Pearson Technology Consulting is me, Joel Pearson. Twenty years in IT.

I formed Pearson Technology Consulting in 1996 to offer services in the design and building of distributed systems on top of Microsoft technologies. The first of these was a flexible query system written in PowerBuilder and utilizing a SQL Anywhere database on the back end. Since 1999, I have focused almost exclusively on .NET and J2EE systems that leverage a browser in the presentation layer. My most recent project was a large J2EE system to support the complete operations of a consumer finance company having 100+ branch offices and 300+ active users.

Prior to forming PTC, I worked as a manager for a Big Five management consulting firm. My primary role was to lead technical teams through ERP (enterprise resource planning) system implementation projects. The experience I gained in managing large groups of people (25-50) over extended periods (4-6 months) was fantastic. This was where much of what I know about project planning, project management and team building was learned. Enjoyable projects but very intense.

In the early 1990s, I worked as an internal consultant evangelizing client/server and object technologies. My role was to lead the evaluation and adoption of graphical operating systems, development tools, testing tools, middleware, server-based database systems, etc. The experience provided an introduction to many concepts still relevant today including GUI design, OO analysis and design, distributed systems and the internet. During this time, I also graduated from business school (MBA in Information Management) and developed a classroom scheduling system in Smalltalk.

I began my career at a financial services company doing PL/1 development on a large IBM mainframe. When personal computers came into use at the company, I jumped at the opportunity to do DOS text-based development and led the effort to create one of the first applications: a salary administration system. This was followed by DOS and Windows-based systems of increasing size and complexity.

I am a graduate of the University of Minnesota. (BA in Computer Science)