Who am I
My name is Rafael Marquez.
I am a seasoned Software Architect, CIO, Full-Stack Developer, and Consultant with over 35 years of experience.
I excel in designing comprehensive solutions and leading teams to deliver high-quality projects, showcasing proficiency in NodeJS, JavaScript, VB.net, and MSSQL.
My expertise spans Front-End and Back-End Development, Database Management, API integration, Dashboards, Reporting, Digital Marketing, and many many many programming languages.
Since when
I don't remember. I started sometime in 1978, punching cards before the invention of the monitor, writing stuff in PL/1, Fortran, and later in RPG III for the newly created IBM AS400. Since then, All flavors of Basic, dBase, FoxBase, Clipper, FoxPro, Pascal for the Mac, Then C++ for OS/2, writing stuff for IBM's Image/Plus and VisualInfo. Then they invented Windows 95 and I stopped counting.
dBase for the Mac / nuBase
I moved to USA in 1989. 27 years old me, wife, kid and all. And as luck would have it, I met someone who new someone who gave me my first job here in Miami. It was a company that had bought the rights of the dBase for the Mac from Ashton-Tate and renamed it nuBase. My first introduction to event- driven programming through MacPascal. Dreams shattered courtesy of Hurricane Andrew.
Document Management
After Andrew, I had my first encounter with document Scanning, OCR , Indexing, baskets and such. I found a job in an IBM third party vendor and learned C Set++ for OS/2, scanning public documents, OCRed and indexed them and sent them to whoever was next in line. My first brush with Document Management and Image Workflow.
Web Development
I was one of the first dudes who managed to tie a database to a html page! Back then, 1996 I think, Microsoft released 'ActiveX', Then in 1997, someone smarter than me invented javaScript, and I never looked back. I still use it to this day.
Chicago Public Schools / E-Rate
I combined my document management expertise, my newly acquired edge with dynamic served pages (ActiveX), and my database knowledge and landed the minority PM contract through SBC/Ameritech
to build a full blown PMO with a tied shopping cart and a CAD document consumer. I called it WebPMO and it ran for the first 3 years of the federal program for the Chigago Public Schools
Digital Marketing
At some moment, around 2007, my consultant exercise became my second job, as I co-founded MediaTrax, a software company for Digital Marketing agencies.
We were one of the very first 10 companies that became Google Platform Partners!
IT Consulting
I became a software consultant at the beginning of the new millenium. This has given me the freedom to travel with my wife every year. I am a consultant and an entreperneur. and I love it.