James Kelly

During my time with the employers you will find listed here, I had the opportunity to work with and for many other companies through my various employers. Some larger companies I’ve worked with:

• Battelle (Pacific Northwest National Laboratories)
• The Department of Energy
• BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Ltd.)
• Lockheed Martin

Before 1994 I worked for BCSR (Boeing Computer Services Richland) a division of Boeing (the airplane manufacturers), which was a former contractor working for the Department of Energy at Hanford, Washington. My duties for BCSR was as an assistant administrator working in a heterogeneous UNIX network consisting of computers like DEC Alpha’s, HP Mini’s, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, several main-frames, and one outdated Cray. The main reason that I don’t include this experience is because I feel that many of the talents it took to operate in this environment are duplicated in the experiences below.

Phone: 866-404-3946

Buzzy Planet, Inc. is primarily an Internet marketing company. They own several web properties marketing products from collector’s items and health products to information products.

Buzzy Planet also develops solutions for a small client base and hosts some of their sites also doing marketing for them when approached.

I was responsible for:

• Establishing marketing systems from operating procedures to the technology behind the systems including:
  • Visitor tracking
  • Email and customer information collection
  • Follow-up with automatic targeted email delivery
• Creating solutions for internal problems and client challenges related to the Internet
• Setting up and managing pay per click campaigns
• Security and customer information protection
• PHP, XHTML, CSS, ASP.NET, MS SQL, MYSQL development
• DNS, backup solutions, website connectivity and hosting

I helped to create Buzzy Planet and it is definitely on the road to success. My motivation for leaving Buzzy Planet is due primarily to personal issues concerning my family. It is a small company that, while growing, I simply can’t wait for. I have a wonderful wife, who I’ve been married to for 11 years, and three kids to think about and the related concerns are growing with time. If my situation were different, I’d be perfectly happy staying on for an indefinite period of time because I find the challenges related to what they do exhilarating.

MEIER Enterprises, Inc. is an engineering company located in Kennewick, Washington with an employee base of about 40 - 50 people. Most of the employees are AutoCAD designers, with the remaining employees consisting of engineers (covering most disciplines), architects, and office management personnel.

MEIER wanted to break into the Internet market and “didn’t know how”. So I was brought on with the idea of helping them do just that. The other motivation was that the increasing complexity of computer systems and networks was quickly overwhelming their staff regarding their own internal systems.

Once employed, I quickly brought their network up to speed. I also centralized their file storage and increased performance by installing updated file servers, a central RAID 5 storage system, and automated backups with a custom developed application allowing full versioning capability with rapid recovery of individual files and complete sets when needed.

MEIER offered my services to its clients including network design for schools and businesses, application development (online, offline, and hybrid), web hosting, and basic technology consulting.

In this position I grew a previously non-existent group from nothing to 5 individuals. We specialized in database driven web-centric applications successfully mixing technologies that many never would have dared to mix.

Early on we developed a 3 dimensional graphic repository for left over waste in the Hanford tank farms commissioned by DOE (US Department of Energy).

Later we developed many other applications and web properties including:

• A commercial bidding system paid for by Energy Northwest for the decommissioning of a nuclear facility located in Western Washington.
• An amateur musician website which is still in operation today.
• Learning to Write, an online writing system still being sold to, and used by schools to this day.
• Kid Compass, an online student management system still sold to and used by schools to this day.
• A prototype Internet-based real-time broadcast stock market talk shows, which I’m sad to say, ran out of funding.
• Many internal systems that eased the day-to-day operations internal to MEIER.
  • Contact management and marketing system similar to Constant Contact (which made its debut shortly after we started on this project)
• And many smaller applications and web properties that may or may not exist today.

I thoroughly enjoyed working for MEIER Enterprises, Inc. Of course all things must end and so too would my employee relationship with MEIER. It was my choice, simply put, the opportunity for growth was too limited.

Dynacom Systems, Inc. was a small local (Kennewick, Washington) computer system manufacturer, ISP, and consulting firm. Dynacom Systems designed, installed, and maintained several small networks around South Eastern Washington.

I became an employee with Dynacom Systems in 1995 when they purchased my one-man computer consulting business, Aries Computer Services.

Dynacom Systems also attempted to gain entry to the Internet through a site that I designed, created, and initially maintained called The Executive Pages. The site was a success, but the business model was flawed which resulted in the site languishing for years never really reaching its full potential.

I quickly rose to my maximum potential with such a small firm until I was literally running most aspects of the business. I was the sole designer and installer of networks, primary contact with the manufacturing process and lead programmer.

It became obvious that my growth with Dynacom Systems had peaked, so in 1997 I joined forces with MEIER Enterprises, Inc. a local engineering firm also located in Kennewick Washington.

This tiny company, created and owned by myself, was relatively successful considering my lack of experience and wisdom.

ACS was organized as a sole proprietor business with a single employee…me. This endeavor was basically a crash course in economics and business in general. During the time that I owned and operated ACS I embarked in no marketing campaigns. All my marketing was strictly word-of-mouth and kept me very busy.

ACS was a computer consulting company specializing in business networking, computer repair, maintenance, and general troubleshooting. Many of the first networks I installed and maintained were of the 10Base2 variety (coax).

My client list included construction companies, schools, outsourced work from other local computer companies, government partners like British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) and individuals.

One of the largest networks I maintained during this period was a star topology consisting of one server and fewer than 50 clients. The server was running Windows NT 3.51 and the client machines were running MSDOS with MS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (Thank God that’s over).

In late 1995 I sold ACS to Dynacom Systems, Inc. and became an employee for them basically doing the same thing as I was doing in ACS and more.