Rajiv Pant +1 (610) 659-3149 rajiv@rajiv.com
Senior information technology & product development executive with 11 years experience and several prestigious industry awards in media, web and publishing. Growing track record of successes in technology leadership, project management, product development, systems integration, network/hardware infrastructure management, vendor evaluation, budgeting, team-building and employee development. Expertise in operating mission-critical 24x7 news media web sites nationwide with weekly tens of millions page views, millions of visitors requiring zero downtime and weekly product enhancements. Oversaw business-critical operations and support across departments for customers using online and print products 24x7 for publishing deadlines.
June 2004-Present Chief Technology Officer, COXnet / Cox Newspapers Digital
COXnet is part of the Cox Newspapers Division of Cox, one of the nation's leading media/communications companies (cable, television, radio, newspapers, Valpak ...) and providers of automotive services (Manheim Auctions, AutoTrader.com ...).
Responsibilities:
· Supervised multiple departments: Project Management, Software Engineering, Technology Operations and Customer Service. Led team of about 45 engineers and managers.
· Member of Cox CIO’s Leadership Exchange comprised of technology leaders from various Cox companies that meets regularly to share management and technology best practices.
· Responsible for technology budget including multi-million dollar shared web hosting infrastructure and software for all of Cox’s newspapers.
Projects:
· Led team and solved stability and performance issues on web sites and content management system. Improved the reliability and performance of web sites with infrastructure upgrades and implementation of advanced content delivery network.
· Instituted Project Management organization: Hired staff and led implementation of processes. Launched an internal projects information web site. This web site provides information on all projects including status, estimated completion dates, issues, reports and contact information. It also has an online form for our newspapers to submit project requests.
· Instituted 24x7 Internal Customer Service & Help Desk for all our newspapers’ web production staff. It was called the best thing ever done for them by a metro newspaper’s Internet General Manager.
· Reorganized software engineering organization into an Enterprise Projects team and a Special Projects / Fast Track team. Implemented Agile Development methodologies. These greatly improved the quality and time-to-market of web applications for our newspapers.
· Developed Single-Sign-On solution for our web sites to integrate separate sign on systems between our sites and external vendor hosted applications for our sites. (Rollout in progress.)
· Implemented shared Local Programming Environment web hosting infrastructure for our newspaper brands to have more control of their web sites and to encourage innovation.
· Launched several successful web site applications for our newspapers, including mobile/PDA access, RSS, Blogs and user community submitted content.
Achievements & Awards:
· Newspaper Association of America’s 20 Under 40 recognition, December 2006 (link)
· Two teams under my direction received two separate Newspaper Association of America 2004 Best Practice Awards in New Media for the development and implementation of the following (link)
o Print+Web suite of multi-platform content management and publishing products
o A system for upgrading web application software on high traffic web sites without requiring downtime
July 2003 – May2004 Founder & President, Effectuation, LLC
Effectuation is a startup in the open source and enterprise software space providing consulting and training in the new media and SAP areas. It became part of another company, SynchronISIT (link) in 2003.
September 1995 – June 2003 The Following Jobs Of Increasing Responsibility At Knight Ridder
January 2001 – June 2003 Vice President, Technology / Engineering, Knight Ridder Digital
Knight Ridder is a newspaper and Internet publishing company. The second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States, it owns 31 dailies and operates the Real Cities (link) network of 68 regional web sites.
Responsibilities:
· Oversaw the functioning of the about 35 engineers, managers and directors in San Jose, CA and Philadelphia, PA. (up to 20 contractors on year-long projects) Managed multi-million dollar budget of the Engineering department. Mentored and advised 3 managers. Coached and provided technical and problem solving expertise to engineers. Acted as technical problem solver of last resort.
· Worked closely with managers of Product, Editorial, Sales, Marketing, and Research departments and employees of 31 regional newspaper offices.
Projects:
· Managed overall technology in the development and implementation of Knight Ridder Digital's next generation unified content management and publishing system based on the Cofax (link) product integrated with the BEA Weblogic Platform and the Oracle Database. This was a year-long project (total budget over $20 million) with over 100 staff in multiple locations. Customer requirements for this product were extremely diverse and varied across markets. This new product transitioned the company to a new operational paradigm and currently 31 Knight Ridder web sites are in production and being served by this system. The implementation of this new technology has increased efficiency by over 40% and though there isn't a comparable alternative, it is expected to save over 50% in licensing and operating costs.
· Served as Knight Ridder Digital's technology representative to assist parent company select the future print publishing system for all 31 Knight Ridder Newspapers. This project involved understanding requirements of all of KR's newspapers, negotiations with multiple vendors, interactions with CEOs, senior managers, employees and checking references of vendors. Aligned business requirements and product with the company's vision, business and products to recommend the suitable vendor for us. The vendor (CCI Europe) was chosen by the management of Knight Ridder.
· Directed the migration of 31 Knight Ridder web sites to a single hosting provider. This resulted in consolidation of all web hosting, related management and expenses into one operation and reduced expenses by 30%.
Achievements & Awards:
· An Engineering team under my direction received the Newspaper Association of America 2001 Best Practice Award in New Media (link) for the development and implementation of Xmultra (link), a product used for integrating data in the legacy newspaper publishing systems with web publishing systems.
March 2000 – December 2000 Director, Technology, Northeast United States, Knight Ridder Digital
Responsibilities:
· Accepted additional responsibilities for sites in the Northeast US region.
Projects:
· Led the implementation of the Cofax content management and publishing system for 20 newspapers across the country. Successful implementation led to 30% savings in operational costs and created efficiencies that freed up about 40 employees to be redeployed. This product was featured as the top story (link) on Sun's Java home page in February 2001 as an example of a large enterprise benefiting from the use of Java technology.
· My team migrated the technology infrastructure to the new office location. This was successfully completed without any interruption of service.
· Under my supervision, the technology operations team successfully migrated about 100 user email and workgroup accounts from local operations in Philadelphia, Kentucky and Ohio to the centralized operation in Miami. This consolidation resulted in better service and 40% cost savings.
July 1999 – February 2000 Director, Online Technology, Philadelphia Newspapers (Knight Ridder)
Responsibilities:
· Continued the previous role of technology department manager and accepted additional responsibilities to include strategy and business.
Projects:
· Envisioned a unified news media content management and publishing system. Led the development of this system called Cofax (link). Today, Cofax is among the most popular open source news media content management products used by newspapers and media companies in the US, Europe and Asia. It has been favorably reviewed in over a dozen magazine articles. I was also directly involved in selling the Cofax concept to the different Knight Ridder newspaper sites. I was ultimately successful in convincing newspapers' online staff, Knight Ridder Digital senior management and Digital employees in multiple cities of the benefits of Cofax. Delivering results with each new implementation was a challenging and fulfilling task.
· Acted as the primary technology consultant to Knight Ridder Video, a profitable subsidiary of Philadelphia Newspapers. Assisted KR Video negotiate a business relationship with Channel 6 ABC in Philadelphia. Authored a proposal with three options for affiliation between the two companies. Provided primary technology and product development services for the creation of the 6abc.philly.com web joint venture.
Achievements:
· Advocated and established software engineering methodologies helpful for rapid development including a subset of agile/extreme programming practices including pair-programming, refactoring and iteration planning that were used in several successful projects.
· Ensured Year 2000 compliance at the company. The systems worked without problem on the date and during the subsequent months. Due to mainframes and legacy systems involved, this took several months of diligent work beforehand.
August 1998 – June 1999 Manager, Online Technology, Philadelphia Newspapers (Knight Ridder)
Responsibilities:
· Managed a team of 5 employees plus up to 5 independent contractors. Helped develop and implement strategy, business, product and operational planning for the division and online products of Philadelphia Newspapers. Played a key role in shaping the vision of the products and services and led several implementations.
Projects:
· Project lead for the development and implementation of a new product for managing print ads for Philly Tech magazine. The magazine was in need of such a system to generate revenue and did not have the funding or the time to purchase, implement and maintain an expensive system. This system was developed and implemented 50% under budget and 50% faster than they had targeted for. It continued to meet all their needs during the magazine's 3-year lifetime. It required minimal operational and maintenance costs. Also implemented the technology platform for Philly-Tech's web site.
· Served as technology consultant to General Manager and VP of Business Development of Philadelphia Newspapers for evaluation of company acquisitions specializing in online recruitment products. Participated in negotiations with Senior Management of prospective companies and conducted all technology related interviews with their employees to evaluate their products, services, technologies and long-term prospects.
Achievements:
· Organized the technology department into development and operations teams. This resulted in improved focus, and allowed employees to better pursue their career growth.
July 1997 – July 1998 Sr. Programmer Analyst, Philadelphia Newspapers (Knight Ridder)
Projects:
· Ideated and led the development of a web portal and search engine product called Finder that powered the Philly Finder (link) service for 5 years. This unique search engine and portal helped Philly.com become a comprehensive destination for Philadelphia related information. It resulted in improved search results and an increase in users, page views and advertising revenue.
· Led the development of an online Yellow Pages product. It was in production as a steady source of revenue for the online department for 4 years. This success resulted in the hiring of additional sales people to sell this product.
· Led development of the first web gateway to the legacy Atex publishing system for newspapers. This enabled reporters and editors to securely file stories from any web browser and was a paradigm shift in working remotely. This was a major advance over the old dial up systems that were unreliable, slow and expensive to maintain. This enabled journalists the freedom to work without their own laptops that required special software and configuration to dial up and interface with the legacy systems. This saved over 80% in costs.
September 1995 – June 1997 Programmer Analyst, Philadelphia Newspapers (Knight Ridder)
Projects:
· Designed and developed a job listings system for Philadelphia Newspapers' classified listings online. It powered Planet Jobs, the most popular job search web site in the Philadelphia area for over 3 years. Until Knight Ridder's co-acquisition of CareerBuilder, this product primarily sustained and strengthened the two newspapers' recruitment listings. Among other innovations, Planet Jobs was the first online job site that had a shopping cart feature where job seekers could save their selected job postings.
· Designed and led development of one of the first newspaper web publishing systems. This system called Pin, was in production for 4 years. This was arguably the first automated online newspaper publishing system in the world. It allowed Philadelphia Newspapers to compete favorably against other newspaper companies with much larger staffs. The automation of this system allowed editors and producers to focus on online journalism and build several award winning online products on it, including the acclaimed Black Hawk Down web site (link).
· Developed a personalized edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News Newspapers called "The Clipper" which provided personalized news via the web and e-mail. This resulted in improved customer loyalty and helped build a database of over a hundred thousand registered users.
· Ideated and developed an online ad management system for web sites called AdMaster. This was an industry-first and Philly.com received industry wide interest from several competing companies for the product. This product enabled business people to sell and manage ads on the web sites without depending on technology or editorial people. This made advertising highly effective on the Philadelphia Newspapers web sites and was instrumental in helping the Sales Team win the 1997 Editor and Publisher EPPY award for Best use of Advertising on a Newspaper Web Site (link).
· Developed the first Internet e-mail gateway for the Philadelphia Newspapers legacy Atex publishing system. This enabled journalists to file and retrieve stories via e-mail. People in the newsrooms found this a revolutionary way to work. This created enormous cost and time savings for journalists in multiple locations around the world.
· Led development of the system for content management, publishing and co-branding for The Sports Network (link), a partner company of Knight Ridder. After being in production for 5 years, it continues to power the Sports Network website as well as the co-branded sports sites for dozens of their customers including the New York Times, Fox Sports, Comcast, Tribune Media, Cox Interactive, Knight Ridder, Media General and many others. The use of this product has been a very significant portion of the Sports Network's revenue and business model. It enabled them to transition from a sports wire service to an Internet based media and content distribution company.
· Developed the Philly.com web development and hosting division for other organizations' web sites. This provided a steady stream of revenue to our online department for 5 years. Besides being a profitable business venture, it enabled Philadelphia Newspapers to build strong relationships with several organizations in the Philadelphia area like the Chamber of Commerce and Genuardis Family Markets and helped build stronger ties with major newspaper advertisers. This led to increase in revenues by 10%.
· Served as the lead developer of a product for the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia that enabled over a million visitors to the museum to instantly publish their personal web pages along with their digital photo on the museum's web site. In recognition of this work, my name was imprinted on the wall inside the museum along with individuals and organizations that donated money or work to the museum's CyberZone section.
· Newspaper Association of America’s 20 Under 40 recognition, December 2006 (link)
o NAA press release said “Twenty of the best and brightest young professionals in the newspaper business” and “to recognize those who have proven themselves as change agents within their companies and the industry, providing much needed leadership and vision”.
· Excellence Award for Technology Innovation, Knight Ridder, 2001 (link)
o Each year, about fifteen KR Excellence Award winners are chosen from among about twenty thousand employees. The final judges are a group of about twelve outside experts from the industry. My team and I received it (link) for the development of our content management & publishing system, Cofax.
· Excellence Award for Technology Innovation, Knight Ridder, 1999 (link)
o The judges said, "His work is phenomenal. He's done more in four years than some do in a lifetime." I was also part of a team nominated for the 1997 award for the success of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News web sites. At a news media conference, Bill Gates of Microsoft praised the sites' use of technology and innovation showing examples. (link to quote from Bill Gates)
· Two development teams under my direction received two separate Newspaper Association of America 2004 Best Practice Awards in New Media for the development of web and multi-platform publishing tools and software upgrade system for high traffic web sites (link).
· Engineering team under my direction received the Newspaper Association of America 2001 Best Practice Award in New Media (link) for the development and implementation of Xmultra.
· Spoke on CTO panels at the Newspaper Association of America (NAA)'s conferences. In NEXPO 2002 and 2003, spoke about technology and business topics in the news media industry (link).
· In 2003 & 2002, was invited by the Medill School of Journalism and the Computer Science Department, Northwestern University. Taught classes on new media and technology. Participated in a panel of five online media experts speaking to a larger audience from both schools on journalism and technology (link).
Mentoring/Teaching Engineers, Managers & Directors (5+ years), Explaining Technology to Non-Technical People (10+ years), Marketing Products & Solutions Internally & to Other Organizations (8 years), Building Relationships with Customers (8 years), Management of Teams Across the Country (2 years), Financial Budget Management of Department, Project Management (6+ years), Product Management at Job and for Open Source Projects (5+ years).
Java 2 SE (intermediate, formerly advanced), J2EE (intermediate, formerly advanced), BEA Weblogic Platform with Portal and Integration (intermediate, formerly advanced), IBM Websphere Platform, HTML/CSS/XML/XSL/Javascript (intermediate, formerly advanced), Databases and SQL (intermediate, formerly advanced), Oracle and MS SQL Server, Perl 5 (intermediate, formerly advanced), Visual Basic (intermediate), C# (advanced), Microsoft .NET (intermediate), Several other programming languages (basic, intermediate), Solaris/Linux Systems Administration (intermediate), Windows NT/2000/XP Systems Administration (intermediate), Computer Network and Web Application Security (intermediate, formerly advanced).
US Citizen, Fluent in English and Hindi languages
Some testimonials from senior executives in the industry are available online at www.rajiv.com/resume. Other references can be made available on request.
