Matt Sergeant


475 Mill Park Drive / Kitchener / Ontario / N2P 2L4 / Canada
Tel: Home: +1 519 896 9317 Mobile: +1 519 721 4280
e-mail:matt@sergeant.org / gsm sms:

DoB: 1974/04/01


Education

University of Durham, St Cuthbert's Society Graduated: 1996/06
BSc Computer Science

Key Skills
Languages
Perl 5
C
XML
Java (JDK 1.2, Visual J++)
JavaScript
ASP
HTML
(Visual) C++ (all versions)
Protocols
SMTP
HTTP
CGI
DCOM
SMTP
TCP/IP
NNTP
Software
Linux (all versions)
Apache (1.3)
mod_perl
CVS, RCS, VSS and PVCS
NT (all versions)
IIS (3 & 4)
Databases
Oracle
Sybase
MS SQL Server
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Access

Current Work
MessageLabs Inc

Work Experience
MessageLabs Inc 2001/08 - Present
Chief developer of MessageLabs' global anti-spam solution including architecture and development of the entire end to end solution including scanning, quarantine, web UI for quarantine, notifications, honeypot code, and all sundry tools and utilities. Since starting the spam team it has now grown to an international team of 11 developers and several operations specialists. This work also involves media interviews, many of which can be found online. Most recently I appeared on the cover of the New York Times Business section.
AxKit.com Limited 2000/08 - 2001/08
CTO and lead developer on a project to build a leading edge open source XML application server and content management system. AxKit is now one of the leading products in the open source community for building XML backed web sites, and has been used to successfully build many web sites providing alternate views for pages (such as WAP or HTML) and a friendly XML based development environment. The technologies built and designed by myself include XPathScript and the core engine inside AxKit. I also ported Cocoon's XSP technology to Perl for use in AxKit.
O'Reilly and Associates 2000/03 - Present
Developing a commercial Perl based Web Discussion system, with Web, Email and NNTP interfaces. The project was a complete, from scratch development that I personally designed, architected and developed (with one further developer helping later). The technologies used included Object Oriented (OO) Perl5, mod_perl, DBI, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, module design, Apache, multi threaded kernel development, Email and NNTP message parsing (Internet RFC's 821, 977, 1341, 1641 and 2980), and much more.
Deutsche Bank - Wood MacKenzie 1999/10 - 2000/03
This role involved consulting on the development of a product using the MediaSurface application server product. Involving all aspects of development and project management. In particular working towards extending MediaSurface to have better templating facilities and XML support.
British Broadcasting Corporation 1999/07/01 - 1999/08/31
Investigating several new technologies for the BBC's high profile web site (the most used content based web site in the UK) and developing modules for use on the site. One module is now used on every page on the BBC web site. Investigations into new technology covered search engines, personalisation technology, database backends and mod_perl. All work was conducted using Perl.
Ericsson Mobile Communications (UK) Limited 1998/04/06 - 1999/06/30
Developing an MMI for a "black box" device. Using Java over a tiny web server. Working initially with Visual J++, then with Sun JDK. Following on, working in Development IT doing internet/intranet development. Leading the development teams to create interactive business functionality. Key developments include large amounts of XML work, designing XML search tools (based on XQL and XML-QL), XML re-formatting tools (as a pre-cursor to XSL - see my web site), online XML editing protocols, and indexing techniques. The culmination of this work has been a global XML-based timesheet application, to be deployed all over the world to Ericsson employees. Some of this work has been made available to members of the Perl community via the Perl-XML mailing list and CPAN.
Speaking Engagements
As one of the world's leading Perl and XML developers, I am invited to speak at many conferences each year. These are the talks I have given or will be giving in the coming year:
MIT Spam Conference (Adding Bayesian Scanning to SpamAssassin)
O'Reilly Open Source Conference 2002, San Diego (AxKit - Advanced AxKit Tutorial, POE - Threading without threads, Exceptions handling in Perl, Why SOAP Sucks, Why SOAP Rocks)
O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention 2001, San Diego (AxKit - XML Application Serving with mod_perl, mod_perl as an HTTP RPC Daemon, Exception Handling in mod_perl, Cross Database Perl Applications, Orchard: a new API for XML)
Open Source Web Solutions 2001, Stockholm (Developing XML applications with Perl and AxKit, Building a web portal with XML and Perl)
XML Dev Con 2001 New York (Building XML Based Web Sites with Open Source Tools)
Apache Con 2001 San Jose (AxKit - the XML Application server for Apache)
XML Dev Con Europe 2001 London (Building XML Based Web Sites with Open Source Tools)
XML Dev Con Fall 2000 San Jose (Building XML Based Web Sites with Open Source Tools)
XML Dev Con Fall 2000 San Jose (Generating XML From Form Data)
Apache Con Europe 2000 London (AxKit - the XML Application server for Apache)
XML Dev Con 2000 New York (Generating XML From Form Data)
XML Dev Con 2000 New York (XML Little Languages (compilation, optimisation and execution of XML languages))
Training
Oracle Performance Tuning (Oracle Training)
Oracle Advanced SQL (Oracle Training)
Object Oriented Design (QA Training)