tigerbears!

Welcome to tigerbears!

I’m Bill Kunz, and I’ve been working the web full-time since 1997, though I’ve been tinkering online since ’91. I’m currently a consultant wearing several web-centric hats: developer, UX architect, project manager, product manager and others. Before striking it out on my own (again), I was a the senior front-end engineer at Netflix for just shy of nine years. When I left, I was one of three employees remaining from the days when we were a stealth mode startup scrambling to release our beta site to the world. Some of my favorite professional memories are from those days … what a ride!

My last position at Netflix was with my buddies on the Community team, responsible for the Friends section of the site. The challenges we faced are shared by plenty of new ventures these days, so you can expect some commentary on that from time to time.

Most of my recent development experience has been front-end development, writing custom Javascript libraries for Ajax-based and other client-side logic / rendering, and server-side page generation with Java / JSP. One of my upcoming projects is a good candidate for Ruby on Rails, so I’m especially excited about that opportunity.

Process-wise, I’m a strong advocate for an agile development approach (when appropriate!) and have led teams of engineers and designers under this banner (whether by that name, others, or none) for over ten years.

When I’m not typing away for one reason or another, the hobby I’m most passionate about is motorcycle racing. I’m a backmarker with the AFM in California and am big fan of the guys playing in the MotoGP series. I race an ’02 Honda F4i and take to the streets on an ’04 Ducati 749s.

Thanks a lot for stopping by. I can be contacted by email and other means. I’ll usually keep comments disabled here, but I’d like to hear from you, so don’t be shy. I also welcome opportunities to work with teams or individuals on solutions large and small, on a formal or informal basis. I’ll soon have a more thorough bio and resume available for those who are interested.

meta: tigerbears runs on WordPress. Its theme is based on Barthelme by Scott Wallick, whose clean approach to blog design is a breath of fresh air in a MySpace world. I had to destroy a lot of his work by slapping on a quick color scheme of my own, among other tweaks, which is based on the livery of a series of US Navy fighter squadrons and my beloved yellow bikes. As a scheme, it needs work, but it’s been good for learning more about this system. Please pardon the dust and clashing colors while I play. ;)