Skills
- I have expert level knowledge (and love) of XHTML, CSS, javascript, and current best practices in web development around progressive enhancement, accessibility and front-end performance - that works in all major web browsers - gathered through ten years of building web applications.
- I've successfully led small teams to do great things in a short period of time, building scalable, performant and successful web applications.
- I am a passionate believer in The Cluetrain Manifesto, in personal leadership, in having passion for my work, and in doing the right thing.
- I have built training programs around web standards, and delivered them around the globe. I've spoken on web standards-related topics at several conferences in the past four years.
- I love Ruby on Rails and have architected and built two successful products using the framework. I wouldn't say I'm an expert yet, but I know my way around well enough to build some fun and interesting stuff with it.
- I am currently AOL's Advisory Council Representative on the W3C, and was a member of the CSS Working Group for three years. I am familiar with web standards bodies, and how the W3C works. I am also active in AOL's Developer Network - attending and speaking at conferences, and working as an ambassador for the program.
- I've worked with Movable Type for several years, and have built a half-dozen products and blogs on the platform using a combination of its built-in features, plugins, and a little PHP glue.
- I've also built a couple different communities using the Drupal content management system. I'm not an expert, but, like Rails, I can get things done with it.
- I am well-versed in SEO best practices and implementation.
Projects
The projects listed below are just some of the highlights from my time at AOL. I've built a couple dozen separate search applications, two intranets not worth talking about, lots of prototypes, three major multi-month projects for products that never launched, Dashboard, Opera, Netvibes and a handful of other types of widgets, and more static pages for more purposes than I can remember.
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Adapting to Web Standards
2007 I wrote a chapter about the work I and others did on AOL.com's standards-based redesign a couple of years ago. The chapter included several examples, a couple of interviews and tips for dealing with the usual "swirl" that happens on high-profile projects in large companies. The book was published in December of 2007 by New Riders
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AIM Photos
2007-2008 I am currently the system architect for AIM Photos. I had nothing to do with the product idea, but I gave a lot of input and direction on the UI and visual design, took over front-end development after Jason Garber left the company, and led two other developers in the design and construction of the models, controllers, performance optimizations and led the technical design.
Technologies Used: Ruby on Rails, memcached, XHTML, javascript, CSS, ImageMagick, RMagick, jquery
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Ficlets
2007 Ficlets was, and is, an experiment. I had been playing with Ruby on Rails for a while and thought it would be a good idea to really put it through its paces and see if AOL could use it to build out community applications quickly, with small teams moving indepenently. Thankfully, the experiment worked, and we were able to go from concept and design to launch in three months (without really knowing much about Rails when we started). I served several roles on the project: product manager, project manager, architect and lead developer. I led a small team of five - three part-time designers, one web developer and myself. I came up with the original idea, wrote the requirements down, led the team, and wrote a lot of code (almost all the markup, CSS and javascript was written by the great Jason Garber, I handled models, controllers, and strategy).
Ficlets currently has over ten thousand users, thirty-five thousand stories, eighty thousand comments, and is going strong, even though I am no longer at AOL.
Ficlets also won a 2008 SxSW Web Award in the CSS Category! Keeping in the spirit of the site, the community wrote the acceptance speech.
Technologies Used: Ruby on Rails, XHTML, javascript, CSS, jquery
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AIM Pages
2005-2007 AIM Pages was a ground-breaking publishing tool for the web. It used the Dojo toolkit, a new microformat called ModuleT to describe modular web content (patent pending), several new web services, and a completely open platform for allowing users, content creators and third-party developers access to the AOL and AIM membership.
I was one of three architects on the project, and concentrated on defining the microformat for widgets, helping the design team work out what was possible on the web, develop early prototypes and build the first round of modules that went into production.
After launch, I led two teams building out social networks for The Washington Redskins and the Ellen Degeneres. These were high pressure, short timeframe projects, and the entire team worked long hours and delivered high quality code on time.
My time on AIM Pages is conflicted. Technically, it's one of the coolest things I've ever built. The design is one I still believe in and still marvel in its simplicity and power. On the other hand, it was a disaster on the product side from the beginning, with ever-changing priorities, requirements and a lack of vision. The product is gone, but the lessons I've learned from it will always stay with me.
Technologies Used: XHTML, CSS, javascript, Dojo toolkit, microformats
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AOL xpRSS
2005 After moving from the Search team back to Publishing, I was asked to help tech lead the construction of a light web-based RSS reader. Using simple markup and lots of Ajax, we were able to launch a full-featured web-based feed reader in four months. At launch, it was the fastest feed reader on the web: six to seven seconds faster than its nearest competitor.
Technologies Used: JSP, Spring framework, XHTML, CSS and javascript
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AOL Site and Channel Search
2003-2004 As a team of one, I built a flexible and configurable search application that allowed product groups within AOL to quickly, and without development or QA intervention, launch search products with their own ads, look and feel (through CSS - it was a search application version of the CSS Zen Garden) and search results. This product was used, at one time, by dozens of AOL properties. It was completely valid XHTML 1.0 Strict (a mistake now, I realized, but I thought it was the right move at the time).
Technologies Used: JSP, Spring framework, XHTML, CSS and javascript
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AOL Search
1999 - 2003 I was the sole front-end developer on AOL Search for four years, taking it from product inception to being the number two search engine in the world, after only Google. I implemented all product features on the front end, and helped build the product from a cost center to one of the leading money makers for the company. I helped tech lead the conversion from AOLserver to Spring-based servlets.
I also led the charge to improve front-end performance. I implemented a standards-based rewrite of the product, and steadily improved performance. Measured over dial-up by internal tools, AOL Search went from a load time of 14 seconds down to 3, and for a short while was faster than Google's search product - all while serving more results and a more complex visual design.
Technologies Used: AOLserver, Tcl, several web services from Google, Overture and others, JSP, the Spring Framework, HTML, XHTML, CSS, javascript
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The AOL Maintenance Request Tool
1999-2000 I designed, built and maintained an internal tool to take incoming maintenance requests for AOL Publishing team. It had user management, reports, deadlines and tracking, and ran, without change or additional maintenance for eight years.
Technologies Used: AOLserver, Tcl, Sybase, HTML, CSS