David H. Young

Background

About David H. Young

My primary skill as a hands-on “blue collar” CTO and technology evangelist has been bridging the world of business requirements and software development. I enjoy teaching concepts that give developers insight into the business considerations of software development. My hands-on attitude has led to my ability to build Web applications from requirements gathering to deployment. Having served as the bootstrapping CEO for a successful start-up, then later as CTO for another successful start-up (of a SaaS-based driver risk management service), I particularly enjoy creating and molding exciting new ventures. I have always been known for my natural evangelism of open source technologies and business products. I love using storyboarding to most effectively extract customer requirements. Lately, I’ve developed a fascination for DevOps, its proximity to the customer experience and how it can be used to augment production Web application design strategies. As a result of my hands-on approach to problem solving, I’ve acquired significant experience in document databases (MongoDB) and functional programming while exploring topics ranging from big data to daily operations. Proficient in Salesforce.com development (Apex), MongoDB development, Web design & development (HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, jQuery, Java, Groovy and Grails). My most significant work recent years has been in Grails/jQuery/Bootstrap development, having built a large application from the ground up. I am author of two books, Enhydra XMLC for Java Presentation Development (SAMS Publishing, 2001) and The Visual Tcl Handbook (Prentice Hall, 1995) and many technical magazine articles (XML for phone applications, Web UI design). I have a penchant for giving talks at local high schools, giving students insight on how open source and the ever growing stack of Web application technology, supported by the virtualization of Amazon Web Services, make it possible to implement all variety of solutions in a few days. Oh yeah, I'm a huge Anavex fan! Target the cause, not the effect. Remind our cells how to produce proteins and keep our mitochondria running properly. Solves just about everything, eh?