Who We Are

LightHouse Data Services, LLC, formerly Strategic Network Solutions, was formed in 1997 to help people who have a business to run, want to focus on running that business and who don't want to focus on running marketing, IT, web site design and software development departments. We help them use Information Technology in a way that helps you and your business, not ties you up dealing with complex technical issues. We also have many years of experience in a variety of disciplines and can help think through the process of bringing a business to the web and using the Internet as a powerful marketing tool as well as maintaining the data so vital to your company's success.

We are currently working on long-term projects, as full time employees, for the Engineering and Sciences Contract Group, a prime contractor for NASA. We are, however, available for other projects on a limited basis.

Personal Web Site:
[ www.thebinki.com ]

Kit Plane Community Web Site
[ www.mykitplane.com ]

Elves and More (for the kids)
[ http://www.elvesandmore.org/ ]

Gary McNeel, Jr. — Owner
[ ]

Gary has spent over 17 years in a variety of leadership roles, helping build such well known Houston companies as BindView Development (acquired by Symantec), and PentaSafe, Inc. (acquired by NetIQ in 2002), of which he was a co-founder and Vice President of Sales and Marketing. More recently he was Implementation Director for SimDesk Technologies, Inc.

He currently works full-time for Jacobs Technology with the Engineering and Science Contract Group on a variety of application development projects for the the NASA Constellation Program, including the Altair Lunar Lander mission.

He is also a co-founder of Submar Nigeria, a manufacturer in Nigeria, Africa of articulated, flexible concrete mats.

While Executive Director of Rice University's Data Application Center (DAC) he oversaw the implementation of a campus Content Management System (CMS) and built the Graduate Student Database System (GSDB).

Before entering the Information Technology industry in 1990, Gary spent 9 years in the United States Air Force working on a variety of advanced combat aircraft in the electrical and environmental fields and traveled extensively for long periods to many parts of the World, including England, Germany, Greece, Spain, Honduras, Mexico, Mali (Africa), the Philippines, Japan and throughout the United States.

Gary was born in Galveston, Texas and moved to Bellaire, Texas, the biggest city in Houston. He attended Bellaire High School and U of H. He resides in the Meyer Park area and is actively involved in the YMCA, Elves and More, and other local charities. He is active in supporting his son's BSA Troop 55 as an Patrol Assistant Scout Master. He enjoys building airplanes, cars, models, cycling (recumbent), camping and playing guitar.

In 2001 he founded MyKitPlane.com, one of the largest Kit Plane enthusiast sites on the Internet, ranked number 5 on Google with 1,300+ members.

More Info
[ www.linkedin.com/in/caffeinatedcoder ]

Patent - Retrieve Disparate Data and Integrate
[ www.freepatentsonline.com/7103593.html ]

Good Enough MVC - A Model View Controller framework for Flex
[ gemvc.riaforge.org ]

Quick Scan List tag for ColdFusion
[ qsl.riaforge.org ]

Help tag for ColdFusion
[ cfhelp.riaforge.org ]

Wife Monica's Real Estate Website
[ www.realtybymonica.com ]

Elves and More (for the kids)
[ http://www.elvesandmore.org/ ]

Christopher Dean — Senior Software Architect
[ ]

Christopher Dean has worked in the field of application and data integration and web technologies for the last 10 years utilizing technology such as Java (JSP and custom JSP tags, JDBC, J2SE and J2EE), Adobe Flex, Actionscript 3, ColdFusion (components and web services), XML, HTML, Ajax, data mining and relational databases (SQL Server, MySQL, HSQLDB, Oracle, DB2).

Mr. Dean also has a U.S. patent (US 7,103,593 B2) and several publications in this area. Mr. Dean is a firm believer in test-driven/automated development processes and Agile Development methodologies (such as Crystal Clear or XP) and has extensive knowledge of such tools (for Java and ColdFusion) including Ant, xUnit (Junit/CFUnit,FlexUnit), CVS, Subversion, TortoiseSVN, Eclipse. Netbeans, Proguard, JDiff, Checkstyle, ColdSpring, Mach-II and Install Anywhere. Mr. Dean currently is the Software Architect and Technology Analyst for the Enterprise Software and Data Services (ESDS) group of the Engineering and Science Contract Group (ESCG) for the NASA Johnson Space Center and the lead Architect for Lighthouse Data Services.

Two of Mr. Dean’s most important projects include the Lunar Sample Database web application charged with managing a U.S. National Treasure and the XIM (eXtensible Information Model) schema-less database program for modeling all the systems of the next generation Lunar Lander.

Previously, Mr. Dean was the VP of Engineering for Kiboga Systems Inc. and the manager and lead engineer on both the patented RIDE (Real-time Integration and Data Exploration) and DILE (Data Integration for Law Enforcement) systems with RIDE being a java agent-based, domain-independent, integration platform and DILE, a web-based law enforcement integration platform currently being used by over 1000 officers at the Dallas Police Department and other departments in the surrounding cities including McKinney, Plano, Garland and the U.S. Secret Service. Mr. Dean previously was development manager and lead engineer for the Knowledge Integration Environment, a java agent middleware platform, under Elagent Corporation. Previous to that, Mr. Dean was the lead engineer on the Integrated Resource Management System, a Java/C++/CORBA integration platform, developed under the Launch Operations Support Contract for the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

In addition to his integration skills, Mr. Dean has over three years of experience in advanced distributed simulation and computer generated forces research for the U.S. Army including AI research and ModSAF development. Mr. Dean also has six and a half years of experience in commercial educational software development. Included in these work areas is 8 years of C/C++ experience as well as knowledge in object-oriented technology including object-oriented analysis and design, object-oriented programming, object databases and distributed object technology. Mr. Dean also has experience in knowledge-based systems and natural language understanding.

Mr. Dean holds a Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida (1994) and a Masters of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida (1996). His Masters work focused on the integration of simulations and knowledge-based systems. He lives in League City, Texas.