We're a team of eight software professionals that have a long history together. Many of us worked at Creo Products before it was bought by Kodak, developing products that revolutionized the printing industry. And we all worked in Kodak's Victoria office on the Kodak InSite(TM) product line, a highly successful web portal suite for printers. When Kodak closed the Victoria office and moved most software development overseas, we decided to keep our momentum and synergy going by forming Semaphore Solutions.
We currently specialize in web application development, but our team members have experience in a wide range of disciplines.
We take pride in our honest, open work enviroment, and the full commitment each team member has made to the success of our company and our clients.
Kevin Kotorynski | CEO and Project Manager
Kevin started out developing electronics and embedded software, and has held team lead, operations management and project management roles. His professional passion is project and operations management. His technical passion still lies with small "gadgety" microprocessor projects. Kevin holds an PMP (Project Management Professional) certification and an M.Sc. in Physics, specializing in DSP and psycho-acoustics.
Jon Stocks | COO and Software Developer
Jon holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Victoria specializing in Software Engineering. He has worked in various industries fulfilling roles in software development, systems architecture, and project engineering. While mostly working in a Windows environment, he still manages to hold onto his true love of working with Macs.
Mark Swinkels | Partner and Software Architect
Mark has been writing software for 30 years. In the early days it was assembler and Forth, interrupt routines and writing to hardware. He has been a team lead or architect for over 20 years on teams of many different sizes. He is an unabashed geek, liking nothing better than learning about something new in almost any field. Mark holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Victoria.
Peter Smith | Partner and Software Developer
Peter has spent the last 20 years working on firmware and software products using a wide range of programming environments, from coding in assembler to PostScript to .NET. Most recently, he has been working on web solutions, from servers to Flex clients. Peter holds an Honours B.A.Sc degree in Electronic Engineering from Simon Fraser University.
Rebeca Dunn-Krahn | Partner and Software Developer
Rebeca begin her technical career in web design and maintenance, creating promotional websites for small commercial clients and non-profits such as Mediawatch Canada. She then moved into web app development, creating and maintaining shopping cart and content-management applications. Recently, she has worked on user interfaces for applications in the telephony, print and energy industries and has become a proponent and student of User-Centred Design. Rebeca holds a B.Sc. from the University of Victoria in biochemistry and computer science.
Steve Cockayne | Partner and Software Developer
Steve's 13-year career has taken him to four tech-sector software shops in Victoria BC, starting with the Astronomy computing gurus at CADC and continuing with five years at telephony start-up Voice Mobility. Recently, Steve has gained strong and varied experience across various software applications while working for global companies Schneider Electric and Eastman Kodak. His colleagues know him as the go-to guy for any questions about SQL syntax and database design. Steve holds a B.Sc. in Combined Maths and Computer Science.
Tobias Patton | Partner and Software Developer
Tobias has been working professionally in software development for 7 years. Prior to that, he worked as a subject matter expert on various software development teams. Going even farther back into the mists of time, he did remote and on-site customer support in the digital print industry. He has spent some time focusing on user centered design and usability issues. He has worked on projects targeting .NET, Mac OS X, and the Flash runtime. Tobias holds a Bachelor's degree in Linguistics.