I have a wide range of experience working with digital technologies in enterprise, educational, and startup contexts. Below are some more in-depth details of what experience I have put into practice over the past few years.

This position was created by Athabasca University as a bridge between the Research Centre and the Computing Services department. Originally, this position provided web development and project coordination services to individual academics and small pilot projects within the university, as well as pre-production activities for Computing Services.

The scope of this position grew during my time there, however, and in October 2009 I took on project management duties for the Virtual Media Lab (e-lab) project, sponsored by Dr. Evelyn Ellerman.  This project ran as part of Athabasca University’s $7.65 million Knowledge Infrastructure Program (KIP) and had a budget of over $450,000.  In addition to preparing and maintaining project documentation, I also supervised the work of two developers and two content creators and aided in the creation of additional funding proposals.

The e-lab project also created opportunities to interact with other institutions, such as the National Film Board, Telefilm Canada, Libraries and Archives Canada, and other universities to share knowledge and technology.  Because the e-lab project ran as a pilot project, we were able to pilot new software development methodologies within the university. I incorporated aspects of Agile into the software development process for the e-lab in a primarily waterfall environment, with very positive results.

Being a Help Developer gave me the chance to enhance my writing skills, which is always a good thing; however, I also used a surprising amount of my skill as a web developer in the position. 

As part of the Help Development team, I aided in creating new help templates using HTML, CSS, Javascript, XML, and DOM manipulation. I also created several PHP scripts to help with the maintenance of existing help systems and created an ASP script to search installed help through the use of Microsoft Index Server.  I have also implemented a wiki to foster better inter-team communication.

I also managed the transition from HTML-based help to DITA, an XML schema tailored for documentation that makes use of an open source toolkit to generate both online and print documentation. DITA allows for significant content reuse throughout the enterprise and considerably lower translation costs.

From April to June, I was contracted by Sandcastle (formerly CDMG) to help develop a site for AADAC.  While there, I expanded my ASP knowledge, and created a fully functional administration portal for the site.  This portal handled the maintenance of the site’s content, including news, polls, storage of data for several Flash games, inter-site messaging and members. 

Concurrently, I developed a time management system in PHP, which helped track project hours and clients.

Unfortunately, Sandcastle’s founder succumbed to illness, and the company was disbanded before the project could be released.  The site never made it live, though I can supply development code on request.

Since 2003, I have been taking freelance contracts on a part-time basis.  Working freelance allows me to keep my web development skills in good shape.

In 2002 and 2003, I provided Cramsession with technical articles on a monthly basis. Past articles have encompassed subjects including Linux, Apache, CSS, ASP and PHP. For more information, read my Publications page (http://staticred.net/portfolio/publications.html).

Cramsession, based out of Edmonton and Florida is "the place to prepare for success in the IT industry."

Like previous positions, my role at Matrikon was multi-faceted, covering web development and implementation, technical copy writing and graphic design.  Working closely with a team of two others (an illustrator and the former webmaster, who has taken on a leadership role in the department), we worked to service a company of over 400 employees and their marketing demands.  Needless to say, the workload I experienced at Merilus prepared me well for this position.

In my tenure at Matrikon, I expanded my web development skills, adding SQL, ASP and PHP.

Matrikon is an engineering software company based in Edmonton, providing process monitoring and optimization solutions to manufacturing, oil&gas, utilities and mining operations around the world.

Merilus exposed me to a much higher workload. Due to its status as a startup company, I had to wear many hats as the creative department, from artist to technical writer. Work duties covered two major areas: Layout and composition.

Layout duties consisted of creating and maintaining the Merilus website and Intranet, print advertisements, product collateral and product documentation. My product advertisements garnered praise from fellow employees, resellers and major advertising firms such as BBDO Needham.

In addition to my normal creative duties, I advised with the development team on several look and feel issues with the Inferno application itself, specifically co-authoring the Device Configuration Wizard with Dana Epp and Alan Bailward.

Although my focus was primarily on creating compelling product advertisements, I retained strong control over the general tone of our external communications. Composition duties included creation and maintenance of product documentation, maintenance of Website copy and editing of sales copy. I also served as Project Editor for a private publication by Merilus CEO Dana Epp, entitled "Computer Security Concepts: Managing Business Threats in a Wired Word."

Merilus was a strongly Linux-oriented company. As such, I’ve grown a large Linux knowledge base, including Apache setup and configuration and basic firewall knowledge. I’ve also gained respect for the open source community, and have extended their principles to my own web scripts, offering them freely to those who want them.

Shortly before its release, I joined the beta team for Movable Type. Duties included application testing and bug reporting. I still remain active with the community, regularly visiting the support forums, offering help for new end-users and making feature requests for future development.

From their website:

Movable Type is a web-based personal publishing system. It is designed to ease maintenance of regularly-updated news or journal sites, like weblogs. The Movable Type system runs on your own web server, giving you complete control over your site.

More information can be found at http://www.movabletype.org.

Co-founded nasty, an online academic journal specializing in the humanities, with Kirsten C. Uszkalo in 1999. Duties as publisher include maintenance and design of the website, as well as content management duties.

nasty has served as a playground of sorts for me. As publisher, I have complete creative control over the look and layout of the publication; as a result, I’ve been able to experiment with and learn about different methods of presenting content.

Responsibilities included maintenance of website, creation of marketing material and online support system (viewable at http://www.worldgate.ca/support/). See Print section of the portfolio for sample of print work.

Although my stay at WorldGate was relatively brief, it helped me to develop my web authoring skills further and whetted my appetite for working in print media.

Part-time duties included maintenance of corporate website and internal/external documentation. Additional duties included interface design for web application and production of promotional material.

NetMaster was my first technical writing gig; One of my first duties there was to create user documentation for their NICS product. I convinced them to move from Corel WordPerfect to Adobe PageMaker, for more portability between online and print versions of the documentation.