About Me

About Me

My name is Jose M. Tamez; I spent four years in the navy as a radioman, which by the way is now called something else. When I was honorably discharged I wanted to be a programmer and I bought books on Pascal, Fortran, and other procedural programming languages but quickly learned that the only way to run code or learn about programming was in college. I didn't have the money for college so I drifted around doing other things and then eventually discovered the web, and by 1995 I was hooked. I started going back to school and taking computer classes and I learned more about the web and by the time year 2000 rolled around, I was working as a web designer and web developer. Early 2006 I was hired as a web designer through a temp service at CMC Construction Services, and all the hard work up until then had finally paid off. I always say “Chance Favors the Prepared Mind” and after many years of struggling for a break into IT, it finally came and I was ready. I assissted marketing with branding their external web presence and created hundreds of pages for their web site using ASP Classic (vbScripting) and after more than four months, I was finally hired as a full-time employee. The rest, as they say, is history. During my time working as a temp, I discovered WSS2.0 and how the company was using it and what I considered a very unique approach to providing intranet web solutions through the use of web part technology. I realized it’s potential and I found the company interested in adopting the new Portal 2003. I wasn’t impressed with Portal 2003 but I carried on anyway and continued to work with it until I eventually found MOSS2007 while it was still in beta. I really found it interesting and the more I read and learned about it, I thought it was a much better approach and it offered more features which made it much more powerful. I thought at first that it was using .Net Framework 2.0 but as it turned out it was using Asp.Net 2.0 and it was being built on top of the new 3.0 .Net Framework (Workflow Engine). I really found it promising and the longer I worked with it the more I looked forward to its initial release. I stopped working with Portal 2003 and started working with the new MOSS2007 while it was still in beta and I never looked back. I couldn’t wait for its 2007 January release and as soon as the new year rolled around, by the end of January I had a three server farm setup with MOSS2007 using three Dell desktop machines, believe it or not. Afterwards I asked the IT manager if I could upgrade our current WSS2.0 to the new MOSS2007. Sure, he said, I don't care, so long as you never let the current SharePoint system (WSS2.0) go down and you make it a smooth and transparent transition. Ok, I had a big challenge in front of me and I had to be very careful. I was still enrolled at Kaplan at the time and working many hours on the new MOSS2007 and then the parent company CMC had discovered MOSS2007. It was actually the Portal 2003 developer, who by the way taught me a few things on the programming side of SharePoint (he went on to leave CMC and work for Microsoft), who recommended the upgrade. The parent company identified and gathered up all those who were listed as software engineers or programmers and singled out those that were web developers and invited  us to Dallas for a meeting to discuss a future portal upgrade. I think it was no-brainer and they picked me to be a part of the new corporate portal installation team. Again the hard work paid off and I was really excited about that and soon afterwards we started having monthly meetings in Dallas and I would fly out to meet with the corporate team and start planning the new MOSS2007. Now I had a good excuse to ask for some training because I wanted to get certified. When that was approved and I found Unitek Education in San Jose California and by the end of May I was trained and certified MCP and MCTS MOSS2007.  I spent one week in San Jose, California with Unitek Education who was offering the "5 Day Official MCTS: Configuring Office SharePoint Server 2007 Boot Camp" led by Clive Herman. When I got back I was really pumped and then I put into high gear and I dropped out of Kaplan so that I could focus on working with the corporate team, learning on my new development environment, and getting my company migrated to the new MOSS2007. I earned my certification, migrated the company WSS2.0 to MOSS2007 (using the same Dell desktop machines no-less), and towards the end of 2007 in November the entire corporate team flew to Las Vegas for the one week long DevConnections SharePoint. Corporate allowed us to pick a workshop which cost extra, and I chose the workflow workshop, which I had always found interesting, and the workshop was very good and cleared up some questions on state machine workflows. During this year I was also working on the company external web presence and I was still using VB.Net. By the time 2008 rolled around I finally made the decision to start using C# exclusively. I think I should also mention that back in 2007 CMC Construction Services was using 2003 InfoPath exclusively with Microsoft Access and Outlook and there were three service pack. Needless to say, migrating 2003 InfoPath forms to 2007 InfoPath was no picnic and that included using C# so there was more reason to convert so by end of 2008 I switched to C#.Net and I never looked back. I have been working with SharePoint since 2006 starting with WSS2.0 and SharePoint Portal 2003, and I'm now working with Foundation and SharePoint 2010 Server and it just keeps getting better and better. I just recently finished a week course with CriticalPath's "The Great SharePoint Adventure 2010" led by Ted Pattison and all I can say is, SharePoint development has come a long way from the days of WSS2.0 but it's been an incredible journey and still loving it.    

Thanks,

Jose M. Tamez, MCP, MCTS MOSS2007, SharePoint 2010

Certification and Academic Credentials  

 MOSS2007

SharePoint 2010

MCTS

ITILv3

Kaplan University - Internet & Web Development 

Dean's List - Dean's List - President's List

University of Phoenix BSIT/WD - Currently working on Bachelor of Science IT w/Focus on Web Development

Unitek -  MOSS2007 Bootcamp

Millitary - U.S. Navy - Radioman - Computer Shipboard - MainFrame

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