Ahmed Soliman Farghal is a Software/Systems engineer graduated from “Mansoura University, Faculty Of Engineering” at 2007. Best known for his expertise in Linux and Programming.

Biography: Ahmed is the son of Prof. Soliman A. Farghal, A professor of electrical engineering in Faculty Of Engineering, Mansoura University. He is talented in training and presentations which has reflected in a good way in his relationship with colleagues and work-mates.He is a founder in CAT Reloaded (Computer Assistance Team), The reloaded version of the old computer assistance team by Hesham El Sawi and his friends (Now he is CairoIT CEO) and H4ck3rZ Foundation (pronounced ‘Hackers’) in CAT since August 2006.

Nationality: Egyptian

Marital Status: Married to Sinar

Spoken Languages:

• Arabic — Mother Tongue
• English – Fluent (as natives)
• German — Fair

Education:

1. General Secondary School Graduate, Mathematics Division – (96%)
2. B.Sc of Comptuers and Systems Engineering, Mansoura University – Egypt (2007) with general grade of “Good” (71.61%) and Excellent grade for graduation project.

Awards:

1. 1st Award in 1999/2000 “Egyptian Ministry of Education” competition for students among Egyptian schools for two years.
2. ThinkQuest 2001 Semifinalist (1 out of the best 20). a Website with the name “History Of The Holy Jerusalem“.
3. Certification of Excellence in High School from The Egyptian Engineers Syndication for score 97.5%. 2001.
4. 1st Award in 2002 Mansoura University competition for e-learning programming.
5. 1st Award in 2002 Egypt Ministry Of High Education (youth Week in Assiut) in programming.
6. The Most Effective and Creative founder in CATReloaded (Computer Assistance Team in Mansoura University).

Programming Languages and Technologies:

1. Java J2SE, Very Good.
2. Design Patterns, Very Good.
3. Shell Scripting (Bash/Korn/Bourne), Very Good.
4. C# .NET 2.0, Very Good.
5. GNU C with Linux/kernel programming experience,  Very Good.
6. C/C++, Very Good.
7. GNU Autotools, Good.
8. PHP, Very Good.
9. GWT (Google Web Toolkit), Very Good.
10. ExtJS and GWT-Ext, Very Good.
11. Python, Very Good.
12. OCaml, Beginner
13. SQL, Very Good.
14. Perl, Beginner.
15. XHTML/CSS, Very Good.
16. XML/XSLT/XPath, Very Good.
17. RRD Round-Robin Databases, Good.

Certifications:

1. Red Hat Certified Engineer, since 2004.
2. Red Hat Certified Technician, since 2003
3. Sun Certified Java Programmer for Java 5, since 2007.

Presentations and Seminars:

1. Windows vs. Linux – 2003.
2. The Open Source Approach – 2004, 2005.
3. Linux Installation Festival – 2005.
4. XML And Related Technologies – 2006.
5. SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) – 2006.
6. Leadership – 2006.
7. About H4ck3rZ – 2007.
8. Secure Shell – 2007.
9. Get That Job (CV, Interviews) – 2007.
10. Web 2.0 – 2007.
11. Introduction To Algorithms (2/8/2008)

Projects:

1. More than 10 DB-based projects using Visual Basic / C++ (MFC) in my secondary education level 1997 – 2000
2. “Al Maktabah” Library Management System (VB/Access) – 1999
   

   A Visual Basic application attached with a relational “MS Access” database that completely manage libraries in schools, It was built specially for the 1st high school competition for software development in egypt that was arranged by the egyptian ministry of education. I was ranked the first.

3. “Genie The Teacher” – Basic Learning Management System. 2000
   

   A Visual Basic with some components written in C++/MFC that simulates a basic client/server learning management system, It had some nice features like students collaboration suite and content authoring tool. I’ve submitted this program in Egyptian Ministry Of High Education’s competition (Week Of Youth in Assiut) in programming.

4. Al Natoor – Cyber Cafe Management System. (C++) 2001
5. “Al 7ares”-”The Guard” – Distributed Adult-rated Content Filtering System (COM/C++). 2001
6. Infra LMS – Learning Management System. (C#.NET) 2003
7. Infra CDE – Courseware Development Environment. (C#.NET) 2004
8. SIDLab Simulation System. (Sound In Ducts Lab) (C#.NET) 2007
9. M-Commerce Mobile VAS Application. (Java) 2006
10. Anti-Netcut For Linux (Shell/Python) 2007-2008
11. Web Interface Management System For Sudan Financial Services Co. Ltd. (PHP) 2006
12. Shabacat – Advanced Traffic Management and Monitoring System with GWT Web-interface. (C/C++/Java) 2007 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/shabacat/)
13. Red Hat Directory Server Advanced Content Management Interface for The American University In Cairo, 2008 (Fusion+) (Java)

Work Experience:

Origin IBM-ATC: August 2003 – December 2005 –EGYPT [while in college]
Professional Trainer

Origin is an authorized training center for IBM located in mansoura, I worked as an official IBM trainer for those courses:

• XML And Related Technologies.
• .Net Framework Introduction.
• C#.Net Introduction.
• C#.Net Advanced.
• ASP.Net .
• Linux as Power User.
• Linux Systems Administration.
• TCP/IP In Linux.
• Linux Security and Firewall.

Also I’ve supervised and contributed in the graduation project for the egyptian ministry of communications and information technology scholarship graduation projects for 2003 and 2004, Phase 7 and 8.
The Two projects were Infra LMS and Infra CDE, Infra LMS was ranked first as it was the best graduation project in egypt for that phase. and Infra CDE was ranked third.

Mazari IT: June 2005 – September 2006 –SUDAN [while in college]
Linux/Unix Trainer.

• .Net Diploma in C# Courses.
• Linux As Power User — IBM Course
• Linux System Administration — IBM Course
• TCP/IP In Linux — IBM Course
• Linux Security and Firewall — IBM Course

I worked as a part-time trainer for “Mazari-IT” in Khartoum, I travelled to sudan 4 times and launched those courses for the following institutions:

• Mazari-IT
• Marawy Dam – IT Department
• MobiTel Information Systems Department
• Sudanese Intelligence – Information Systems Department.
• Traffic Department in Sudanese Police

Linux-Plus Information Systems: December 2005 – December 2008 –EGYPT
Linux/Unix Systems Engineer.

• Training Courses For “Liberation Unit” in the “Central Information Center” in “Egyptian Ministry Of Defense”
• Linux Programming Essentials
• Linux Advanced Programming
• Linux Kernel Internals
• Linux Kernel Programming
• Qt/C++ Programming
• Bash Scripting

Sun Microsystems Official Courses:

• Sun Java Programming Language (SL-275).
• Sun Shell Scripting For Administrators SA-245.
• System Administration for the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System Part 1 (SA-200-S10)

Red Hat Official Courses:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Essentials RH-033 (updated to RHEL 5.0)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration RH-133 (updated to RHEL 5.0)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Network Services and Security RH-253 (updated to RHEL 5.0)

Software Development:

1. M-Commerce Solution – MM7 VAS Application for MegaMart.
2. ERA – Plus (Enterprise Router Appliance), Based on FreeBSD
3. Several automation scripts for servers like automatic backup system.
4. Red Hat Directory Server Advanced Content Management Interface for The American University In Cairo (Fusion+).

Professional Services:

1. pre-sales activities for various sales campaigns and closed successful business with Mazzika TV, Amer Group, CBE (Central Bank Of Egypt) and Etisalat.
2. Various network services installation and configuration at high-profile customers’ datacenters, like Etisalat, Amer Group, Mazzika TV, CBE, Vodafone and Mobinil.

Thebe Technology : December 2008 – Present –EGYPT
Software Engineer – B-Virtual (www.b-virtual.org)

Thebe Technology is a Nearshore open source development company that work with distributed teams around the world, I’m working as a Software Engineer is the next generation dispersed storage system for cloud computing platform in a team that is distributed between Egypt and Belgium.

I’m one of the core developers on the core product (DSS) and my responsibilities include the design, coding and testing of the core product that is written in both C++ and Python.

DSS (Dispersed Storage System) is the next generation cloud storage system that utilities a neat Information Dispersal Algorithm (IDA) that has been used for years in telecommunications to enhance the reliability of transmissions to satellite and deep space missions like the mars explorers.

The invention of a new class of online codes allows building much more efficient and hence faster codecs. DSS Combines these technologies in an efficient and scalable distributed cloud storage system.

I’ve used a lot of open source technologies to develop that system that is designed to work on Linux, Unix (Solaris) and even Windows with high code portability, that include extensive C++ and Python coding with Java sometimes.

I worked closely with teams from Sun Microsystems (Q-Layer) and A-Server for integration with open standard cloud management platforms.

Open Source Contributions:

1. Fedora Ambassador in Egypt.
2. Wine (Windows Emulator) Arabic Support. (C++)
3. Mplayer Arabic Subtitles Hack. (C++)
4. Anti-NetCut 2 For Linux – Python.
5. cppThreads (C++ Wrapper of POSIX Threading) (Project Lead) – C++
6. SCMP (Scalable Community Messaging Platform) (Project Lead) – Java
7. Thread-Safe Red-Black Trees Implementation in C++ (Highly Generic, Highly Efficient)
8. Web2py enterprise python web development framework. (patching and bug fixing) (Python)
9. Online Support through IRC freenode.net channels.

Operating Systems:

1. RHEL/Fedora/Ubuntu Linux
2. Mac Leopard/Snow Leopard
3. M$ Windows (Rare)

Social Activities:

Ahmed is one of the CAT Reloaded founders (Computer Assistance Team) in Faculty of Engineering- Mansoura University, his primary goal was to create an IT community that is dynamic, innovative and highly scalable for the undergraduate computer engineering/science students, that would help them achieve a good level of technical proficiency through projects and seminars.

It is a team that started by 16 students and now became one of the largest IT students communities in Egypt and the largest in Mansoura.
Being the most experiences student among all the founders, he started to lead the team to develop marketing campaigns as long as managerial spirit in founders so they can inspire the rest of the team.

He held so many presentations and seminars for various topics but he always gave a special interest for open source and Linux which attracted many university students other than engineering students only so CAT became for all computer-interested students not only engineers.

Many people got inspired by him and his technical/personal skills and learned how to manage small to large teams with a flexible and innovative ideas that would enhance the general enthusiasm and productivity.

Then he created the “Foundation System” in CAT, one of the most innovative systems that CAT has ever experiences and started his own independent foundation that is called “H4ck3rZ“  (pronounced ‘Hackers’) which became the most active foundation in CAT that is more involved in development, OS, open source technologies, and Networking .

H4ck3rZ Foundation, is the biggest CAT foundation that has more than 600 member on its own, it conducts a lot of activities, periodic courses, open-source projects and presentations.

Ahmed is still an active member of H4ck3rZ even after he got graduated but he delegated the management to another talented fellow and he only provides technical presentations and projects management activities.

Personal Skills:

1. Strong negotiations Skills
2. Strong presentation/sales Skills.
3. Strong training skills.
4. Excellent communication skills.
5. Good team leadership skills.
6. Very good code-hacking skills.
7. Self-motivated, strong motivator and team player.
8. Artistic Sense of colors.