Biography
John A. Lewis is the Chief Software Architect for Unicon Inc, the leading independent
provider of open source training, consulting, and support in higher education. He is
primarily responsible for the technology strategy of the company's solutions portfolio for
higher education. John is a 16 year veteran of the software engineering industry. His
passions are large-scale enterprise architecture, open-source technologies, and agile
software development methods. Prior to joining Unicon in 2005, he was the Chief
Technology Officer for Arcanum Education Solutions, which has been providing
specialized IT solutions to the K-12 education community since 2000. John is an
engaging and perspicacious person who seamlessly integrates the latest technologies into
Unicon's higher education solutions and makes it possible for the company to deliver
unique world-class services to our customers.
After several years of rigorous software development work and study, Mr. Lewis joined
Andersen Consulting in 1993 and discovered his enthusiasm for providing technology-
driven business solutions to customers. With Andersen, he was an integral part of
designing and implementing mission-critical systems for customers including Intel and
AT&T. In 1995, John joined Sybase, Inc. to start a new Professional Services practice for
the company. He and his team delivered strategic technologies to customers including
American Express and Motorola. In 1998, John united with several key associates to
establish Arcanum International Corporation as a premier Systems Integration firm that
provided enterprise-class systems architecture and design services to customers
including Motorola and Cisco.
John has been a long-time advocate and contributor in the open source software
community. He is the lead developer of Spring Portlet MVC, the JSR 168 Java Portlet
development framework that is part of the wildly popular Spring Framework project. He
is also active in several higher education open source communities, including uPortal and
Sakai.
Mr. Lewis' education includes a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Pepperdine University where
he graduated Magna Cum Laude, and graduate studies in Computer Science at Arizona
State University.
Platform Statement
I humbly and gratefully accept the nomination to the JASIG Board of Directors. It would
be a distinct pleasure to continue to serve the broader JASIG community in this capacity.
I have been actively involved in JASIG since 2005. I have attended the last six
conferences, at which I have routinely presented sessions and seminars. I was honored
to deliver the keynote address at the Winter 2006 conference, entitled "JASIG Projects In
Actions", in which I presented a compelling vision and demonstration of the value that
technologies like uPortal and CAS provide to higher education. I serve on the
Membership Committee and the Licensing Committee for JASIG and have become a
trusted adviser to the Executive Director, Jonathan Markow. I have worked closely with a
number of JASIG Board members over the past years and already have great
relationships with many of them.
Over the past ten years, I have been involved in a number of open source projects and
communities, including Linux, Perl, Apache, Tomcat, and Spring. I am also currently
active in the Sakai community. I am well versed not only in the technology of these
projects, but in the governance and licensing models that they employ. Through all this I
have gained a great sense of the best practices for managing open source projects and
communities.
As the Chief Software Architect for Unicon, I believe I bring an important and valuable
perspective to the JASIG Board of Directors. Unicon is recognized as the clear leader in
providing training, consulting, and support services to users of uPortal and CAS and to
members of the JASIG community. Unicon has been active in JASIG since its inception
over nine years ago and became the founding Commercial Affiliate in the new
membership program. Unicon has done more uPortal development than any other
organization. I personally played a pivotal role in driving the 3.0 release of uPortal
forward over the past two years and I am deeply gratified at the recent successful
release. Unicon serves a wide range of clients across higher education and the
publishing industry and I will help to represent the needs of these uPortal and CAS users
to the JASIG community.
I believe JASIG has evolved well and continues to be very relevant today. As a member
of the JASIG Board of Directors, I will continue to move forward a number of initiatives
that I have long supported:
● Improving the membership program to drive higher membership levels and
greater revenues for JASIG.
● Strategically using JASIG funds for key infrastructure and staff positions that help
us coordinate our activities as a community.
● Building a proper incubation process for new potential projects or adoption of
existing projects.
● Forging stronger relationships with other open source communities like Sakai,
Kuali, and Apache.
I hope you will elect me to the JASIG Board of Directors and I promise to continue to
work hard on behalf of the entire JASIG community in this new role, in addition to
staying involved with the uPortal and CAS projects. Thank you.