“Nick is easily one of the most talented FE devs I have worked with – highly skilled, deeply knowledgeable, and keenly attentive to the details. Nick’s patience, guidance and generosity were instrumental in helping me get back into writing code after a long break.”
About
Award-winning front-end architect and full-stack software engineer based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. A dynamic and entrepreneurial developer specializing in building scalable and usable web applications, Nick brings his technical leadership ability, distinct UX/UI sensibilities, and deep understanding of the B2B/B2C SaaS and community/social networking spaces to bear when working independently, or with engineering and design teams of all sizes.
Straddling the line between UX/interaction design, product owners and data/services layers, Nick brings 20+ years of experience to leading product teams and delivering high-quality, well-tested code, following architectural best practices. He's passionate about the latest in front-end and mobile development trends, as well as creating enthralling and invigorating user experiences.
In addition to offering development & UX services via Taunt Media (https://tauntmedia.com), Nick also designed, built, launched, and operated Protagonize, a SaaS-based collaborative creative writing community of 30K+ authors, which operated from 2008-2017. Nick also hosted VanCX, a meetup for online community builders w/200+ members at its peak & is an active member of VanJS, React Vancouver, IxDA & VanUE.
Most recently, Nick has started a YouTube channel dedicated to urban, indoor/outdoor gardening, tropical plant collecting, and semi-hydroponic growing called Proppist.
Recent skills/tools:
- JavaScript (ES6 → ESNext), TypeScript, React, Redux, React Native, Vue.js, NativeScript, AngularJS, JAMstack, HTML5, CSS3/SCSS, Material UI, styled components
- Node.js/Express/Fastify, Ruby/Rails, C#/ASP.NET, PHP, Java/JSP/Spring
- GraphQL (Apollo), REST APIs, websockets, authentication (JWT, OAuth 2.0), microservices, serverless
- PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server
- Jest, Enzyme, testing-library, Cypress, Puppeteer
- Git, Webpack (+ Module Federation), Babel, ESLint, Prettier, gulp, yarn/npm, VS.Code, Photoshop/XD, Sketch
- AWS, Heroku, Next.js/Vercel Now, Gatsby, Docker, Hasura, Azure, WordPress, SharePoint, Sitefinity
- Single-page apps (SPAs) & PWAs, responsive & adaptive app design, mobile apps, isomorphic apps
- SDLC & software methodologies, object-oriented programming & design (OOP), architectural & UX design patterns & best practices
- Slack apps + API integrations
- Chrome/Edge/Firefox/Safari browser extensions
Activity
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Semantic Kernel SDK is powerful tool to build intelligent applications, integrating OpenAI with business logic through plugins. Using natural…
Semantic Kernel SDK is powerful tool to build intelligent applications, integrating OpenAI with business logic through plugins. Using natural…
Liked by Nick Bouton
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Ilya Sutskever gave John Carmack this reading list of approximately 30 research papers and said, ‘If you really learn all of these, you’ll know 90%…
Ilya Sutskever gave John Carmack this reading list of approximately 30 research papers and said, ‘If you really learn all of these, you’ll know 90%…
Liked by Nick Bouton
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currently working in public: writing an Intertwingler handler: • https://lnkd.in/gqiAgKgn • https://lnkd.in/giUsMci8
currently working in public: writing an Intertwingler handler: • https://lnkd.in/gqiAgKgn • https://lnkd.in/giUsMci8
Liked by Nick Bouton
Experience
Education
Projects
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Protagonize - Creative Writing Community Site
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Protagonize is an award-winning creative writing community dedicated to writing a variety of forms of collaborative, interactive fiction. One author writes a story, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving story where everyone can participate.
We developed Protagonize as an attempt to modernize the collaborative creative writing arena; this entailed providing enhanced usability to authors, creating better tools for them to…Protagonize is an award-winning creative writing community dedicated to writing a variety of forms of collaborative, interactive fiction. One author writes a story, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving story where everyone can participate.
We developed Protagonize as an attempt to modernize the collaborative creative writing arena; this entailed providing enhanced usability to authors, creating better tools for them to publish and distribute their content, and allow them to easily work with others.
Protagonize launched at the end of 2008, and has been receiving an excellent response from users and the press, with over 30,000 authors signing up for the site since its debut.Other creatorsSee project -
Vancouver Community Experience Group (#VanCX)
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Founder and host of the the Vancouver Community Experience Group (#VanCX), which represents Vancouver-based online community developers, managers, and designers.
VanCX is kindly hosted by our good friends at Work [at] Play Media Labs, in the Railtown neighbourhood of Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Other creatorsSee project -
MAKE AppShot (Dell) - Enterprise SaaS Application
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After an extensive interview process, MAKE Technologies (now Dell Modernization) hired us in the fall of 2011 to work on a new subscription-based enterprise SaaS product that was in its initial stages of planning and requirements gathering. This product, known as AppShot, would help automate their existing business processes, exposing much of their application modernization technologies as a single, unified web-based B2B service that their clients could use directly.
While the first…After an extensive interview process, MAKE Technologies (now Dell Modernization) hired us in the fall of 2011 to work on a new subscription-based enterprise SaaS product that was in its initial stages of planning and requirements gathering. This product, known as AppShot, would help automate their existing business processes, exposing much of their application modernization technologies as a single, unified web-based B2B service that their clients could use directly.
While the first phase of development was spent prototyping with a very small team, primarily consisting of MAKE's engineering leads, Taunt, and an outside UX designer, the project eventually grew in size and scope substantially. The internal team we worked with grew and adapted in concert.
From the product development side, the feature set supported upon project completion was quite diverse. A broad set of user roles were defined, and the application's features included user management (including security roles), submission of applications or groups of applications for analysis, user-created survey management and delivery, custom reporting tools, and administration interface for MAKE to manage customer accounts.
One challenge we faced was a significant requirements change mid-stream, coupled with some upheaval in our team members at MAKE. We also switched outside visual design resources early in the project, which fortunately resulted in a major improvement to the app's UX.
While functionally complete, tested, and announced (and advertised) to the public, in the end, AppShot never launched. In the fallout of Dell's acquisition of MAKE in mid-2012, AppShot was shelved indeterminately. We hope it'll still see the light of day at some point in the future.Other creatorsSee project
Honors & Awards
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Deloitte Technology Fast 50 - Companies-to-Watch Award - Klue.com
Deloitte LLP
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BCTIA Technology Impact Awards - Startup of the Year - Klue.com
BC Tech Association
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Vancouver User Experience Awards - UX For Work - Klue.com
Vancouver User Experience Group (#VanUE)
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W3 Awards - Silver Winner - Community & Publishing - Protagonize.com
International Academy of Visual Arts
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nextMEDIA Banff - Top 5 Digital Property in Canada
nextMEDIA Banff / Achilles Media
Selected as one of the Top 5 Hottest Digital Properties in Canada for 2009.
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SXSW Interactive Web Awards - Community (Finalist) - Protagonize.com
SXSW Interactive
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Applied Arts Interactive Awards - Experimental/Artistic & Weblog/Social Networking - Protagonize.com
Applied Arts Magazine
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KPMG / Backbone - PICK 20 Awards - #19
KPMG / Backbone Magazine
Selected as one of Canada's leading Web 2.0 companies for 2008.
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Canadian New Media Awards - Excellence in Social Media Websites (Finalist) - Protagonize.com
Canadian New Media Awards
Languages
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English
Native or bilingual proficiency
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French
Native or bilingual proficiency
Recommendations received
17 people have recommended Nick
Join now to viewMore activity by Nick
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Apple's WWDC keynote unveiled a vision for Apple Intelligence, showcasing the potential of AI across all Apple products. A notable highlight was the…
Apple's WWDC keynote unveiled a vision for Apple Intelligence, showcasing the potential of AI across all Apple products. A notable highlight was the…
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Great event last night to kick off Collision Conference! Cone AI’s vision to use AI to improve structural safety of bridges and other…
Great event last night to kick off Collision Conference! Cone AI’s vision to use AI to improve structural safety of bridges and other…
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We are VERY proud to be a Canadian tech company 🇨🇦 And to be recognized as a leader in the BC tech industry by the BC Tech Association is…
We are VERY proud to be a Canadian tech company 🇨🇦 And to be recognized as a leader in the BC tech industry by the BC Tech Association is…
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