rick mason

As part of the evolution of Relish I've evolved too. Bringing my server side skills to integrate DevOps practices within the company. From various infrastructure needs to setting up and managing Jenkins servers to writing the build pipelines for our Unity projects. Alongside this, I'm working to ensure we are following quality assurance and testing best practices across our projects. Last but not least, part of the QA role involves acting as our internal accessibility evangelist, working to ensure accessible needs are considered at every level from the design and UX stages down to game play control implementations.

My roles with FITC have been constantly evolving, from helping produce the Iron Flash event in 2002, to acting as technology liaison with the AV suppliers to my main role helping curate the speakers and topics that reflect both current trends and the cutting edge in creative technology.

In 2013 I was invited to do a presentation that covered the broad landscape of creative coding technology and projects at FITC Toronto. I gave a 50min talk that covered Processing, openFrameworks, Cinder and Javascript. This presentation was submitted to SXSW Interactive for their 2014 conference and I was invited to transform it into a 3 hour workshop. For that workshop, I expanded on the original presentation and added 90 mins of live demonstration of coding projects in each of the major creative coding frameworks. In addition to these major events, I regularly speak at my own event, CreateInTO on a variety of topics.

As part of the original team behind NXNEi, I helped launch the interactive conference portion of North By Northeast in the role of lead curator. I was responsible for helping to set the tone and direction of the conference's content and for finding top-notch speakers to present and inspire.

Taught a weekly 3 hour class introducing programming for Flash using Actionscript 3 to students of the Interactive Digital Media program.

For a brief period I did freelance website development for numerous clients. I still occasionally take on this kind of work, but only for the most inspiring stuff.

As lead developer for nowtoronto.com I handled all the back-end development and some front-end for NOW's online edition. Working primarily as a Coldfusion programmer, I also performed database design and coded in JavaScript, Actionscript 3 and Flex. Additional core work was done to do extensive integration between the publishing systems (ie. Woodwing and Filemaker) with the online systems.

Currently working as part of a small web apps team within Relish. We build complex web applications using the latest technologies. My primary role is doing backend development where I'm designing databases and building API's to support the frontend development. I'm also doing devops work as I'm responsible for setting up servers and automating build processes.

I got my start at Pangaea NewMedia, learning the ropes in the industry from a solid team of people. I honed my Coldfusion and SQL skills here as well as my ability to work with clients to discover and build the tools they needed.