University of Illinois at Chicago

IT Project & Account Manager, PMP

Portland, Oregon, United States

At Polar Systems I advise dozens of accounts in a variety of industries, including Not for Profit, Transportation/Freight, Construction, Government, and a variety of Professional Services. I offer strategy and project development, technology and staffing assessments, author scopes of work, and participate directly in projects, committees and leadership meetings with my clients. Together with the Project and Service Desk team, Polar Systems supports over 3500 systems in the Pacific Northwest.

Polar Systems, Inc.

Account Manager, vCIO

My department was a key player in the $72 Million dollar renovation project for the downtown 120,000sqft Carnegie library - winning multiple international awards in architecture and innovation. Our 12 person cross-functional team helped transform the facility into a regional cultural landmark, major music and author venue, public art host, recording studio, maker space, and historical research facility. We slayed dragons, changed mental models, modernized departments, and redefined public service for a 150 year old institution.After a successful renovation, we applied the new infrastructure design across 17 other branches, executed new websites with countless APIs into a long list of patron accessed platforms, and rebuilt the catalog into a modern social-enabled experience that offered patrons a voice of their own in a globally connected library platform. We used Agile and rolling wave planning to innovate operations, improve a broad range of services, and meet strategic objectives.

St. Louis Public Library

CTO - Director of Technology Services

Brighton was a fun mix of advertising, marketing, production, and interactive dev staff supporting some big Midwestern accounts in agriculture, pet food manufacturing, healthcare, and upscale pet products.At Brighton things moved fast, advertising agency fast. As IT Director I developed quick in-house hosted solutions to accommodate rapidly changing business needs. Everything from building a theater for reviewing our commercials, to managing the server room and network infrastructure, and even operating the photo studio, doing field photography, and assisting in projects as a creative resource.I developed the procedures to accommodate a few bouts of rapid staff growth, and managed all staff assigned assets, technology vendor leases, developed budgets, acquired and integrated new technology and software, and assisted business leads to develop cost effective solutions for their departments. During mergers, I managed the integration of not only all the acquired technology assets and data, but would show up on site with my truck to move their desks and furniture to the Brighton office, ratchet ties and all. I miss the family company model.

Brighton Agency

IT Director

I was in the beer business during the Miller-Coors merger, and when InBev bought Anhueser-Busch. Our team supported international and craft brands in St Louis, right in AB's backyard - possibly the most competitive beer market in the country and we served over 5000 accounts with the state's largest fleet of beer trucks.At Summit, I supported all IT resources at Missouri state’s largest beer distributor running a blended Microsoft, Apple, and AS400 environment, and acted as a technology project manager. I managed much of the operational and developmental aspects of our ERP platform for Product warehousing, truck routing, pre-sale, and more. I developed annual IT budgets, managed all IT and telecom contracts, provided daily BI reports, directed technology mergers, and managed the systems and network infrastructure.

Summit Distributing

With United Technologies Corporation I managed the datacenter in our Missouri office, and provided on-site and level 3 support for clients in the region. We provided network and server support, tower-mounted wifi and camera installations, and IT Consulting. Typical clients were city government administration offices, law firms, law enforcement, and school districts.

United Technologies Corporation

Manager of Network Services

Copywriting, web development, digital art production, and photography were principle services offered.  Managed and maintained WAN connections, workstations, and TCP/IP and Appletalk networks for product development, graphic design, and photography companies in the Chicago area. Key employers were Podd Morrow Product Design, TA Edge, Artemis Design, Cam Chapman Photography, Bryan Hall Photography, Criterion Collection, Topco Associates.

Independent Technology Consultant and Photographer

Web Developer & Photographer

Operated the photography studio, 4x5 and 120 cameras, and light rigs. Styled product and handled all post processing of film assets in our own dark room and couriered some items to Helix. Typical shots were on seamless, and included a variety of small and large product ranging from food, to baby carts, to jewelry. We did some field architecture work, some location and in-house portraits, and eventually I got an original teal iMac to build websites and managed art institute interns in the studio while I banged out code until I went freelance.  Clients included United Airlines, Topco Associates Food Distribution (can and box labels), Tiara Jewelry Co (quarterly jewelry catalogs), House of Blues (catering shots), Ringwood Manufacturing (large machine shots), and many more.

Dave Halbeck