M. ALI HASHMI: CV
Profile Summary
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MIT Media Lab, Center for Civic Media
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Building E15-344
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
Email: a_hashmi@mit.edu
a_hashmi@media.mit.edu
Graduate Scholar/Researcher MIT Media Lab, Center for Civic Media
Software architect with expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, civic innovation, IT
program & project management, Business Intelligence & data integration, software architectures, business
analysis, programming, team building, service delivery and service management.
Have led and managed high performance Business Intelligence & data integration teams in Toronto, Montreal,
London (Ontario), and Bangalore.
Writer/journalist with a strong background in business reporting, comparative politics, history, critical theory
and philosophy.
McCormick Fellow at Northwestern University, Chicago (2011-2012)
Knight Fellow at Globe Lab, Boston Globe, The New York Times Company (2013)
Education
MIT Media Lab, 2013-2015
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Graduate Scholar/Researcher MIT Media Lab, Center for Civic Media
Key areas: NLP, Machine Learning, Civic Media Innovation, Large-scale text corpora, Topic Modeling,
Harvard Berkman’s Media Cloud
Medill MSJ, Journalism
2011-2012, Medill, Northwestern University, Chicago, United States
McCormick Fellow at Medill
BSc, Computer Science
Specialization: Software Engineering
2004, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Relevant Work Experience: Software Engineering
Bell Canada, Toronto & Montreal, Canada (~9 years)
Senior Consultant Manager Feb 2010 – May 2011 (~ 1 year)
Manager Application Development Team (ADT), Dec 2006 – Feb 2010 (~ 3 years)
Architecture Lead for Design Authority and Oversight Committee, Dec 2006 – 2011 (~ 4 years)
Business Analyst/CGI Consultant ASSURE, Bell Canada, March 2004 – Dec 2006 (~2 years 9 months)
Manager-Programming Specialist, Bell Canada, May 2002— Sept 2003 (1 year 4 months)
Role description: Software Architect and Development Manager
Architecture Domains: SOA, Legacy Integration, Distributed Events-based Systems, Data Federations
Business Intelligence: WebFOCUS, iWay, SAP Cognos/BW, Microstrategy, SAS, Oracle, Microsoft, JasperSoft
IT Service Management & Governance: COBIT, ITIL, SOX, SAS70
Latest Objective Performance Rating at Bell: Role Model/Exceptional
Functional Details:
• More than eight years of experience in the field of software engineering for Bell Canada. Have worked on
all aspects of software engineering, including coding, requirements analysis, architecture, design, delivery,
support, management, strategy, research and governance; I successfully delivered several complex, multimillion IT programs and projects for Bell.
• Responsible for leading, developing and managing high-performance Business Intelligence (BI) & data
integration teams in Toronto, Montreal, London (Ontario), and Bangalore.
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Responsible for managing for all enterprise Business Intelligence & data integration projects in our
domain. I was responsible for: technical planning, architecture, high level design, detailed design and
implementation, integration test approach and strategy, overall project monitoring, issues and risk
tracking and mitigation, service support (SLAs), remote and onsite coordination, expectation management
with the client teams, status reporting, and quality assurance of the deliverables.
• As architecture and governance lead responsible for: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) delivery and
technology roadmap, governance framework, and technology best practices.
• Responsible for managing district’s research and development activities using Gartner & Forrester
guidelines.
• Responsible for managing strategic development and synergistic alliances within and outside Bell.
• Successfully built service relationships with clients and vendors—this included contract management, inhouse clients, and infrastructure teams. Negotiated and revised vendor licensing agreements to maximize
asset benefits for Bell.
• Attended various vendor sessions and workshops for business exposure, seeking options for business
vision and problems (SOA, BI tools, WebFOCUS, JACADA, Syndesis, Micro Focus, Intelliden, BEA/Oracle,
RequistePro etc.)
• Physically surveyed eight overseas software houses for establishing an outsourcing model for ADT.
• Engaged Bell outsourcing primes IBM, WIPRO and Infosys to establish a tailored outsourcing model for
our district.
Some key projects/programs that I have delivered:
Business Intelligence and Data Integration for BELL Voice Managed Services (VMS)
VoIP Managed service from Bell leverages VoIP management capabilities for overall management that
ensures secure, reliable VoIP communications. Each customer has unique SLA requirements and is
treated as a separate project in Bell.
• Successfully delivered VMS iWay integration on SOA ESB model. This project was featured in
Information Builders annual summit in Nashville, TN in 2009 and also in Kissimmee, FL in
2010.
• The system orchestrated asynchronous and synchronous real-time integration between
configuration management database system, fault surveillance system, and problem resolution
system. The following integration patterns were used: Web-Services, HTTP Post, Remote File
Polling, and Remote Shell Execution.
• Successfully delivered VMS BI solution under aggressive timelines using WebFOCUS, providing
the following key BI capabilities for the service: ‘Change/Service Request Management,’
‘Release Management’, ‘Incident/Problem Management,’ and ‘Inventory Management.’
Business Intelligence and Data Integration for BELL Enterprise Workflow Management (EWM)
EWM is an ITIL-based, service management solution offered by Bell. Each customer has unique SLA
requirements and is treated as a separate project. For EWM:
• Successfully delivered complex reporting and integration EWM solutions for Canadian Imperial
Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and Ministry of Finance under extremely aggressive timelines and
tight budget constraints; it was an extremely important delivery that the team implemented on
time in order to meet the contractual obligations of CIBC et al.
Bell IPVPN SLA & Performance Reporting
Bell IP VPN service provides network infrastructure backed by stringent service level agreements.
• My team developed and upgraded various flavours of SLA & performance reporting solutions
for many Bell Canada clients, including Bank of Montreal (BMO), Royal Bank of Canada (RBC),
and Aliant.
• IPVPN service reports on key SLA and performance metrics.
• Reporting involved consolidation of data from multiple feeds (Remedy, Teradata, Oracle, SQL
Server, and event management feeds)
• All the projects were delivered within the triple constraint (time, quality, and cost) under
extremely aggressive timelines.
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Architecture Lead for Design and Oversight Committee
• Delivered projects on a data federation approach and established data-dictionaries for the
support systems.
• Created SOA delivery and technology roadmap for the SystemWorks. Enhanced Telecom
Operations Map (eTom) was used as the logical layer.
• Created a framework for establishing governance within SystemWorks, Bell Canada.
• Established BI design/technology best practices.
• Established where we are and where we want to be (gap assessment w.r.t ADT).
• Established SOPs to meet SAS70 compliance requirements (and beyond that COBIT and ITIL
requirements). ADT successfully cleared SAS70 for 2007, 2008, 2009.
• Hardened security and control requirements for enterprise systems within the SystemWORKs
domain.
Held Service Manager/Gestion des Services en Instance/corporate platform for Canadian
Radio-television Telecommunications Commission reporting
• As project lead for HSM, developed, designed and implemented Held Service Manager/Gestion
des Services en Instance system as part of Quebec initiative; aligned Held Order software
business processes for Ontario and Quebec.
• Implemented legacy code translation and decommissioned system data retrieval for successful
decommissioning of the service.
Rules of Engagement Whitepaper
• Co-authored BST IS/IT “Rules of Engagement” white paper for our district.
• Developed the engagement portal for our district.
ADT SWAdT Whitepaper:
• Authored BST ADT SWAdT white paper. The paper focused on various aspects of development
within our district, including objectives, best practices, development processes, development
architecture, and funding models.
SAP/ASSURE Convergence
• Developed and implemented SAP/ASSURE Convergence process to bridge SAP with
Administrative Systems and Support Universal Reporting Environment (ASSURE) platform.
Groups included: Power, Switch, Remote Provisioning, and Transport.
Network Provisioning and Tracking Tool (NPTT)
• Was responsible for Network Provisioning Tracking Tool (NPTT) development, design, and
maintenance.
• Managed and implemented Bell West (Vancouver, BC) reporting projects.
• Worked on Common Language Location Identification (CLLI) consolidation project.
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Relevant Experience: Journalism and Civic Technologies
Globe Lab, Boston Globe, The New York Times Company (2013)
2013 Knight Fellow, Globe Lab
Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University (McCormick Fellowship 2011-2012)
Medill News Service Chicago: Business Reporter, 2011-2012
Reporting beat: Finance, Commodities and Derivatives, Global Markets, Financial Regulation
Media Management courses taken at Kellogg School of Management:
Understanding Media/Content
Media and Integrated Marketing: client SAP CRM
Capstone Journalism Project at Medill:
Developed a system (WordPress plugin) for local news sites that serves related content from syndicate
member sites. Organization: Knight Lab, Northwestern. Technology: Alchemy API, LastRSS, MySQL,
PHP, WordPress.
Advisor: Rich Gordon, Larry Birnbaum
Building Networked Audience at Medill
Developed audience growth strategy for local and international media organizations using the
following tools and concepts: SEO, traffic metrics, Alexa.com, Google Insights, Google Ad Planner,
Nielsen ratings, Omniture, social media, audience segmentation, and Like-gating.
Feature Writer, VISTA Monthly, March 98 – May 99
Vista Monthly was a project of Liberty Publishers, one of the leading news publishing companies in Pakistan. I
was responsible for writing the monthly socio-political feature and various review columns.
Misc. Awards & Achievements
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McCormick Scholarship recipient, Northwestern University
Robotics Olympiad Winner, University of Western Ontario
Dean’s Honor’s list, University of Western Ontario
Exceptional/Role Model Rating in Bell Canada in the entire district for 2009, 2008
Outstanding enterprise project, Information Builders 2009 Summit in Nashville, TN
Member of Advisory Council for Information Builders/iWay
Customer Appreciation Award, Information Builders
Captain of Cathedral Cricket Team, Cathedral School
VISTA Journalist of the year 1998, VISTA Monthly
Outstanding Academic Achievement award, Cathedral School
Team member, Toronto Knights, GTA Cricket League champions 2008, 2009
Winner of intramural cricket championship, University of Western Ontario
Running: Mississauga Half Marathon May 9, 2009
Running: Enduro Trail Race, Rattlesnake Park, Milton,12.7km Jul 11, 2009
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Certifications
Java E Business certification
OOP, JDBC, Servlets, JSP, WAP, Linux
ITIL v3 Foundation Certification completed in 2008
Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, Continual Service Improvement
PMP comprehensive training completed in 2008
Project Management training under Learning Tree
W3 ASP certification
ASP/ADO/SQL
WebFOCUS Certifications
Numerous certifications in WebFOCUS Business Intelligence and Advanced Coding Techniques
SOA certification
SOA methodologies, modeling, design, implementation and architectural frameworks (BPEL, WSDL)
Six Sigma Certification
Area: Problem Solving
Data warehouse SAP Superuser
Superuser reporting module
Skills
Project Management Skills
Software Development Life Cycle Models; Life Cycles and Metrics; Process Maturity: SEI CMM Cost Estimation
Techniques; Project Scoping; Project Planning; Project Control; Project Phase-Out; Risk Management;
Configuration Management; People Management; Team Dynamics.
Technical Skills
Business Intelligence
WebFOCUS, iWay, SAP-Cognos/BW, SAS, Microstrategy, Oracle, MS, JasperSoft
Legacy integration
JACADA/iWay emulation adapters
Data integration
Frameworks
iWay/WebFOCUS:
Databases
Design Tools
Programming
Other
SOA, Legacy Integration, Distributed Events-based systems, Data Federations,
EDW, Technology Agnosticism.
ASP/ASP.NET, J2EE/JSP
FOCUS Reporting, Maintain, ETL, ETL/Oracle packages, Service Manager
Teradata, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, O2, PostGres, Access, MySQL
Rational Rose, Visio, UML
Java, C++, C#, Python, PHP, ASP, JSP, Visual Basic
Public APIs, WordPress development, Natural Language Programming (NLP)
using Python based NLTK, Twitter API, Bing API, Google APIs, Machine
Learning Scikit-Learn, Stanford NLP, Processing. Weka 3 Machine Learning,
Gensim Topic Modelling
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