Paco Ahlgren
On the Web:
Social & Business:
Professional History
Socratic Arts, Inc
(Contract Consultant) Austin, TX
12/2011 to Present
Project Manager / Content Developer
"Socratic Arts employs a unique design and development methodology to build programs that help people learn.
We help clients look at training and educational needs from a different perspective,
asking what employees need to learn how to do as opposed to asking what they need to know.
Workplace skills and common mistakes are our focus not the transmission of information."
Responsibilities and Achievements:
- Worked with clients to develop sophisticated financial/business/technology training programs.
- Used collaboration, conferencing, and versioning tools to collaborate with multiple teams around the world.
- Used different publishing formats to create coach materials.
- Improved turnaround times while increasing the quality of deliverable drafts.
Financial Analyst | Business Analyst | Systems Analyst
"ICFI is a global professional services firm that partners with government and commercial clients to deliver
consulting services and technology solutions in energy and climate change; environment and infrastructure;
health, human services, and social programs; and homeland security and defense markets."
Responsibilities and Achievements:
- Managed complex business, financial reporting, and invoicing databases and tables for large-scale municipal, state, and federal energy rebate programs.
- Introduced reporting tools to create efficient information distribution.
- Crystal Reports
- SSRS
- SharePoint
- Excel SQL Scripting
- Bridged critical gaps between financial and IT departments.
- Dramatically mproved invoicing procedures by reducing repetitive inputs
- Reduced reporting production time (and increased accessible information) by 75% to 85% through the implementation of Crystal Reports, SSRS, Microsoft Excel (SQL script) as database access and reporting tools.
Senior Programmer & Developer | Systems Administrator | Designer
Design Originate is a development/design operation specializing exclusively in short, medium, or long-term contracts.
From custom design, to development, to security frameworks, Design Originate handles stand-alone issues
for a limited group of high-end web clients.
Responsibilities and Achievements:
- Hosted and managed internal and external websites.
- Managed client account interfaces.
- Installed privacy and security protocols.
- VPS
- VPN
- SSH tunneling
- Encryption
- Hashing
- Salting
- Launched and managed internal/external P2P and centralized RAID system servers:
- Unix
- Linux (Ubuntu Server, Red Hat, etc.)
- Windows
- Mac OS
- Developed highly creative and interactive dynamic web sites and designs, focusing on financial and ecommerce solutions.
- Built hundreds of sites from ground up, and/or by using various CMS technologies.
- Increased client exposure through SEO and SEM strategies.
The Copernican, LLC Austin, TX
03/2005 to 02/2006
Senior Developer and Research Analyst
The Copernican, LLC, is a financial / real estate holding and management company. It specializes in
the acquisition and administration of two primary portfolios:
- Commercial / residential real estate
- Marketable securities and derivatives
Responsibilities and Achievements:
- Led and managed the implementation of all web marketing campaigns, designs, and web programming.
- Oversaw and managed the acquisition, improvement, and management of a real estate portfolio of over $7M.
- Lead a team of 75+ in-house and outsourced employees.
- Managed portfolios of real estate, liquid, and semi-liquid assets. Holdings included:
- Commercial / Residential Properties
- Equities
- Fixed-income
- Interest-rate tools
- Currencies
- Derivatives
- Installed privacy and security protocols.
- VPS
- VPN
- SSH tunneling
- Encryption
- Hashing
- Salting
- Launched and managed internal/external P2P and centralized RAID system servers:
- Unix
- Linux (Ubuntu Server, Red Hat, etc.)
- Windows
- Mac OS
- Managed team-project aimed at designing and implementing company's content management system -- including database development, maintenance, and administration.
The Popperian Group, LP Austin, TX
01/1996 to 01/2005
Sys-Admin | Developer | Financial (Research) Analyst
The Popperian Group, LP was a hedge fund whose objective was a value approach to equity and conservative derivative investing.
Responsibilities and Achievements:
- Achieved average annualized rate of return: 8.7%.
- Portfolio turnover ratio: less than 1%.
- Increased marginal return by hedging with interest rate futures instruments.
- Reduced internal costs by 7% to 11% per year.
- Outperformed the benchmark Standard & Poors (S&P 500) Index by an average of over 5% per year.
- Oversaw and participated in all web development, web marketing, SEO, and development strategies -- including online client and portfolio administration.
- Managed a pooled portfolio of over $12M in equity, fixed-income, and derivative securities.
- Led over 25 in-house and outsourced employees.
- Managed the needs of hundreds of clients.
- Installed privacy and security protocols.
- VPS
- VPN
- SSH tunneling
- Encryption
- Hashing
- Salting
- Launched and managed internal/external P2P and centralized RAID system servers:
- Unix
- Linux (Ubuntu Server, Red Hat, etc.)
- Windows
- Mac OS
- Increased client satisfaction and interactivity by creating propriety web-based privately accessible accounts (SAP R/3).
- Used web data extraction technologies to maximize analytical efficiency when valuing possible investments.
- Wrote, edited, and published technical and procedural manuals for proprietary software developed to analyze changing markets, economic conditions, and and portfolio strategies.
Continental Securities Austin, TX
10/1991 to 06/1995
Sys-Admin | Junior Analyst / Trader / Project Manager
Continental Securities was a derivatives trading and forecasting firm that managed hundreds of millions of dollars of individual portfolios for its clients.
Responsibilities and Achievements:
- Project manager to team of 8 commodities traders and 3 developers/programmers.
- Macro-economic advisor to the CEO.
- Managed futures and derivatives portfolios while devising and executing statistics-based derivatives trading strategies using web and local systems.
- Implemented firm-wide trading analysis software.
- Helped maintain client database (SAP R/3).
- Managed the needs of hundreds of clients.
- Installed privacy and security protocols.
- VPS
- VPN
- SSH tunneling
- Encryption
- Hashing
- Salting
- Launched and managed internal/external P2P and centralized RAID system servers:
- Unix
- Linux Ubuntu Command Line
- Red Hat
- Increased client satisfaction and interactivity by creating propriety web-based privately accessible accounts.
- Saved firm millions of dollars by leading team projects to implement new trading and database management technologies -- significantly improving commodity analysis and forecasting.
- Used Present and Future State Analysis to maximize profitability by linking organizational components -- sales, marketing, trading, portfolio management, etc.
Contributor
Seeking Alpha is a global syndicated financial / economic news provider with an estimated readership of 4 million (Google Analytics).
Responsibilities and Achievements:
- Contributed content from proprietary CMS-driven websites.
- Intimately researched macro and micro economic and financial conditions.
- Used proprietary SQL queries to pull currency, commodity, equity, and debt instrument data to determine direction of interest rates and inflationary pressures.
- Constructed Excel routines and custom functions to predict market and economic trends.
Author
Discipline is a philosophical, financial, economic science fiction thriller published by Greenleaf Book Group Press in 2007 with multiple translations and global distribution.
Responsibilities and Achievements:
Awards:
- Winner: 2008 Eric Hoffer Award, Best Commercial Fiction
- Winner: 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Award, Science Fiction/Fantasy
- Winner: 2008 Silver Medalist, Foreword Book of the Year Competition, 2008
- Booksense Notable Selection, 2007
- Optioned to become a major motion picture by BeeHolder Productions in 2010-2012.
- Created massive, interactive web-presence.
- Spear-headed marketing and publicity campaign.
- Conducted global speaking and signing tour, consisting of hundreds of live appearances, as well as television, radio, and Internet interviews.
- Collected 15 years of substantial multi-disciplinary research -- including chaos / game theory, financial and global economic trends, and modern philosophies of science.
Discipline in stores:
- Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration: Finance
- CFA Exam, Level 1 - Chartered Financial Analysis Institute
Fluent: Spanish / English
(Web) Programming & Development
Java Frameworks, Skills, and Tools:
- Maven
- Spring
- Tomcat
- Apache Shiro
- GUI (Swing)
- NetBeans
- Eclipse (WindowBuilder)
- Google Web Tools (GWT)
- Android
- JSTL
PHP, HTML, and CSS:
- (D)/(X) HTML(5)
- CSS3 (cross-browser compatibility)
- PHP MVC Frameworks:
- Zend
- Code Igniter
- Cake PHP
- Other MVC Frameworks
- jQuery
- MooTools
- YUI
- Dojo
- Et Cetera
Ajax, XML, JSON
Version Control
- SVN / Subversion
- Git / Github
- CVS
- Bazaar
- LibreSource
Content Management Systems (CMS)
Apache, MySQL, PHP Stacks
- LAMP (Linux)
- MAMP (Mac)
- WAMP (Windows)
Analytics, Traffic. & Ads
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing
- Semantic Indexing
- Google
- Google Webmaster
- Analytics
- Feedburner Analytics
- Adwords
- Adsense
- Adobe Omniture
Security & Privacy
- Encryption:
- MD5
- SHA
- Blowfish
- PBKDF2
- PHP
- GPG
- TrueCrypt
- Whole-disk Encryption, Multiple OSs
- Algorithic Hashing
- Salting
- File Transfer & Tunneling:
E-commerce
- Magento
- Zen Cart
- PayPal
- Google Checkout
- BitCoin
Development Tools & IDEs
- Eclipse
- NetBeans
- Adobe Dreamweaver
- Blue Fish
- Notepad++
- jEdit
- Aptana Studio
- Coda
- TextMate