Welcome to Shawn Xun Gong's project portfolio! To view my professional experience, please visit LinkedIn; for an overview of my different sites, please visit about.me/shawn.gong. I also have a couple of open source projects to share on GitHub.
I have been creating software and games since high school, and graduated from University of Waterloo in January 2012, with an Honours Bachelor of Computer Science degree.
Since my childhood, I have dreamed of creating another world of tales. I was shocked by the imaginary world video games brought, and wondered how I could do it with my own hands.
I started teaching myself how to program in high school. In 2003, I found a chance to work with an online team to make a RPG game and had great experience collaborating and learning from team members, which made me decide to pursue Computer Science in college, and got admitted into the Beijing Union University in China.
Moved to Canada in 2008, I struggled to merge into this brand new culture, and got admitted into the University of Waterloo. Arrived at UW’s beautiful campus in Fall 2008, while adapting to a new study system, I actively got involved with many extracurricular activities: I created a music band with new friends who had the same pursuit; I joined the Computer Science Club and Game Development Club where I was able to communicate with peers and experienced alumnus; also I participated in a variety of sport leagues, such as Soccer Intramural and Basketball Intramural, and helped my teams achieve good standings. These activities brought me an enjoyable and meaningful life in Waterloo.
Along with these social activities, academically I maintained Good Standing, and passed the English Proficiency Exam. With the appreciation of UW Computer Science program's guideline: "To develop students with a broad view", I selected courses from various disciplines to satisfy my interests. In my second school term, I got my first internship as a Software Developer with Research In Motion, which opened a brand new chapter in my life.
In Summer 2009, with an excellent manager at RIM, I stepped into professional software industry and learned to collaborate with team members. Discovered that many people are working on Unit Tests with poor supporting tools, I designed tools that significantly reduced the repetitive work from developers, thus greatly improved the overall efficiency for dozens of developers.
From January 2010 till August, I was interning with Electronic Arts making FIFA 11. It was like a dream to actually work on the game that I have been playing since youth. In the 8-month internship, I actively learned from almost everybody in the FIFA team, and completed all my tasks in time with great feedback. Beyond that, I constantly helped others to solve problems, and gained experience working with producers, artists, engineers, QAs, and 3rd party partners. I improved my communicating and technical skills, and learned how to solve conflicts in adverse situations.
In Winter 2011 I part-timed at RIM to help my manager build a new building system, which involved much fun and creativity; in Summer 2011, I interned at Mozilla in California, enjoyed the summer and contributed to the 400-million-user Firefox - you can see I being the actual firefox in the picture above!
After graduation, I joined Yext, a startup company to help businesses manage and publish their location information easily, in Spring 2012. With the brilliant team and exciting projects, I thrived in my abilities on web development from back-end through front-end, and have become a much more full-fledged developer. I'm excited to see where next I should be.
