Karen Hope’s major expertise lies in Server Smalltalk programming, frameworks development, and re-architecting and migrating rich client Smalltalk applications. During her employment at St. Paul Insurance, she worked closely with two major Smalltalk-to-Java migration companies and is aware of their methodologies, tools, and experienced first-hand the resultant translated Java code.

Karen also has a deep passion for training and mentoring. During her years at St. Paul, she helped develop curriculum (MS PowerPoint presentation as well as labs and tests) and delivered a 5-week “OO Boot camp.” The particular topics were: Basic Smalltalk, Object Oriented Analysis and Design (using UML), Advanced Smalltalk and Best Practices, Frameworks (specific to St. Paul’s Smalltalk application), and Concurrent Development in Envy. Since leaving St. Paul, she has also customized and delivered a 5-day Web Services in VAST course, as well as developed the material for and delivered a 5-day Distributed Programming in VAST (including introduction to Java, Eclipse and RMI). Both these courses were given in Caracas, Venezuela in 2005.

At the moment, Karen cannot consider taking a position that would require permanent relocation (excluding Maui), but is amenable to occasional travel, and is well positioned to be highly productive telecommuting. She would consider re-architecture analysis, design, coding and testing distributed object communications, as well as representing a client in an advisory capacity with Smalltalk/Java migration companies. Training is a viable possibility, either using existing materials or developing custom courses.