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Project Portfolio

In addition to the work in my summary, my career has consisted of aspirations of becoming an entrepreneur. I have tried to fulfill this goal through my work as a freelancer. I’ve created numerous applications and proof-of-concepts for clients. In the sections below, I’ve provided descriptions, designs, synopses, and links to projects. Some source code may be available upon request.

Live Applications

Note: The applications in the following section are currently in production.

CryptoChrisJames.com - Portfolio Website

  • I know what you’re thinking:

    “Why is this site in the list? Wasn’t this site built using Squarespace?”

    Yes and no.

    When I first decided to create a portfolio website, I knew that I couldn’t just provide a short description and some code. I needed to provide a way for people to interact with my work. I needed to tell the story of my career. So, I designed and built a separate server to host each of my demo applications, giving you access to each of them to try out yourself.

  • In the development of this site, I actually didn’t start with Squarespace. I started with my demos, the applications you will see in the section below. In my role at Butterfly Network, I learned about Git submodules. I leveraged them by containerizing the apps I wanted to be demos, creating a deployment repo, and registering the submodules of my demos. I then used Docker Compose to build and restart all the services at once. I used Cloudflare andNGINX for routing subdomains for each demo, and used a SQL Server image for all of the .NET apps to use. I then set up to deploy the demos to an EC2 instance using Jenkins.

  • Docker

    Docker Compose

    NGINX

    AWS - EC2

    Jenkins

    Git

    Cloudflare

    SQL Server

  • I learned the importance and the difficulty in choosing and maintaining the appropriate EC2 instance for hosting multiple applications. I hadn’t had to worry about this as much prior, because I was primarily focused of using managed services such as AWS ECS. I also got a deeper understanding of NGINX, although I know I still have a long way to go.

GreyHelix - SaaS

  • GreyHelix is a CRM SaaS for DNA Collection agents and agencies. Before GreyHelix, DNA Collection agents were required to manage cases, appointments and invoices through a hodgepodge of different applications, with no real integrations or automations. GreyHelix is a custom application to solve this issue, centralizing an agent’s tools to one centralized platform that can automate tasks and processes, such as automatically emailing a client with their results once they’re ready.

  • I worked in a consultant/tech lead position in the development of this application. Coordinating with the CEO, I designed the service based on their business needs and requirements. I then helped interview and hire a contractor to implement the functionality, as well as a separate designer to create a new UI/UX. I followed agile methodologies by breaking the development of the application down into tickets for our developer to implement. I performed the code reviews, tested the application in QA and managed production releases. I personally implemented all of the infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines and integrations.

  • React

    Node

    Express

    MongoDb

    Stripe

    Heroku

    AWS Cloudfront

    AWS SNS

    AWS SQS

    Cloudflare

    Mailgun

  • I learn the difficulty that can occur when trying to manage an employee, especially when they work overseas. I also learned how important it is to have clearly defined requirements, and to make sure that the technologies chosen and implemented make sense. I also learn that migrating infrastructures can be a daunting task when you’re not already familiar with the infrastructure that you’re attempting to migrate to.

Story Collector Productions - Marketing Website

  • Story Collector Productions is a company that I co-own with Director Chandonae Baskin. We pride ourselves with being able to tell very vibrant, gritty and entertaining stories as well as provide opportunites for PoC and other underrepresented communities. I developed our website collectthestory.com myself because we wanted to make sure that the site could properly contain and convey our particular style and energy, separating us from competitors.

  • The development of this site actually went through 2 other iterations before finally settling to where it is now. I had originally wanted to self-host all of our content, but that quickly turned into a massive overhead. I decided it would be best to seek hosting elsewhere using a CRM. I decided to leverage Contentful and Vimeo, and used Nuxt.js for the server-side rendering benefits. I knew that I would need to create a custom contact field in order to gather any information from users that would be interested in hiring us, and integrated the site with Airtable and Slack for lead generation.

  • Nuxt.js

    Vue.js

    Contentful

    Airtable

    Netlify

    Storybook

    SASS

    Slack

    Cloudflare

  • I learned that sometimes, you need to build something fast just to get it out there and have something to provide while you take more time to plan out what the actually product should be and feel like. I also learned that, while video hosting and streaming is an interesting and fun problem to solve, it requires far too much over head to implement than what is needed for a site that is only focused on marketing.

Demo Applications

Note: The following applications are running in a demo-only environment. Please refrain from using any personal information.

Live N Color - PoC eCommerce Application

  • Live N’ Color is a fashion brand that needed a PoC to be created for an eCommerce website. I decided to take on this role because I was interested in developing an eCommerce application from scratch. At the time, I had very little UI design experience, so I bought a UI template and integrated it into a .Net Core MVC application. Using jQuery, I was able to create a full process for a user to choose products, create an order, and make a payment. The were also admin accounts and roles that allowed admin users to add new products, update existing products, and fulfill orders.

  • C#

    .Net Core MVC

    HTML/CSS

    jQuery

    Stripe

    SQL Server

    Entity Framework Core

    Identity Framework

  • The biggest lesson I learned out of this project was how to determine when to build system vs. when to buy an already existing one. Shopify obviously is a much better solution than this application, but you have to also weigh whether or not you can afford it. The moral of this story is: whether it’s your money or your time, you’re going to spend something.

    During the development of this application, the other thing I learned was how much I valued framework to work on the front end as opposed to having HTML, CSS and Javascript be loosely constructed together. While I definitely see the power of jQuery, the way my mind logically thinks about frontend development works in the way of components. I realized that I was already partial to the paradigm of using components and atomic design for frontend development. Once I had completed this project, I immediately began searching for a way to do this moving forward, and that eventually brought me to Vue.js, which I have been using ever since.

SoundSelect - PoC eCommerce Marketplace

  • SoundSelect was my first big project. I was contacted for building a PoC for an application that would provide a marketplace for some users to list their studio spaces for rent, and other users to book time with the available studios. I created an application in .Net Core MVC that allowed some users to post listings and other users to book time, but I didn’t implement any type of payment processing as it was outside of the scope of the project.

  • C#

    .Net Core MVC

    HTML/CSS

    jQuery

    SQL Server

    Entity Framework Core

    Identity Framework

  • The biggest lesson I learned (which I think we all have learned at sometime in this field) is that you need to operate as a business first, and just because someone has a great idea, that doesn’t mean that they have all of the tools or resources that they need to execute it properly.

Heart Of The City - Marketing Website

  • Long before there was a Story Collector Productions, there was Heart of the City. Me and a group of friends wanted to start a business creating content and events based around Nashville life. I took on the job of creating a small marketing website for us using a free template that I had found online.

  • HTML

    CSS

  • The only thing that I truly learned from this project was that I still had so much more to learn.