About Me

Personal Information

Originally a New England native, I moved to Virginia about 17 years ago. My family still lives in the Rhode Island / Massachusetts area.
Although my name is Emanuel, most people at the firm know me as Manny. In the open source community I'm also known as Nino, pronounced 'NEENO', or Nino.Borges. Nino was a nickname given to me by my family when I was younger.

In March of 2007, my wife and I moved back to the Massachusetts area to be closer to our family.

Current Employment

UPDATE:As of March 2007, I now live outside of Boston and work for McDermott Will & Emery LLP. I received my Concordance Certified Administrator certification and have been enjoying the challenge ever since.

For the past 9 years I've been working in the technology department of McGuireWoods LLP, a large law firm in the Richmond Virginia area.
Specifically, for the past 4 of the 9 years, I've been working as a Project Manager and Software Developer for the Practice Support department, with a strong focus on technology as it relates to Electronic Document Discovery. I believe there are firms that refer to this as a Practice Support Technologist but project management and direct contact with clients and our legal staff is still a large portion of my job.

Practice Support Responsibilities Include:

• Implementation, rollout, database migration and support of CT Summation Enterprise and CT Summation WebBlaze
  
• Electronic Document Discovery methodology creation, dependent on the specific collection
• Summation server upgrade, client software rollout and constant systems analysis
• Summation user level training
• Electronic document database creation and support for Summation Iblaze and Concordance / IPRO
• Creation of electronic document productions
• Support for Documentum's eRoom online collaboration environment
• Development and support for firm's matter management and client relation system
• Summation "add-on" software development (Litigation Support tools)
• Automation of large scale text file manipulation and conversion through custom programs written by me
• Design, setup and support for large document reviews utilizing internal and temporary attorneys
• Negotiation of agreements with outside vendors and the management of their performance based on those agreements
• Delegate tasks to our junior level members

• Design and creation of Summation Extension, a program that lets us quickly and efficiently create electronic document productions from Summation.
• Design and creation of the Practice Support Portal(screen shots coming soon), an online collaboration environment developed using Python and Zope, that allows us to track our tasks and projects, acts as our main knowledge base and allows the paralegals to check up on the status of their Summation database creation and data load requests
• Development of a program that automatically creates an auto loading hyper textual "Presentation CD" from document exhibits, which was recently used in a conference hosted by a client of the firm. I was told that it was appreciated by our legal staff for it's ease of use and impressed our client by it's professional look, being able to hand out autoloading CDs as apposed to paper handouts, and low creation cost
• Creation, implementation, upgrade and support of our "Media Station", which the team uses for converting various forms of source media, including VHS into Mpeg, WMV, streamable web media and fully authored DVDs with integrated menus. This station of machines is also where the team syncs Trial Director transcripts

Previous Work History

Before starting in the Practice Support department, I spent the majority of my career at McGuireWoods in the Desktop Architecture group.
Responsibilities in this group included:

• Creation, testing, research and implementation of new technologies for the firm
• Software repackaging using Microsoft SMS Installer or Wise for automated installation
• Software rollout using Microsoft SMS and custom batch files
• Microsoft SMS site and package administration
• Hardware and software inventory using WMI and SMS
• Schedule and package system updates
• Project management for large firm implementations, such as HummingBird's Docs Open document management system
• Creation, update and support for the firm's Windows 2000 master image
• Provide 4^th level support to Support Services personnel
• Creation and organization of documentation on new software and technologies
• Training of new Support Services personnel on new software and technologies

• Work with department leads to find "problem areas", where hours were being wasted because of repetitive and time consuming tasks, which were absorbing costly overtime
• Create automation tools for employees in these areas that would increase efficiency and eliminate these repetitive manual tasks
• Develop online system for "change requests", replacing the paper system that was used, to increase efficiency and decrease errors

Contracting

Software development
Web application design and implementation
Network infrastructure architecture, implementation and support

Background

Computer science

Hobbies

Open source software development
Linux
Hardware hacking and electronic engineering
Woodworking

You can also follow me on Twitter.