Info + Data + Interactive + Creative
© 2014
Info + Data + Interactive + Creative
I've always been fascinated and excited by emerging technologies and have been fortunate to have worked near the center of many evolutionary changes. In 1985, I began desktop publishing using PageMaker on a Mac. (PageMaker and PostScript! My first tech love!) In 1991 I started at Microsoft, pushing the publishing limits of MS Word (yeah, you heard that right), and enjoying a box seat to witness the exploding tech (and culture) wars pitting Microsoft v. IBM, then Microsoft v. Apple, then Microsoft v. Netscape, then Microsoft v. the Department of Justice. After working on the release of Excel 4 and 5, I spent my final years in Redmond on early research efforts to exploit broadband in support of interactive television, then completeing my tenure upon delivery of version one of Windows CE.
I left Microsoft in 1997 to pursue the next big thing: The Web. I taught myself HTML and started my own business designing and developing websites. I started building sites for small businesses, but soon was working again for Microsoft, as well as Hewlett-Packard, and the University of Washington. In 2005 I began a full time gig at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, joining a small team to design and deploy a web-based collaborative system for global HIV/AIDS research efforts.
In 2011 I was accepted into the Master of Science in Information Management program (MSIM) at the Information School at the University of Washington. Over the next two years I joined an impressive cohort of mid-career students exploring a wide variety of information, data, and business management topics. Course work focused on design methods and usability, enterprise systems management, information economics, taxonomy and metadata standards, data science, information law and ethics, leadership, and business research methods. I completed my degree in 2013.
With the arrival of ubiquitous mobile broadband connectivity, along with the true maturation of web 2.0 technologies, we've entered yet another era of disruption and opportunity. Enterprise-scale, web-based collaborative work environments are commonly deployed. We're now seeing the rapid growth and availability of distributed systems for processing extremely large data sets. The coupling of visualization and statistical analysis apps with tools developed for real-time, data driven decision making is ushering big data capabilities to the desktop. The power of data is no longer constrained to the data scientists. All members of the organization can utilize tools to make data-driven decisions.
Yet typically, the challenges remain immense. Systems can be insular, hard to use, and effectiveness is often questioned. Technical obstacles persist, but it's the human resistance to adoption that can be most challenging. I find the nexus of these technical and human challenges fascinating. I want to parlay my training in psychology, my deep tech industry experience, and the knowledge gained from completing the MSIM program into an IT leadership position where I can help organizations negotiate these challenges and implement effective information management solutions.
In Steve's role as Production Manager, he hired and managed freelance designers, desktop producers, and tools developers, and he kept everyone working smoothly together in a hectic situation. Steve's interest in and curiosity about what we were doing ensured that he learned more than just how to do his job; his intelligence is not just in wrangling people, but also in taking in complex tools and systems and making all the parts of his job work together.
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I'm an experienced team leader and project manager with deep expertise designing, developing and deploying solutions that enable web-based collaboration and support complex workflows for distributed teams. I'm seeking a position in a Web 2.0 company or organization with an emphasis on Smart City technologies, open data, data analysis and visualization, and data-driven decision making. My ideal position would include product and team management, strategic planning, and client engagement.
Emerging Trends: Evaluting Smart City Initiatives
During my first year in the MSIM program, I kept coming across this idea of Smart Cities. First introduced in our Systems Design class by guest speaker Bill Schrier (then CTO of the City of Seattle), he listed the myriad technologies the city was developing and utilizing, making the claim that Seattle was emerging as a "smart city". In our Business Management class I presented IBM's development of the Rio de Janeiro Information Operations Center, a "mission control" integrating real-time data and information from over 30 city and regional agencies. While investigating this and other IBM "Smarter Planet" initiatives, I was becoming intrigued. I enrolled in an Emerging Trends seminar taught by Prof. Jochen Scholl, a leading researcher on Smart City initiatives.
Partnering with classmate Jason Repko, and using a proposed integrative framework for evaluating smart city initiatives, we explored efforts underway in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Rio de Janeiro, Chicago, and Bellevue, Washington. Most intriguing to me were initiatives facilitating the open release of government data. Open-data projects are often framed as a movement towards government transparency. While transparency is important (and often a legislative requirement), these initiatives add value to regional economies. Open-data stores are a gold mine for entrepreneurs, a resource to build apps and systems that support valuable public services. Helping cities become data platforms and engines for entrepreneurship is an area of great interest.
Data Science + Seattle Municipal Archive + Air Atlas
In the summer of 2012, the UW iSchool hired new faculty member Josh Blumenstock, a rock star Data Scientist from UC Berkeley. Dr. Blumenstock designed his first course at the UW, Data Science "in the Wild", and I jumped at the opportunity to take it. We began the course studying business experiments and how data science is changing the game of Customer Relationship Management. We quickly moved into the management of large data sets including capture, munging, storage, and organization. Machine learning and social network analysis was next, then an introduction to some of the tools for massive data retrieval, storage and analysis like MapReduce, Hadoop, and Hive. Our course work was comprised mainly of statistical data analysis and visualization using R.
During my graduate work I enrolled in three courses focused on information structure and metadata. In my final course, Metadata Design, we were to select an existing archive and create an application profile that could enhance the collection. I chose the Seattle Municipal Archives Photograph Collection, a resource of over 110,000 photographic records dating from 1880. Although roughly 95% of the indexed collection has been digitized and made available online, the index terms available for searching the archive is simplistic. Search is limited to text search of a description field, along with a selection of date and location ranges.
While digital photography and scanning software can now attach a large set of structural metadata to an object (e.g. date, camera settings, GPS data, photographer, scanner settings), descriptive metadata for photography is inherently challenging. Along with capturing a person, place, or thing, a photo captures an event, and events are dependent on the context of what leads up to it, as well as what follows. A comprehensive application profile for a photo archive needs to encompass not only the administrative and structural metadata mentioned earlier, but also a descriptive schema that can capture context along with content.
I performed an analysis of the intellectual, physical, and contextual characteristics of the photographic objects in the collection, and created a data dictionary. The basis of the application profile was an XML-based schema utilizing various metadata standards (METS, VRA Core, PREMIS, and MIX) as well as locally defined elements.
Here is a selection of files showing some of my work for this project, including the data dictionary, the XML Schema, and an object instance.
Air pollution is a major contributor to human mortality and morbidity. Particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometers, or PM2.5, can lodge deep in the lungs and impact cardiovascular health. Strong links have been made between PM2.5 and ischemic heart disease, a leading cause of death in western countries.
For my degree capstone project, I worked with two colleagues, Sanjay Bhatt and Mike Katell, to develop an online tool to visualize PM2.5 exposure levels across North America. Using the statistical program R to normalize 4.7M records obtained from satellite measurements of aerosol optical depth, we poured the resulting data into Tableau Public to create a web-based visualization tool. Working with Dr. Bruce Lanphear from Simon Fraser University, along with researchers at Health Canada, Statistics Canada, and the University of Washington, the Air Atlas visualization tool showed the expected increase in mortality and morbidity, at any location in North America, attributable to recorded PM2.5 exposure levels.
Projects + Teams + Leadership
Having been a website design/build consultant since 1997, project management is the name of the game. I've shepherded an array of clients through a very wide variety of information, data, and web-based projects. I've led teams through logo design and branding, systems and information architecture, server procurement and deployment, website design, development, deployment and launch, and all things in between. I've successfully executed projects for individual entrepreneurs, local small businesses and retailers, university programs and departments, global scientific research efforts, retail product launches for Hewlett-Packard and internal communication strategies for Microsoft. Here are a couple of my PM success stories while at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
In August 2005, I was hired by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to oversee IT operations for a new effort called the Center for Collaborative Research (CCR). Headed by Dr. James Kublin, the first task of the CCR was to establish the Office of HIV/AIDS Network Coordination (HANC). Under the direction of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), HANC was charged with coordinating all HIV/AIDS clinical trials activities funded by the National Institutes of Health, an effort running over $280M per year. Our office was tasked with establishing and coordinating a new Principal Investigator Leadership Council, uncover efficiencies across the global network of research laboratories, establish a Community Partners program to better empower stakeholders and activists from the community of those directly impacted by HIV/AIDS, and provide a focal point of cross-network training programs and materials.
Steve is intelligent and motivated to learn, which was critical, as we needed him to quickly get up to speed on both a complex new information technology and the rapidly evolving science of HIV research. We were working in a startup environment with many demands, limited resources, and a great deal of ambiguity, all learning together where the opportunities were and figuring it out as we went along. Steve's communication skills were incredibly valuable during the technology adoption process, as we had to convince skeptical scientists to change their behavior and adopt new processes and tools. Steve conducted much of the training and proved adept at translating technology in ways that users could understand and get excited about. In the process, he also gathered important usability information that allowed us to improve the tools we were providing.
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Our work was soon noticed by program officers at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and our team was hired to be the Alliance Management office for a new $287M endeavor called The Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD). The CAVD comprised 16 research consortia, each focused on a particular HIV vaccine research approach, or engaged as a central service facility to support the entire CAVD effort. I led the deployment of a web-based collaborative environment designed to support over 1000 researchers at 103 institutions across 14 countries.
My initial responsibility for the CAVD was analyzing consortium business methods and designing improved communication and information management tools. Intra-consortium communication and the secure transfer of scientific data was a primary CAVD challenge. We deployed a Microsoft SharePoint Server Farm, the first hosted by Fred Hutch server operations. We created sophisticated libraries for document and data management and storage. Taxonomy was defined and metadata attached to each item, allowing us to create custom filtering while deploying authentication-controlled workflows. RSS feeds posted new and updated content. Blogs were created so that inter-consortia project updates could be shared while soliciting comments and discussion from other teams, further encouraging collaboration. Looking back, many of these efforts almost seem quaint. Team collaboration systems have become commonplace in most work environments. But in the fall of 2007, this was pretty good stuff.
Product design. Application development. Branding and design. Client engagement. Essentially all the work we do in this field is a product of teams. If you want a successful product and a satisfied client, you need to start with a competent and satisfied team. I've been a part of many dozens of team projects, both as a contributor and leader. I've endured team failures, the total crash and burn or the explosion into competitive satellites. I've also enjoyed the camaraderie and wild success that a well-run team can achieve. I prefer the latter, and at this point in my career, I've come to insist upon it.
The usual rough-and-tumble environment of Microsoft was made even tougher because we were creating Version One for Windows CE and Microsoft Interactive Television. In spite of the difficulties, our team pulled together and had productive working relationships. ...This kind of environment requires flexibility: one minute your project is a green giraffe, the next it's a purple anteater. Forget about all the nights and weekends you put into the giraffe, it's now anteaters all the way! People tend to break one of two ways: some become embittered, while others are able to laugh it off, knowing that the joy of being part of a tight-knit team can make up for hours and days and weeks of work that disappear into the ether. ...Steve's co-workers loved working with him, and he maintained his cool while putting out fires. He not only could participate as a team member, but he could lead in an unassuming but rock-solid way when needed.
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In the IT field, my first leadership position came at Microsoft in 1995. On the heels of my work publishing SDK documentation for Interactive Television in the Advanced Research group, I was asked to hire a team of developers, graphic designers, and desktop publishers to produce 3rd party software development kits and User Guides for the initial deployment of Microsoft's Windows CE operating system. Over the next year our team worked with PM, Dev, and writing teams to complete the Alpha, Beta, and successful RTM launch of Windows CE, Microsoft's first foray into the handheld PC market.
As an independent consultant in 2000, I led a design and development team for Hewlett-Packard to publish the online user guides for HP's Pavilion line of computers. Co-located in Seattle and Silicon Valley, I coordinated activities between teams both virtually and in person, travelling often to meet HP teams in Palo Alto and Cupertino.
As I mentioned previously, from 2005-2010 I was involved in the building of a new program called the Center for Collaborative Research at the Fred Hutch. As a member of the inaugural team of three employees, I was engaged in hiring individuals to fill out the expanding office, from IT staff to program management.
In creating an online collaborative portal for two global research projects, I worked with the Fred Hutch server ops team to procure and deploy the server racks. I hired consultants to guide us through the development of our SharePoint Farm installation. With the consulting teams, I led the information architecture, design and development of the portals.
I enlisted "champions" within each research consortium to identify challenges and pain points that the new collaborative system could address. Working with 16 research teams scattered across the globe, we designed unique collaborative environments for each, while maintaining design and tools consistency to encourage cross-consortia communication and data sharing.
Steve occupied an interesting place in the organization. He had a leadership role, charged with identifying business needs and coming up with solutions, but he also was responsible for much of the project production work. He moved easily between directing our work as consultants, and being directed by us. Responsibility was handed back and forth between us depending on who was most comfortable with the content. He recognized where his technical limitations were and easily deferred to our expertise when appropriate. What I'm saying is, while he was very committed and invested in the project, he wouldn't let his ego get in the way of moving forward. For him, it didn't matter who did what, or who got credit. He simply wanted to see the work done well and as efficiently as possible. As a consultant, he was a pleasure to work with.
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I've always considered myself a leader by nature, and when presented with an opportunity (or vacuum) I invariably lean into it. As a leader, I pride myself in enlisting qualified, engaged individuals. But like most, I've come to learn that identifying qualified people is half the job. The quality of an individual can be equally important, perhaps more. I look for team members who are wicked smart, but can communicate what they know; who convey passion, but not zealotry; people who love to put their head down, but also know when to look up and scan the room. And I look for individuals who play well with others.
But all of us struggle to play nice at times, and it requires leadership to move a team towards collaboration, productivity and success. One can rely on leadership manual boilerplate, things like clear expectations, inspiration, recognition, celebration. But knowing how to engage and motivate an individual takes more. It takes empathy, compassion, and sometimes a little push. If you want a team member that's engaged, position them to contribute value. For a team member who's invested and committed, give them responsibility. To harness inspiration, communicate the big picture while providing room to experiment, fail, recover, and succeed.
And expect great things.
Branding + Websites
Below is a selection of branding and website projects I've successfully delivered over the past 17 years. Each of these projects was a team effort. Sometimes it's simply me and the client where I filled the role of PM, graphic designer, and developer, though typically these projects involved of a team of client stakeholders along with graphic design and development teams. I completed some of these projects under the direction of others, but the majority were delivered entirely under my project management and leadership.
Photoshop is in my wheelhouse. I've been a Photoshop jockey since, well, since it was first released. Working as a desktop publisher at Microsoft in 1991, I soon had a Mac on my desk and was working with the graphic design teams helping with image compositing. I soon left desktop publishing behind and joined the ranks of Microsoft graphic artists.
As a design/build consultant, I've worked on many brand strategies and have had the opportunity to create a variety of logos and design guides. Following is a selection of logos I've designed.
Microsoft's turn towards the internet in the mid-1990's is legend. Bill Gates set the company's sights on Netscape in 1995 and within years Internet Explorer was the dominant browser. But within the company opportunities to use HTML and build websites were surprisingly scarce. In the publishing world I was in, there was still a deep commitment to print. Online publishing tools were proprietary and hard to use. I decided to leave the company to start my solo act as a website developer. The work poured in. Everyone wanted a website!
I taught myself HTML, learning from the work of early web design pioneers like Jakob Nielsen, Lynda Weinman, David Seigel, Eric Meyer, and Jeffrey Zeldman. After surviving the pain of designing sites in the late '90s (separate versions for separate browsers!) I began to focus on CSS and standards-driven design.
I've gotten dozens of people, products, programs, and companies online. Painters, photographers, textile designers, psychotherapists, hypnotherapists, climate change scientists, HIV/AIDS researchers, member associations, internet entrepreneurs, political activists, insurance companies, and yes, a few members of the Fortune 500. Following is a selection of websites I've delivered.
Solution Architecture + Client Development
Aside from being an independent consultant, I've also worked as a contract consultant for a number of marketing, design, and communications firms in Seattle. Within each of these companies, I was soon recognized as a knowledgeable, responsible, and mature partner, and thus handed functional responsibility for major client portfolios. At Wasser Studios, I was responsible for end-user documentation projects with Hewlett-Packard. At Morse Best Innovation I was handed numerous projects for Microsoft. More recently I've been working with Coherent Interactive, where I've been handed the reins for projects with Mutual of Enumclaw Insurance and The Bellevue Downtown Association. Below are a couple stories highlighting client successes.
From 2010-2013 I worked as a consultant with Morse Best Innovation, a marketing and communications firm in Seattle. I was enlisted to take on a number of projects for Microsoft, including one for Microsoft Corporate Communications (CorpComm), the public relations and news center, responsible for directing corporate messaging through PR agencies around the globe. The Rapid Response team needed a more efficient system for immediate, critical message distribution.
We developed an MS Word Template used to capture rapid response items. The template assigned metadata to content elements, and the resulting documents, once uploaded to a library, would immediately create and populate webpages across the corporate intranet. Authorization schemes were used to ensure that message alerts and calls-to-action reached critical personnel as required. The CorpComm team found this solution to be elegant, simple, and very effective. The solution also had some legs to it, as I was asked to work with them on project updates three times over the following three years.
Getting employees at Microsoft to embrace new ideas or solutions is a piece of cake. Try taking the leaders in the global fight against AIDS, hardened research veterans gunning for a breakthrough in vaccine discovery that will land a Nobel in their lap, and hand them a data portal while asking them to share their unpublished work with 1000 others. This is a client development challenge.
One of Steve's strengths is his ability to bridge the gap between non-technical business stakeholders and the technical teams designing and developing solutions. Steve's ability to accurately understand and represent the end user was critical to the final delivery of solutions that were easy to use while delivering the value they desired. His technical curiosity motivated him to identify novel approaches that teams could integrate into their workflows.
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The Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD) is a well-funded effort forwarded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Because of the funding, participants have an incentive to share and play nice. But there are no guarantees when it comes to academic and research collaborations, where incentives are much more complex. Careers (and fortunes) are built on proprietary discovery. Research programs and institutions rely on patent protection and ownership. But the fight against a true global menace, a tragedy like HIV/AIDS, requires something different. And few know this better than those committed to the fight.
Still, we knew that adoption of our collaborative portal strategy would be a challenge. We identified consortium leaders who were committed to open data and sharing and worked with them to lay a strategy to encourage early adopters. We created prototype team areas and tested different approaches to communication and sharing. We built library systems where data sets could be stored and easily accessed by participants as needed. Most important to our success, we enlisted champions early in the process. These individuals provided critical guidance, helping us understand not just the science and research methods, but also the protective, siloed culture of academic and industry research.
Education + Work + Life
I'm an experienced, successful team leader and project manager with expertise designing, developing and deploying complex online solutions and services. Over the past 10 years I've focused primarily on products that enable web-based collaboration while supporting complex workflows across globally distributed teams.
With the intent to expand my knowledge in information systems and technical business management, I attended graduate school at the UW to get my Masters of Science in Information Management. I'm now seeking a position in a Web 2.0 company or organization with an emphasis on smart city technologies, government open data, data analysis, data visualization, and data-driven decision making. My ideal position would include responsibilities in product design and program management, client development, and strategic planning.
2013
The University of Washington's Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM) program develops leaders with the skills to manage innovative systems and networks of information to meet the needs of organizations of all types and sizes. Graduates are industry leaders in the Puget Sound and around the globe turning today's information and technology resources into tomorrow's sources of change, growth, and innovation.
The MSIM curriculum builds foundational skills across the breadth of the information management field, and provides opportunities for specializations in a variety of areas, including data science and analytics, information assurance and security, information architecture and organization, user experience, and information management and consulting.
Course | Title / Description From the UW Course Catalog |
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IMT540 | Design Methods for Interaction and Systems |
Introduction to the theory and practice of user-centered design. Examines design methods for identifying and describing user needs, specifying and prototyping new systems, and evaluating the usability of systems. Examines design methodologies such as contextual design and value-sensitive design, giving specific emphasis to human-information interaction. | |
IMT541 | Enterprise Information Systems Analysis and Design |
Theoretical and practical examination of information systems analysis and design processes as they apply in the workplace. Explores techniques for assessing system and technology needs, defining information and work specifications, process and data modeling, and stakeholder analysis process; and input and output design, database design, test plans and implantation strategies in the design process. | |
IMT530 | Organization of Information and Resources (Taxonomy and Ontology) |
Introduction to issues in organization of information and information objects including analysis of intellectual and physical characteristics of information objects; use of metadata and metadata standards for information systems; theory of classification, including semantic relationships and facet analysis; creation of controlled vocabularies; and display and arrangement. | |
IMT580 | Management of Information Organizations |
Introduction to internal and external management issues and practices in information organizations. Examines key topics drawn from the fields of organizational theory and behavior, including planning and decision-making, organizational structure, leadership, and motivation. Reviews strategic and operational issues including human and organizational issues related to technology introduction, use, and management. | |
INFX542 | Information Structures Using XML |
Introduces the concepts and methods used to analyze, store, manage, and present information and navigation. Equal weight given to understanding structures and implementing them. Topics include information analysis and organizational methods as well as XML and metadata concepts and application. | |
IMT598 | Emerging Trends in Information Management and Technology |
Focus on emerging trends in information management and information technology. Attention given to their impact on the functions of the chief information officer and others managing the acquisition, retention, use, and disposition of information and the enabling technologies. Exploration of methods and resources for trend discovery and tracking. | |
LIS579 | Netherlands Exploration Seminar |
The "Dutch Designs" Exploration Seminar is based in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Students learn design and research methods through Dutch culture, embracing the social sciences, progressive ideas, and collective planning. Over the four-week program students learn research methods and techniques, using them to design and conduct their own group projects to explore library services or other information management challenges and their relevant cultural impacts. |
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IMT554 | Information Economics |
Theoretical and practical examination of how information economics impacts design decision in the context of information systems and information organizations. Explores issues of how information is priced, commoditized, exchanged, and preserved in economic transactions. Exposes students to how strategic decisions within organizations are made through concepts such as information and strategic games, information signaling, information strategies, information-based network economics, and information incentives. | |
INFX531 | Metadata Design |
Design principles of metadata schemas and application profiles - implementation of interoperable application profiles using XML technology. Focuses on achieving syntactic and semantic interoperability among diverse metadata schemas and application profiles. | |
IMT550 | Policy, Law, and Ethics in Information Management |
Select concepts, processes, and issues related to the organizational contexts within which information professionals practice. Topics include information as public/private good, intellectual property, privacy, confidentiality, information liability, and information policy. Focus on contemporary issues affecting the role of the information manager. | |
INFX505 | Project Management Basics for Information Professionals |
Introduces the terminology, concepts, and skills used in working with project management and project management software. Emphasizes developing, refining, and monitoring work schedules using software tools. | |
INFX598 | Data Science "in the Wild" |
This course offers students an introduction to the growing field of "Data Science" as practiced by leading data scientists in industry and research. As "big data" become the norm in modern business and research environments, there is a growing demand for individuals who are able to derive meaningful insight from large, unruly datasets. This requires a diverse mix of skills, from data munging, wrangling, and storage; to machine learning and econometrics; to effective visualization and communication. | |
INFX595-596 | Capstone |
Analysis, design, and implementation of an approved project demonstrating professional-level knowledge and skills. |
Gain the ability to develop Microsoft Windows console and Web applications in the C# programming language using the Microsoft .NET framework. Explore data structures and storage techniques, and learn to work with database records. Examine how object-oriented programming, multithreading and class libraries can improve application performance and design. Develop the skills and knowledge needed to build a career in Web application development using C#, ASP.NET, jQuery, HTML5 and more.
Course | Title / Description From the UW PCE Course Catalog |
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CP810 | Introduction to Windows and Web Applications in C# |
Review of C# and .NET basic concepts in the .NET framework including: Solutions and projects; Using variables and constants; Conditionals and loops, arrays, and nullable loops. Other concepts include: Classes, objects, and types; Defining class structures; Inheritance; Polymorphism; Properties; Creating objects; Methods, constructors, parameters; Using static members; Use of common collections, lists, and dictionary; Efficient use of strings, including concatenation and string buffers; Throwing and catching exceptions; Exception objects. | |
CP811 | Intermediate Windows and Web Applications in C# |
Building upon the Intoduction class, students will create Windows forms applications using common Windows controls. Skills will include: Data binding to controls; Using DataGridView; Getting started with ADO.NET and databases; Advanced exception handling; Events and delegates, strings, regular expressions, and collections. | |
CP812 | Advanced Language Constructs in C# |
Topics Include: HTML5 concepts; Using Javascript; Intro to jQuery; ODATA; REST; JSON; CSS 3; ASP.NET MVC; Using web services from server. |
Independent consultant, project manager, web developer, and graphic designer
Developed SharePoint solutions for internal Microsoft teams, including Corporate Communications, Interactive Entertainment Business Unit Leadership, Customer Services and Support Executive Team, Server and Tools Marketing Group Executive Communications.
Designed and developed departmental and program websites for:
Developed SharePoint solutions for 12 scientific collaboration projects.
As initial member of the Alliance Management team, developed web strategy and online collaborative solutions supporting two global HIV/AIDS research efforts.
I grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula on the shores of Lake Superior. I've lived for a time in Lansing and Ann Arbor Michigan, Houston Texas, Atlanta Georgia, and Washington, DC. I moved to Seattle in 1988 with my partner as she pursued graduate school. Catherine is now a pediatrician and faculty researcher at the University of Washington. We live in the Phinney/Ballard neighborhood with our two daughters, Zoe and Thea.
Living in Seattle has stuck. I love the natural environment here. Being surrounded by mountains and water is an unbeatable combination for my family and me. I enjoy mountain biking, backcountry skiing, and sailing (though I haven't enjoyed sailing enough lately). I'm a long-time player in the Seattle ultimate frisbee community. I also run the Ultimate program (and coach) at Hamilton International Middle School. Now that my daughters are getting older, I'm hoping to find the time to re-familiarize myself with the Seattle music scene. Oh, and although I enjoy many of the fine craft ales emerging from the area, I'm really a Scotch guy.
Drove a London Cab in Ann Arbor ▪ Played guitar in a Blue's Brother's band with Dan Ackroyd ▪ Sang protest songs at a US Embassy with Pete Seeger ▪ Guided 13 year old kids through the lakes and portages of Algonquin Park Ontario ▪ Lobbied Congress on Capitol Hill ▪ Played Ultimate Frisbee in the US National Championships ▪ Did humanitarian work during the Contra War in Nicaragua ▪ Was escorted by a tribe of baboons while mountain biking in Malawi ▪ Hitchhiked from San Francisco to Detroit ▪ Fronted a rock band in Seattle through the '90s ▪ Worked on a congressional campaign in Michigan ▪ Drove on the left side of the road ▪ Watched the Kingdome implode (awesome!) ▪ Learned to load and fire an AK-47 near a conflicted border (you know, just in case) ▪ Rode a bike across the Delta Works in The Netherlands ▪ Worked security at a Rolling Stones concert ▪ Performed music on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial ▪ Have never been arrested ▪ Watched Bart Starr (and Brett Favre, and Aaron Rodgers) play football in Lambeau Field ▪ Occupied a college dean's office in protest of South African apartheid ▪ Got my bike wrecked by the US Secretary of the Interior ▪ Was present at the birth of my two children (I know, all I had to do was watch, but still…) ▪ Sped away (in reverse) while confronted by an African Elephant ▪ Sailed a boat around the Greek Cyclades ▪ Drove a press jeep through an area under mortar fire ▪ Stood in Nelson Mandela's Robbin Island cell ▪