Joe Woodhouse

Hi, I'm Joe Woodhouse. I speak both IT and business!

Joe Woodhouse has worked as a database & data warehouse consultant for about seventeen years. Joe went into business for himself in 2003 and hasn't looked back. He founded Prima Donna Consulting, an IT consulting company specialising in Sybase enterprise products and in data/information architecture. In his Sybase mode, he is like caffeinated soap for Sybase databases - Joe cleans them up and makes them go faster. In Joe's architecture mode, brand names aren't important. He can work effectively with both C-level people (CIO, COO, CTO) and D-level people (Developers, DBAs, Designers). He gets along fine with the rest of the alphabet too. Joe works more to a consulting model and is not your typical contractor - he likes short stays but offers discounts for longer engagements. If you need a short term back-fill which you can't entice contractors into, the two of you should talk. Joe has enjoyed a very good living from cleaning up the mistakes made by business management who didn't understand the technology and by IT management who didn't grasp the business drivers... but he much prefers helping prevent those mistakes.Specialties: Sybase database and data movement technology (ASE, Replication Server, IQ) Data architecture, information architecture

Sessional Tutor at Swinburne University of Technology

February 2010 - June 2010

I took Swinburne's Enterprise Systems subject as a student in my MISM/MBA double Masters. I topped the class and obviously made an impression on the lecturer as they asked me to help teach the subject in the following semester. According to the student evaluations Swinburne later shared with me, I scored significantly higher in all teacher attributes evaluated than the Faculty or University average for that period.

Principal Consultant at Sybase Australia

1996 - 2003

Working for Sybase was great; I got in on the ground floor, and I was told I was the first person worldwide to have held every consulting position they had. They promoted me each year until they ran out of positions to promote me to... and then they created a new job title so they could promote me again. You can tell I still feel pretty good about that! I was their top database person outside the US, and I gave their US people a run for their money.

DBA at The Chalice Group

1994 - 1996

I took this direct marketing company from standalone PCs to networked client-server databases. It was a lot of fun seeing the expressions on the directors' faces when, say, I'd redesign their data entry forms for a 2.5x increase in productivity, or automate Australia Post National Sort Plan reports for bulk mail discounts.

Principal at Prima Donna Consulting

February 2003

Founded as a Pty Ltd company. Was billable three days after incorporation. Operationally profitable in the first month. Break-even in the third month. Never looked back. IT consulting, at all stages of project delivery: requirements, analysis, architecture, design, development, conversion, performance & tuning, testing, deployment, release management, service delivery, operations. I do all the sales & marketing and enjoy showing neither have to be evil. Best Sybase performance & tuning result: critical report taking 3.5 days (!) tuned to run in 30 seconds. Yes, really. Best data warehouse data model: 1.2Tb of raw data (fixed width) loaded into fully indexed schema (every column with at least two indexes) using only 280Gb of data warehouse space. Yes, really.

Sybase Volunteer Expert at Experts Exchange

October 2004

Experts Exchange (www.experts-exchange.com) is a collection of people with questions and experts who like answering them. I stumbled over it when searching for an obscure Sybase problem. They hand out free memberships to anyone who is deemed to successfully answer a minimum amount of questions per month. Once I started, I was hooked - I professionally solve problems for a living, how could I resist? I have been the top expert in the Sybase area for some years now.

Swinburne University of Technology

2009 – 2014

Master of Info. Systems Management / MBA

Concentration: Yes I really am doing two Masters at once. Crazy huh?

University of New England (AU)

2000 – 2004

Law

Concentration: (incomplete)

Activities: Will come back to this some day; gave it up to start my own company.

La Trobe University

1994 – 1994

Graduate Diploma in Maths & Info. Science

Concentration: Pure Mathematics, Computer Science

La Trobe University

1989 – 1993

Bachelor of Science

Concentration: Computer Science, Pure Mathematics, Linguistics, Logic

Databases; applied rationality; sales and marketing don't have to be evil; information theory; neuropsych; social psych; hair colour chemistry; more than you ever thought there was to know about hair care; bespoke suits; vegan business shoes