My employment experience includes a versatile range of management and content/web development experience, most of which demanded learning on the job. My first professional position, seven years as editor-in-chief of national start-up magazine Alternative Press, required comprehensive development of skills in editorial/freelance contractor management, resource budgeting and print-production oversight.
During my final and eighth year at the magazine, I worked to launch the company’s first website, which initially involved negotiating contracts and fees with site developers, planning budgets for site set-up and maintenance, and obtaining clearances and rights from writers and photographers for content.
This led to the position of managing producer of Cleveland Live (Cleveland.com) for two years, overseeing development of specific website projects by working directly with area publications and local attractions/venues to share their content with this online guide to the city, while also providing oversight and guidance to other content producers. The design and overall presentation of the site was in continual flux, and it was important to adapt quickly to the company management’s evolving objectives.
My position as web content developer at Zin Technologies followed, where I was involved with a dozen NASA websites in a variety of capacities, working with NASA points of contact to develop site content to promote their projects or developing content databases to to archive project documentation.
For all websites, ongoing adherence to government-mandated Section 508 guidelines provides me with a current knowledge of usability and accessibility issues.
This web development activity was balanced with outreach work that included developing handout and display materials for numerous events for the NASA Aviation Safety Program, including three years supporting the program’s detail-intensive presence at the EAA Airventure event and three years managing the logistics for the annual Weather Accident Prevention Review event.
This experience was further supplemented by serving as the logistics chair for the annual NASA ICNS Conference from its start in 2001 to 2006. My work managing the budget, leading the event support team, and working with NASA conference chairs to ensure a smooth, professional experience for the attendees was met every year with a NASA Achievement Award.
Support has continued with this conference since 2006, after event oversight was handed over to the IEEE and AIAA organizations for the following year’s event, as I responded to regular requests for documentation and event statistics vital to the conference’s future and continued to support the event as web content manager with a website designed and developed for the event.
The aforementioned work at Zin Technologies, including website development, transitioned me to Analex Corporation in the fall of 2006 with a change in government contracts. Notably, in the fall of 2007, I worked with a fellow NASA contractor to take the official, NASA CSS-based design theme and integrate it into the open-source WordPress content management system (CMS), performing proof-of-concept and Section 508 accessibility testing. Analex was eventually acquired by QinetiQ North America, so my role as NASA contractor continued. In September 2012, I transitioned to DB Consulting Group, Inc, continuing my responsibilities.
At NASA, I continued work with this and other CMS implementations in WordPress to allows multiple NASA Glenn project and program websites (ones that specifically do not use the main NASA public-facing CMS) to be updated rapidly, and which provides the average HTML-knowledged user a method to more easily maintain content. I provided these results in a February 2010 (repeated again in February 2013) presentation to the Glenn Webmasters Special Interest Group (WebSIG), “Using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) at NASA Glenn.”
In addition to the aforementioned ICNS Conference NASA alliance website, since 2010 I have supported the full code and content development of the Interagency Advanced Power Group (IAPG) website.
In the spring of 2013, I began working with the NASA Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and the Glenn webteam on an initiative to convert sites and maintain them with WordPress. In fall of 2013, I launched a responsive version of the NASA WordPress theme. In this capacity, I continue web content development work, while assuming new responsibilities that include web content development training and documentation, as well as oversight of a variety of website projects, as well as support of the new Glenn-specific external website.
In 2019, I became team lead of the NASA Glenn Office of the Chief Information Officer web services group, overseeing priority projects and a core team managing a variety of Glenn web-based projects. Most recently, in 2021, as part of the new PACE V contract, I started work at BQMI to continue all responsibilities. Fiscal year 2024 brings contractual changes, so stay tuned!