About.

This site collects some of the recent technological explorations of John Tran, B.A.Sc., P.Eng.

John came to Canada as a young refugee from Vietnam in 1979. The boat his family left Vietnam on took eight sun-rises to reach the shores of a Malaysian island off Kuala Lumpur (the name "Eight Dawns" and the logo reflect this voyage). After fiften days on this island and over four months in a refugee camp, his family was sponsored to Toronto, Canada by a generous United Church group.

At a young age, John became interested in programming after he convinced his father to buy a Commodore 64 computer, a very expensive purchase for his family at the time. In high school, among other interests, his passion for computers continued, where he started a Computer Club that produced a friendship matching service for fellow students, to raise funds for the club's field trips. After high school, he went on to study and graduate from the Computer Engineering program at the University of Waterloo, earning him a Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.) degree and the Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) designation. During Waterloo's cooperative eduation work-terms, John gained valuable experience at companies in various industries, such as banking, health care, education, and engineering.

After graduation, while raising a family, he spent almost twenty years working for and helping to manage a small software consulting company called ThinkNet Inc. and its offshoot, SpringGage. During his time at ThinkNet, John continued to serve companies in various industries, including pharmaceuticals, food service, financial services, communications, mining and construction, and developed a lot of software, including a database auditing product called AuditMaster, which was sold to Pervasive Software (now part of Actian Corp). He also provided corporate training in Microsoft's collaboration platform called SharePoint.

During the technology bubble bust of the 2000's, John diversified into real estate services and after 5 years as a salesperson and broker, he started his boutique real estate brokerage, City Wide Professionals Inc., which he has been running for 16 years now, mainly helping friends and family through referrals and word-of-mouth.

John's passion for technology and software has stayed with him throughout the years. To help run his brokerage, he built his own brokerage management system to track transactions, generate trade documents and book appointments. He also built a couple of virtual tour sites to showcase real estate listings.

This site aims to encapsulate some of John's technology exploration efforts, mostly as learning exercises to keep his mind fresh in the world of software - balancing real estate and tehcnology keeps him sane. Using a simple app he wrote called Just Write!, he shares his thoughts on various topics in three blogs, all uploaded using the app:

You can reach John to talk about software and technology at johntran@eightdawns.com, or connect with him via social media: