Rock Star of the Month (August 2018) – Jon Wrye

Raging forest fires burn out of control in the western US. Softball-size hail falls from the sky in Colorado, injuring people and killing some zoo animals. Flood waters, now receding, ravage a number of mid-Atlantic states.  In the eastern US and Canada, a heat wave continues, though punctuated by dangerous lightning storms. And, last week, we saw record temperatures in Europe: parts of Portugal and Spain hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s 45.5 degrees Celsius!). Against this backdrop of extreme activity, it’s good to know that we can count on our latest JCA Rock Star to keep things calm, COOL, and collected! This Rock Star is actually a two-time winner, having raised the bar of excellence back in September 2015, when he was only six months into the job. Congratulations (once again) to Jon Wrye as our latest JCA Rock Star!

Jon is hardworking, detailed, and always there when his colleagues need him. Whether it’s in a support or development role, Jon always delivers. When the Product group decided to do a big push on Answers development this year, he dove into the work with enthusiasm and delivered exceptional results. Through team collaboration, Jon rebuilt the Answers Configuration Manager that allows us or end-users to install and support multiple modules (Raiser’s Edge, Galaxy, and soon Siriusware) from a single utility.

And Jon is such a quick study. Through his development on Answers for Galaxy, Jon gained a ton of knowledge about Galaxy, thus providing the Answers team with another resource for support and customizations in the future. His knowledge of TFS, and a zeal for good development practices has been a great influence in making the group’s business processes more efficient. In addition, Jon is always willing to lend his knowledge of Sisense Elasticube development to other JCA product lines. As one team member wrote, “Not only is Jon a stickler for accuracy, he also has a great sense of humor and is a delight to work with.”

Jon’s hard work and diligence have not gone unnoticed. His Fort Collins officemates remark that he is often in the office at the crack of dawn, sometimes as early at 7 a.m. Jon worked tirelessly on the JCA Answers ETL to help deliver the next version of JCA Answers for Galaxy. Jon is so effective that it seems as if he does the work of multiple engineers.

But working on Answers isn’t the only role in the Product group that Jon has. He has also helped the RMA team get started with Sisense. Jon, along with two-time Rock Star Amanda Freeman, worked to upgrade our version of Sisense to match Tessitura’s own environment. And Jon persevered and resolved all of the outstanding issues. Not that he was under any pressure, but everyone on the RMA team was blocked on RMA work until he and Amanda could fix it all. This was just another example of Jon remaining cool in the face of uncooperative software and tight deadlines— and doing it in his typical congenial and helpful way.

Please join me in congratulating Jon Wrye as our latest JCA Rock Star!