About

I'm a Web developer and sudo designer living in downtown Seattle Washington. I work full time for Seattle's Children's Hospital the 8th ranked Children's Hospital according to U.S News & World Report. I lead development of Web sites and applications using and promoting best practice, with an emphasis on Web standards.

In addition to being a full time developer I also work on small freelance projects including two Palm WebOS application, and have contributed to prominent Web development blogs including Wisdump, formerly known as White Space.

When I am not speaking geek or hip deep in code I am usually spending time with my family and friends. I love the outdoors and do a lot of hiking in addition to cycling. I also have a passion for photography.

Professional Bio

I have been working with Web since the mid 90's when I hosted a personal site on Tripod a free basic hosting service by Lycos. What started as a personal hobby site to maintain my photos, links and other things ended up leading the way to a full on love for the Web and it's possibilities.

I started my professional career with Nebraska ISP HunTel.net now known as American Broadband as a tech support representative. After working there for a time and becoming increasingly frustrated with how cumbersome data entry was to add new customers to our system I began creating a issue tracking/user management Web based tool. I eventually was able to parlay this simple task into a full time Web Designer role at the same company. It was during my time at HunTel.net that my interest in Web standards, SEO, and accessibility began to grow. As I learned I tried to put these techniques into practice, but was continually challenged by my colleagues, and despite my best attempts at changing the culture of the Web team environment, I failed to get things moving in the right direction and so I moved on in 2006.

My next venture was with 2nd largest employer in the state of Nebraska, a large Hospital and Academic Medical Center called The Nebraska Medical Center. We immediately began shoring up major deficiencies that their site was plagued with. Within eight months we had addressed many of the issues with a sort of 1st pass mentality with the expectation we would come back around and clean things up further once this site was out the door.

These plans we're derailed by a new executive that came in and changed priorities to other things, and ended up causing a large exodus in the marketing team including two of the three members of the Web team. The executive was evenetually let go and at that point my intention was to stay the course, and I turned my efforts to looking for replacements for the huge talents we had lost.

In January of 2008 I made a bold move and left the Midewestern great plains which was home for 26 years and moved to Seattle to take a job with Seattle Children's Hospital where I am now the Senior Web Developer on an extremely talented Web team. In my 2 years here we have been involved in huge projects including a new brand/logo, site redesign, and a new CMS implementation among many others.

Personal Bio

I grew up in rural Northwest Iowa in the small town of Albert City. After high school I attended Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs, IA. After ironically feeling like I didn't like or understand programming I graduated in a more generic computer degree called a Micro Computer Support Specialist.

After college I lived and worked in the Omaha/Council Bluffs metropolitan area for 6 more years until I moved to Seattle in early 2008. I live in downtown Seattle with my wife and our two dogs in a waterfront property.

Other Place To Find Me

Affiliations

  • Seattle Children's Hospital (Senior Web Developer)
  • Wisdump (Former, contributing writer)
  • Parafoil (Founder)

Additional Writings