DLG Software

Overview

My name is Dan Gronell and I've been an application developer for nearly twenty years. Most of this was SAS-based work in the pharmaceutical industry developing applications to manage, explore, and report on Phase I-IV clinical trials data. For potential employers/clients I've included a bit of work history and personal info below.

Work History

My first ten years of programming experience was as an employee at some of the top pharmaceutical firms (Pfizer, Roche, the now-defunct Lederle). My employee years were great largely because I worked on some really interesting and groundbreaking projects, some of the first computerized New Drug Applications (NDAs) submitted to the FDA.

After nearly ten years as an employee I struck out on my own as an independent consultant. During my decade as a consultant in Manhattan I had several of the top Pharmas as clients (Roche, Searle, and an eight year relationship with Pfizer, the largest Pharma).

As for the SAS world, I had an excellent relationship with SAS Institute — I'm SAS V8 Certified and was both a SAS Quality Partner and SAS Alliance Partner. I've also presented several invited papers on application development at the annual SAS International users group conferences. A sample: Working with Classes in SAS/AF Frame Entries.

As for the apps I've developed, most were SAS-based desktop apps, some for MS Win, others running on Unix, still others Unix-based with MS Clients accessing them via X Windows. I also developed web-based apps using SAS/IntrNet — basically this was dynamic page generation via CGI and SAS with lots of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Several years ago I decided to take a sabbatical and try my hand at writing fiction. This was a somewhat less successful endeavor than my consulting work, though it did result in two novels. A bit more about that below.

Last year I decided to return to the appdev world, and since SAS appdev had changed dramatically (they basically killed their appdev product and went with Java, not my pref for appdev work) I looked around for something new. I quickly realized that RIAs were the most interesting work out there, and when I evaluated RIA products I soon found a clear winner — Flex.

Some personal history

After graduating university I spent a year backpacking around the world, mostly spending time in Australia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia (including three weeks trekking in the Himalayas to reach Everest Base Camp, highly recommended if you ever get the chance). I've also traveled a bit in Central and South America and traveled extensively in Europe, living there for extended periods (studied in Paris, for a time was based in Basel, Switzerland for Roche).

As noted above, I recently took three years off to try my hand at writing fiction, writing two thrillers (which apparently weren't too thrilling, generating many rejection letters but no income, hence my return to the software development world). Although I didn't interest any publishers in my writing I don't regret the attempt, and somewhere down the line I'll certainly take another shot at this.

Currently I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan just two blocks from Central Park where I jog at least five times a week.

Update — Jan 2012

Over the past year I've transitioned from writing fiction back to writing code. While I've enjoyed spending time in the many cafes of Greenwich Village reading Flex books and working on my Flex demo apps, at some point I really need to get serious and look for Flex work. So, if you hear of any interesting Flex work in NYC (preferably more SOHO loft than Wall Street tower) let me know...