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.