About Al Porotesano
| Languages: | C#, ASP.NET, javascript, python, ruby, java |
| Platforms: | Amazon Web Services, IBM Bluemix |
| Frameworks: | .net framework, eclipse.js |
| Databases: | mySQL, mongojs, PostgreSQL |
| Content Management Systems: | AdvisorSquare, Ektron, Jekyll, Drupal, keystone.js |
| Compliation Environments: | .net framework, node.js |
I’m Al Porotesano, and this is my historical timeline:
- 1995 - 2001: Education & Starting Up
- ArtCenter
- California State University, Dominguez Hills
- Manhattan Analytics / LiveOffice
- 2002 - 2008: Growth
- LiveOffice launches new products
- SixSigma
- Venture backing
- 2009 - 2012: Symantec
- LiveOffice adds discovery for compliance and audting
- Symantec acquires LiveOffice
- 2013 - 2014: Dell / Smarsh
- 2014 - current: Freelancing & Acting
1.0: 1995 - 2001
ArtCenter Saturday High
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Manhattan Analytics / LiveOffice
I have a creative eye for design through drawing and illustrating doodles in my high school classes at Carson, CA. In 1995, my Art and Photography teacher encouraged me to broaden my creative spectrum at ArtCenter Saturday High. ArtCenter was an experience of a lifetime where I’d learn the fundamentals of art composition for building a portfolio and this included learning Adobe Photoshop 4 and Illustrator 5.5 when they were the killer apps of their days. Somehow, I ended up studying Economics at California State University, Dominguez Hills because I had more scholarships and grants based on one of my essays about quantitative economics from High School. I continued my trade of creative expression working as a graphic artist in print design and media marketing (internet and radio) with the Theatre Arts Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills for two years from 1997 to 1999.
Before graduating from CSU, Dominguez Hills with a Bachelors of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science in 2001, I joined Manhattan Analytics / LiveOffice from 2000 til 2012. I originally started as a web developer/graphic artist/business development/support/(insert task here). It was the early boom of the .com economy and I was fortunate to be one of the early adapters with the co-founders of LiveOffice. Our engineering staff was a team of five including myself writing Active Server Pages scripts on Cold Fusion running on Microsoft SQL servers powering LiveOffice’s two primary applications: AdvisorSquare and AdvisorMail. AdvisorSquare was a proprietary Content Management System hosting websites and real-time/delayed stock market feeds for Registered Independent Advisors, Hedge Fund Managers, and Financial Planners as registered agents for their Broker/Dealers. AdvisorMail is a proprietary eMail archiving system based on the Sarbanes-Oxley section 404 Assessment of Internal Control auditing (SOX 404). Both products were key web application tools for our clients (Broker / Dealers, Hedge Fund Managers, Advisory Agents, etc.) compliance departments to comply with SOX 404 auditing protocols.
2.0: 2001 - 2008
University of California, Los Angeles Extension
LiveOffice Grows
If someone asked us to do a flag of icons, LiveOffice would proudly fill that flag resembling the European Union. Every Star in an eclipsed arc would represent our biggest client lists: LPL Financial, MassMutual Insurance Company, American International Group, Fidelity Investments, ING Group, Charles Schwab, NFP Advisors, Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, Raymond James, and GE Capital/Ameriprise. LiveOffice’s annual revenues grew from $3 million a year to $30 million in six years. My contribution of our growth was upgrading AdvisorSquare CRM to include Search Optimization, content widgets from approved third party vendors, and timed screenshots of our clients’ contents we host on our own servers. With AdvisorMail, I was adding reactive search results using AJAX (the predecessor of Node now) to make our clients’ auditing results easier. Things looked great on Internet Explorer because we were a growing startup as a “Microsoft Shop.” Our growth caught the attention of our new investors: Summit Capital Partners.
My personal highlights of 2.0: I got my six sigma green belt and black belt certifications at UCLA Extension, built information security protocols after Defcon 12 (yeah that’s my first), and upgrading the architecture of AdvisorSquare and AdvisorMail from legacy ASP to the .net framework with ASP.NET and c#.
2.5: 2008 - 2012
University of California, Los Angeles
Symantec
If it wasn’t for the Troubled Asset Relief Program Government Bailout of our clients, we’d probrably lose a bit more than half of our staff. That perspective was a bit troubling so we introduced some new products. Archived Exchange was an add-on for our clients using Microsoft Exchange to audit and archive emails hosted in any Microsoft Exchange Server. Hosted Exchange is a similar product to Archived Exchange for smaller clients who use LiveOffice to host their emails in our own Exchange servers from a network of data centers. We’d archive our clients’ Instant Messages and SMS messages with the Messaging Archive web portal. We’d accumulate all our existing products to push our eDiscovery & Data Retention portal simply called eDiscovery. Our client base diversified and grew after the great recession of 2009 with UPS, Internet Relay, and Proctor & Gamble.
On Janurary 2012, Symantec bought LiveOffice for $120 million. I was an internet thousandaire with all my stock options purchased and fully vested. I’d take some post-graduate course studies at UCLA in Art history. Symantec sold the website division I was in, AdvisorSquare, to Smarsh.
2.7.5: 2012-2014
Symantec / Dell / Smarsh
Smarsh was a direct competitor of LiveOffice when they started ten years before acquiring AdvisorSquare as a Dell-funded start-up. Smarsh had a bigger picture of archiving and auditing for the Financial Industry, they wanted to “archive everything”. It’s fitting for their marketing slogan at the time. I’d commute between Los Angeles, New York, and their headquarters in Portland, Oregon in my brief year-long tenure there.
Smarsh left Dell in 2013 to become a private company funded by round of investors and venture capital funds.
I thought their overambitious acquisitions of similar and smaller archiving applications would put them in a vulnerable spot if the industry is shifting towards Infrastructure as a Service like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud or IBM Bluemix. I could say this is the cause of scope creep, but what’s keeping them active is there are several Broker / Dealers who find it very difficult to switch their archiving tools from the .net framework to an IaaS platform. They may be used to LiveOffice’s, Smarsh’s or Iron Mountain’s archiving apps of the past…..
I left Smarsh in 2014 to become a freelance developer.
2.7.6: 2014-current
Freelancing, Decompressing, Hackathons, and Acting
After 15 years working with Financial Planners, Accountants, Securities Lawyers, Hedge Fund Managers and Investment Brokers, I wanted to decompress. On the summer of 2014, I spent 3 months in Samoa & American Samoa repairing laptops for grade schools in Samoa. I’d do the same thing from my dad’s homeland at American Samoa for the Department of Education in American Samoa for some of my aunts and uncles’ alma mater at Leone High School. Memory upgrades, blowing dust and bugs from the keyboards, partitioning their drives, installing browser plugins like u-block or adblock because I knew their browing habits creeps away from the opportunities of drive-by-malware from various ad servers. It was fun and more rewarding than working with the compliance departments of Investment Brokerages and Broker/Dealers.
I spent close to two months from September 2015 to volunteer at the mangrove sanctuaries on Olango Island at the Philippines. Olango Island is a 45 minute ferry ride from Lapu Lapu City, Philippines and it just barely edges out of the limits of the Cebu-Lapu Lapu metropolitan area. I’d spend several hours a week cleaning up the mangroves from floating bottles, oil gunk from the tattered fishing ships on the horizon of the cebu harbor, and other forms of waste cleanup that isn’t biodegradeable for the mangroves to contribute in their ecosystem. Mangroves absorb leaves from the nearby trees and tall grasses to stabilize the coastline and prevent erosion from storm tides. It’s a natural breakwater from the harbor’s currents. The take-away I got from this experience was the observation of coral bleaching due to overfishing and illegal fishing practices in the Philippines’ depleting fish population. This motivated me to create a fishing portal at a Fishackaton in Long Beach, California months later on Earth Day April 2016.
My freelancing gigs were a mixture of hits and misses. I’d work on building mobile applications using wireframes on an open-source app called Pencil. It’s good and does the job for graphic interfaces if I’m going to build a template. The mobile applications I worked with in the past are from young college students who aren’t technically inclined to assemble algorithms but know this can be executed with a workable demo and a few client feedback loops. In San Diego, I worked with my friends from UCLA to startup a valet parking mobile app service. They had the mentorship from a veteran who worked on several local startups in the San Diego area supported by the San Diego workspace. The funding wasn’t available to pursue the project in time. I worked with a Beverly Hills based auctioneering house and spent a year researching the Aucitoneering operations at Chait Gallery. I was brought in to build an Open Enterprise Application similar to Open ERP for Auction Houses. I couldn’t finish the project. I needed development help and assistance, but the project was far greater in scope to take in a short period of time with a team of two or three people that included myself.
Once in a while, I’ll take a freelancing website or mobile project right now while i’m earning income as a background actor with Central Casting and Sande Alessi Casting. I could work on the set with my laptop until the Director calls for me to work on background. So far, I’ve only worked on Con Man season 2, American Horror Story, and Let’s Make A Deal. This could be a great buildup for my IMDB profile later this year.
Acting Resume
As of Sept. 5, 2016
| Film/TV Project | Character Role | Producton / Director | Season.Episode (if TV) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Con Man | Convention Attendee | Con Man Productions / Alan Tudyk | 2.3, 2.6 |
| Sandy Wexler | Improv Patron | Happy Madison Productions / Steven Brill | Netflix Feature Film |
I don’t have an IMBD profile yet until Con Man is released in October 2016.