Joel Koenigs
Vice President/Director of Web Development
Hired: August 2001
Overview:
As President of Technology, Joel manages a team of interactive developers and agency IT. He also provides development and IT consulting to clients by researching, recommending, and implementing technologies that suit their needs.
Education:
Mankato State University; B.S. in Automotive Engineering Technology (magna cum laude)
Certifications:
Microsoft Certified Professional
Prior Work Experience:
From creating screen savers for clients such as Energizer (yeah, the one with the bunny) and CDROM games for Ralston-Purina, to administering an NT network and building websites, Joel has worn a lot of hats. As a Senior Developer at Zentropy Partners, he worked with clients such as Community First Banks, Purina (Dog and Puppy Chow), U.S. Navy, 8th Continent L.L.C. and General Mills.
At Risdall Joel is the "go-to guy" for e-commerce application design and development, proposal writing, project management, and all things technical. Recent account experience includes Premier Mounts, Employers Association, Pearson Assessments, AGS Globe, Compex Technologies, P.B.Loco, and the Minnesota Medical Association.
Notable Achievements at Risdall:
After acquiring The Progressive Farmer magazine from Time Inc in late 2006, DTN was under contractual obligation to move the magazine site, and some other related sites and static micro-sites, from the Time Inc hosting facilities over a period of approximately two months.
The major tasks involved porting a 3000+ page site from a proprietary and expensive Vignette StoryServer content management system to the open source DotNetNuke (DNN) framework, transforming content data from Sybase to MS SQL Server, supporting a high-availability architecture, creating sweepstakes and subscription mechanisms that would integrate with an existing processing service, transitioning from the former Time Inc ad serving mechanism to DTN's DART (DoubleClick) service, and converting from Omniture to HBX webside tracking code.
Joel served as the technical project lead from Risdall, creating and managing the combined project schedule, conducting weekly project status update meetings, coordinating with various vendors and DTN IT staff, managing several internal development resources, participating in DNN development and development review, and keeping the project stakeholders aware of progress.
The site successfully launched in May of 2007 and has performed admirably. The performance and reliability of the DNN platform has withstood major traffic spikes during promotional campaigns. Even though the success factors of the project did not involve enhancements to the existing solution, content managers were very pleased with the ease of use of the new content management tools.
On a Personal Note:
Joel led his high school team to win a regional Physics and Engineering competition by creating a Rube Goldberg machine that would crush a pop can and dispose of it in a recycling container. The winning machine employed, among other things, a bowling ball, toaster, steel-toed work boot, plastic Nixon figurine, bar stool, dominos, a record player, a mousetrap and a flyswatter.