisions - Increased headcount from 20 to 30 in the first year, 40 in second, and an estimated 60 in the third year - Created Shreveport's first Real-Time Crime Center, staffed it, and built it for a fraction of the costs of other cities through in-house resources as well as innovative third-party vendors - Built open-source, home-grown public safety cameras for a fraction of the cost vendors sold them for - Mapped our Digital Divide using open-source hardware and software attached to garbage trucks - Secured half a million in funds to blast WiFi down streets on poles within disadvantaged neighborhoods - Migrated over 1200 endpoints to O365, with 2FA across the entire city - Created cloud backup strategies to mitigate ransomware - Implemented anomaly-based anti-virus and threat protection - Handled media, citizen, and electeds' concerns through public speaking, social media, and public education

CodePilot.ioFounder and Chief Automaton

Jan. 2015 - Jan. 2019Shreveport, LACodePilot is a general automation framework which allows businesses to make their processes completely automated. CodePilot creates re-usable scenarios for our customers, or completely custom scenarios specific to their needs. CodePilot is also the backend automation engine that makes projects like LeadBots.io (coming soon) possible. The major contribution I made to the source was heavily modifying open source frameworks to create the initial architectural infrastructure (Docker and Docker Cloud deployments). Along with many custom modules, I create our first custom automation scenarios for our initial customers of automated services. I am now responsible for sales and partnerships as we continue building out our automation engineering & support team for Twin Engine Labs' new product.

Twin Engine LabsCEO

Aug. 2010 - Jan. 2019Shreveport, LATwin Engine Labs designs and develops mobile applications. In less than two years, Twin Engine Labs has grown from two to sixteen employees, producing several award winning applications, including The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore based on the Oscar winning short. Twin Engine Labs has also worked with brands large and small, working with Cisco Networks, American Songwriter Magazine, Symantec, and many others. Twin Engine Labs specializes in ideation, monetization, and execution for entrepreneurs and companies who want to take their ideas and make them relevant in the only place that matters: in your pocket.

Shreveport Charter FoundationTrustee

Jan. 2012 - Dec. 2015Shreveport, LAFounding member of the Shreveport Charter Foundation established this year (2012). We are the governing board for the NEW Magnolia School of Excellence (M.S.E.) Charter School. We are in the process of building TWO separate brand new, state of the art schools for the students of Caddo Parish in Shreveport, LA. One building will accommodate over 600 k-8 students and one will be a 9-12 grade facility. More than just a NEW building... We seek to create an enhanced academic experience for the students of Caddo. We will ensure that our students will be given the best educational experience possible with a rigorous and innovative curriculum. Opening date for Magnolia School of Excellence: August 2013

RubyEngineer.comOwner/Contract Ruby Developer

Mar. 2009 - Aug. 2010Design and Developed services for many entrepreneurs, utilizing complex technology stacks via Ruby and several NoSQL back-ends, including: Redis, CouchDB, and MongoDB. In particular among these projects were several which required full text analysis and artificial intelligence programming, including Naive Bayes Classifiers as well as Sentiment Analysis. Keith Hanson took clients from conceptualization to rapid prototype in as little as a month of development, giving entrepreneurs the ability to turn on a dime and make quick decisions that brought success to the project down the road.

Wieck MediaDevelopment Manager

Nov. 2009 - Mar. 2010- Ensured the software engineering team has a steady, managed flow of tasks that moved projects towards their finish lines at an optimal pace for both the engineers and stake holders - Ensured the was enough communication between the customers and engineers, and removed road blocks from the engineering team's path - Established deployment strategies and worked closely with account managers to coordinate realistic timelines to the customers of Wieck Media.

Tweeting Too HardCo-founder and Developer

Mar. 2009 - Aug. 2009Tweetingtoohard.com interfaces with twitter for authentication as well as displaying tweets on the site, and was recently (August, 2009) featured in an issue of Wired Magazine. Users submit tweets to the site, and the community logs in and votes them up or down. It utilizes the hacker news algorithm for point worth. I developed the entire site in Ruby using the Sinatra framework and Tokyo Cabinet as the data store. The site is lightweight enough to withstand heavy spikes in traffic on a $40/mo VPS with 1GB of RAM. The site generally gets 75,000 unique visitors on a heavy day when we're featured on a popular website or end up on the front page of Digg.com/Reddit.com, and 1,000 unique visitors on an average day.

Highform, IncLead Ruby Developer

Feb. 2009 - Aug. 2009http://unt.findmytxt.com Took a generally lack-luster and feature incomplete first iteration of Highform's initial product offering and brought it far closer to a working product and closer to the vision of the co-founders. Implemented EC2 based scaling and lightweight operations to enable an operating cost of $40/month on low traffic times, while allowing the site to be easily and quickly scaled out during high traffic times (still working around $100/month). This was to keep operating costs at a minimum during the initial phases of funding for the company. Implemented automated tasks for importing and parsing new course data from multiple universities. The parsers were built in a way to allow new sources of data to be parsed and interpreted nearly on the fly (around 5-15 minutes of setup) for very unorganized formats. Hacked the jQuery plugin "autosuggest" to use our own custom formatted array of data. By creating automation that generated a custom format, I was able to give instantaneous responses to a user's search, narrowing down an increasingly lengthy entry from over 10,000 items to 1 literally in a matter of milliseconds. Created automation for deploying minified and gzipped files to Amazon's Cloudfront, and generally automating nearly all day to day maintenance tasks for Amazon Webservices (EC2, S3, Cloudfront) to be only a command line task away. Implemented background processing using the Starling message queue and the Rails plugin Workling. Implemented modular means of being able to call out to new affiliate APIs that, once implemented, were automatically used by the background processes. To speed API calls from 8 different affiliates, multi-threaded API calls were implemented.

Gratis InternetSoftware Engineer

Jun. 2008 - Feb. 2009.NET Software Engineer. Worked primarily on SocialCash.com website doing SQL Server, Linq, and Webforms based development. Worked on experimental and prototype releases of WPF software. Helped move from Visual Source Safe to Subversion based source control.

Wieck MediaLead Software Developer

Mar. 2007 - Jun. 2008Client Management, team management, lead development in Ruby; Production Unix Server Maintenance, DB maintenance (postgresql, mysql); Experience setting up a standard Ruby on Rails stack as well as a standard Ruby/Datamapper/Merb/Swiftiply stack, along with Capistrano deploys for both.

Innovative WaySoftware Developer

Aug. 2006 - Mar. 2007Worked in a custom framework built with C#/.NET. Took project requirements and worked largely on my own with little direction from management. Worked with MSSQL, IIS, and other server maintenance when needed. Built custom software that monitored multiple servers with minimal installation or no installation on each server.

Blue LanternSoftware Developer

Jun. 2006 - Sep. 2006Worked in multiple languages (C#, VB.NET, ColdFusion, ASP Classic) each and every day. Was given tasks to fix and deploy bugs in software that was not created by me. I rarely worked on any one project for very long before being assigned to the next big problem to fix.