Recent Professional Experience

Confidential, LLC 2001-present Semi-retired airline / online travel / web business and technical consultant. Seeking re-entry into full time permanent challenging work.

Confidential, LLC 1990-2001 Chief scientist/consultant. Complex IT and automation systems management and development. Partner in (especially) cross-platform and cross-culture systems integration and interoperability in the airline businesses and their offspring. Effective through innovation and re-engineering in the formerly regulated and hide-bound and unsustainable business models of the legacy and start-up IT cultures of Air Transport and Insurance/Decision support/Trading desk/Derivative modeling. Completed hundreds of assignments in dozens of countries (mostly EMEA) over twenty years. Long-term assignments: Travelport/Worldspan London; International air ticket wholesaler Unitravel/St. Louis, MO; Multi-component dynamic package of travel elements for Walt Disney Travel Company/Orlando, FL and Montreal; Insurance sales channel reinvention for Access America/Richmond, VA; Data warehouse developer Travel Edge Solutions/London, San Clemente, CA; TravelNow Networks Inc. / Springfield, MO; director of this highly successful online hotel web booking site.

• Confidential. PC Network / TPF mainframe integration. 1989-90 Tempe, AZ and The Plains, VA Chief scientist and application software developer/analyst
• Confidential: TPF, Unix, DG, PC platforms. 1986-89 Houston, TX and worldwide Project manager, IT ; Product manager, small computer applications; liason, CCS / SHARES / System One / Amadeus
• Confidential: CCS / SHARES, Unix, PC platform. 1984-86 New York, NY Scheduling/planning product manager; YM/RM Project manager; IT project manager; Manager of IT and automation
• Confidential: IBM MVS, PC platforms. 1982-84 New York, NY Applications programmer; Finance project manager
• Confidential: IBM MVS, VMS, VM, PC, AT&T Unix and Burroughs platforms. 1978-82 Lexington, MA Economist and decision support work; Account / product executive
• Confidential: DEC PDP, DG Eclipse, IBM APL mainframe. 1975-78 Westborough, MA PL/I, APL, Assembly, MAGIC, Eclipse systems and applications programmer with World's largest private timeseries data store and processors

Personal

• Prompt
• Adaptive
• Loyal but careful
• Focused
• Innovator
• Team leader / Team worker
• Fearless but vigilant

Professional

• Problem solving
• Business Development
• Business and technology model: shock-change-management
• Interoperability
• Product point price setting
• Legacy (COBOL, FORTRAN, APL, SNOBOL, TPF) and modern (XML, Web2, SOAP,z/TPF) automation methods

Technical

• Business Process Reengineering
• Airline domain subject matter expert
• Systems Integration
• Mathematics / Econometrics - the new rationality
• New eyes on leverage and P&L
• Multitasking

Certifications

• FAA private (student) Pilot's license
• FCC type 2 (Ham) Radio operator's license
• ATPCO SQL formal training

Education English Literature and Applied Mathematics.

Other Recent Professional Experience by Venue, Project

• ERP and passenger rewards for non-air brand loyalty. 2006
• Dynamic package system creation and consultation; air, car, hotel, parking, dining, amusement park, cruise. 1993-1997
• Online booking for 135,000 properties worldwide.
• Discount and city-break business processes and distribution systems.
• USA Pavilion, 1988 World's Fair. Rescued the IT-based pavilion from Oz Union shutdown, eleven days before opening.
• Automated airline ship scheduling for BWIA. 1988
• Automated single-station multi-GDS agency access for TWA's GSA 1989
• Automated bookkeeping for Columbus' original insurance underwriter.
• Automated Volvo's daily scheduled flying between its head quarters and its factory (D&D Tours with Volvo Cars Europe).
• Advised large commercial agency on aspects of operating a small private Citation fleet (D&D Tours).
• Advised reengineering for proposed radical changes for corporate agency considering transformation to Online infrastructure.
• Directed reengineering for GDS/CRS changeover.
• Advised Chefs de Mer cartel on dataflow and handling for the must-join restaurant managers' union. 1998
• Business development consulting for Datalex, API testing.
• Advised Aeroflot on logistics, technical, and operational difficulties as Russia's one airline fell apart into dozens as perestroika appeared 1993-1995
• Resident consultant for WORLDSPAN's international Technology group over a period of five years, mostly in EMEA situations where my citizenship opened more doors than it closed. Agency and airport consultations along Hayes Road.
• Hogg-Robinson innovations in DRS access.
• Hammersmith, Chelsea, Barnes travel company advice and direction given. Some pure LAN technology consulting and support for US imported software.
• At Greater London House, NW1, helped form scheduled airline ops from
• citybreak charter airline Brittania.
• Converted all Thomas Cook UK agencies from SABRE to WORLDSPAN overnight, including correct changes on both systems, pricing, remarks, seating.
• SL3 Galileo International startup / shutdown project manager (extinct).
• Represented (for hire) development for travel firms at several WTM exhibitions.
• Designed (with team) and developed (alone) airline schedule change hands-off automation with agency answerback for Germany's leading travel firm (DER).
• Exploratory expansion work for Louis Arnitz at I:FAO Travel.
• Designed new private fare system and distribution over ordinary channels for TOI travel software (extinct).
• Represented (for-hire) development for travel firms at several ITBs.
• ATA (slot management), Confidential. 1984
• Confidential management. 1994-1996
• Confidential management (on CCS/SHARES). 1995-1988
• Confidential (package innovation). 1993-1997
• Confidential.Open Skies (reservations reinvention)
• Presidential Airlines management consultant.1996
• Confidential troubleshooting.
• Confidential (System-One /
• Amadeus) evaluation and sell-off consultant.
• Confidential partner and technologist. 1995-2002
• TravelLong agency competitive position analysis (on SABRE).
• Confidential consortium change / risk manager .
• Confidential and creator. 1999-2001

Innovation Is innovation its own excuse? No, it may overcome the FUD which prevents even promising pilot projects from starting, but it's mostly about future-proofing, scalability, core business functions, and open standards. About half of all new IT initiatives fail; new perspectives are a useful tool in preventing or predicting functional shortcomings or budget overruns. Sometimes innovation appears and the business solution finds itself. Since the eighties I have been inactive for two periods: one immediately after 9/11 when there was much uncertainty in business models for aviation; another in 2006 when the economy itself carried so much uncertainty. During these periods I did mostly non-airline IT consulting and relied on Shepp and Associates' retained earnings. 20 October 2009