About me - an informal resume
Basics
Higher education
My company
Currently
Ambitions & Interests
Finally()
Basics
My name is Mads Haugbø Nissen. I was born in 1979 outside of Norways capital Oslo.
I started off with computers age 13 gaming on an Amiga 500. Age 15, I built a 486DX280Mhz while writing game-reviews for norwegian magazine TEKNO, three of them got published. I moved from the suburbs closer to Oslo in 1994 and spent 3 years on Persbråten VGS (upper high-school). I was PR-manager for the school cabaret which had 4000 spectators that year (1998), a record that never has been beaten.
After school I took examen philosophicum at the University of Oslo and got a job with Acterna, a company doing test and measurement solutions for telecom/datacom. I started off as marketing assistant, advanced to webmaster and indoor sales and left the company doing sales of approx. $600k the last year (which happened to be 2000, before the crash:-).
Higher education
The last three years (00-03) I've been going to NITH (Norwegian College of Information Technology) and running my own one-man company on the side. The curriculum for my degree is described in this document. I did a programming specialization and had VB.NET and Object Oriented Databases as electoral subjects. I acheived a GPA of 1.69 (scale 1-6). My last year I was class president.
My years at NITH has given me the opportunity to discover what I really want to do: Software Development. The last 6 months I've really started to focus on .NET as tool of choice over Java. I deliberately waited this long to decide, and originally planned to work dual-platform a bit longer, but I just couldn't take it anymore (java:-).
My company
My company (aka me) has developed solutions for Palm (C++ with Conduit written in VB6), membermanagement system in Access, content management in .NET and various other assignments.
In December '02 I was engaged by eFactory for several projects, in addition to schoolwork and duties as class president. The main focus at eFactory was eDocument, a webform generator and organising solution. Me, Lars Flaagan and Chris Sukantakul (both from NITH) designed and developed this product from January to June.
Additionally I've developed a .NET client for Telenor's (norways largest telco) upcoming PKI solution MobilePKI. I was the first to solve the interopability problems for .NET based clients to their Java based service, thus being the first to perform a digital signature with a cellular phone. A full-blown PKI server application is planned, but I haven't been assigned to that project yet.
Currently
This fall I have been travelling in the Americas. A couple of months vacation through Cuba and Mexico was needed. October 26th I attended OOPSLA as a student volunteer. Until mid-december I am making my way further north on the westcoast, exploring job-opportunities.
In the past year I have been working with most parts of the .NET framework. In general I tend to enjoy every part of the development cycle and all kinds of applications. The complexity and need-for-thought process involved in designing the first drafts of an application or component challenges me. Although, making a design work in code is also a real kick. I have not yet specialized within one field of the framework to keep my options open. Anyways, subjects I have been interested in up until now include:
Service Oriented Architectures (WS/Remoting)
Development of reference architectures (i.e. ShadowFax)
Patterns for thick client development
Object Persistence and Data Access techniques
Effective ASP.NET Development frameworks
I'm into solving problems and making things work for people, that's my main focus. To generalize, my (subjective) personal qualities are creativeness, I am socially outgoing, persistent, sometimes impatient, and goaloriented.
Working with projects that have implications for-, and will improve how software is developed would be a great thrill.