A Brief Tale of My Experience

A resumé is a laundry list; a necessary tool, but it rarely tells a complete story when the narrator has many threads to convey. That’s why I’ve put this missive together, to augment my resume for those who are interested in digging deeper or who might want to know more than a targeted list provides.

Over the course of 27+ years (since the first paying consulting gig), I’ve had the honor and pleasure of being exposed to, learning, doing, and otherwise being involved in many different industries and many different disciplines. The common theme has been techology, but that is broad enough as to say nothing significant. I’ve been in a large foodservice provider, a bank, an independent software development house, a very large consumer internet services provider, online journalism, media and entertainent, and a host of self-initiated projects related to social and network media.

To accomplish a wide variety of responsibilities, I’ve had to learn and grow in several skill areas.

Product Management

Understanding the market of a product or application is essential to helping ensure that the product created will meet the defined business needs (or to assist in defining the business needs when the research comes first). For the past 10 years, Even while attending to other duties, learning about online services, readership markets, and the professional production/post production industry helped move me to understand the benefits and drawbacks of a given product and its consumers, to anticipate the needs of a market, and to rationally determine business-level optimizations to a product development and rollout plan.

Marketing and Web/Social Presence

In addition to self-directed projects, I’ve recently been significantly involved in creating marketing collateral for use at a major tradeshow (print handout design and content, booth message). In addition, I was responsible for easing into a social media presence for the company. Personally, I’m involved in Twitter, Facebook, and Blogging for a variety of websites (based on the WordPress platform).

Software Development

Programming languages come into and go from favor, occasionally multiple times. A strong foundation in problem solving will most times overcome a deficiency in a given language. C/C++ are my primary languages for compilation, with a smattering of Objective-C thrown in. More recently, though, AppleScript and PHP supplanted C/C++ due to the tasks at hand.

Paired with problem solving is the necessity to be able to see the “bigger picture”, that is, the Product Management aspect of a development project. Creating working and clean code is a great outcome; creating working, clean code that meets the correct objectives is a spectacular outcome. Many years of both writing code and dealing the results of written code set me apart from “developer-only” or “manager-only”.

Communications

It’s never fun to “stare down the barrel” of an unhappy customer, difficult business partner, or recalcitrant employee. There are many competing and at times conflicting requirements for resolution. Being able to both understand the issues at hand, create solutiions that maximize the benefit for all parties, and convey those solutions in ways that defuse inherent or escalated tensions is a skill that takes time and experience to refine. I have gained that experience through many of my former positions.

Business, Project, and Personnel Management

Some of the most challenging areas for technical personnel to adapt to are the management areas. Business management tends to be difficult due to a desire to always include the “latest and greatest” despite market needs that dictate somewhat shorter requirements in favor of market windows and lower opportunity costs. Project management brings its own uniqueness, as the bredth of knowledge required to effectively cross all the required areas is sometimes not interesting to someone with a technical background. Personnel management and technical personnel are a classic oxymoron given the stereotypical anti-social or lone-wolf perception of those with a strong technical background. I believe that having worked for many years either for myself or in small companies, I’ve learned many valuable lessons relating to the ultimate role of “management” and how to identify and complete the essential goals of both business and personnel growth.