Education

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, Seattle, WA

B.A., Business Administration — Concentrations in Marketing and Advertising
(1993-1997)

OXFORD UNIVERSITY, Oxfordshire, England

Graduate curriculum in Advertising Theory and Management
(1996)

Professional Experience

President and CEO

Newsvine.com, Seattle, WA

8/05 to present

  • Founded online participatory news media company, featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine, BusinessWeek, TechCrunch, and many other publications. Acquired 10/5/2007 by msnbc.com.
  • Provide user experience and design vision for company.
  • Manage staff of employees and oversee all company operations.

Art Director & Manager of Media Product Development

ESPN.com / Walt Disney Internet Group, Seattle, WA

2/01 to 6/05

  • Provided design and art direction for web properties, broadband applications, streaming media, and other high profile online initiatives within Disney and ESPN.
  • Managed multimedia, broadband, and other special applications within Disney sites such as ESPN.com, ABC.com, and Movies.com.
  • Authored CSS/XHTML coding and design standards for site redesigns.
  • Represented Disney and ESPN at design/technology conferences.
  • Designed, developed, and deployed Flash applications, event packages, live gamecasts, fantasy sports games, and other content on ESPN.
  • Taught Flash, XHTML, and CSS to ESPN, ABC News, and other network-affiliated employees.

Creative Director

Seasonticket.com, Seattle, WA

3/00 to 11/00

  • Provided creative strategy and art direction to a team of web designers and developers.
  • Designed and developed company’s identity elements and propagated them across all media.
  • Represented company at multimedia conferences and evangelized technology to potential partners.

Creative Director

Digital Sherpas, Seattle, WA

2/99 to 3/00

  • Provided creative strategy, art direction, and copywriting for a team of web designers and developers.
  • Start-to-finish concepting, design, and production of high-profile, award-winning web sites.
  • Sites designed include: New York Rangers, Seattle Mariners, Minnesota Wild, K2 Skis, K2 Snowboards, K2 Bikes, K2 Skates, State of Alaska, Bellevue Square, and The Space Needle.

Art Director

AAG/Costacos Sports, Inc., Seattle, WA

9/97 to 2/99

  • Designed and wrote copy for world’s top selling NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB posters.
  • Authored and created marketing materials and business-to-business presentations.
  • Designed, administered, and oversaw all aspects of corporate web site.

Software

  • Languages: XHTML, ActionScript, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, DOM, English
  • Platforms: Macintosh, Windows
  • Macromedia: Flash 8 (expert), Dreamweaver 8 (expert)
  • Adobe: Photoshop CS 3 (expert), Illustrator CS 3 (expert)
  • Microsoft: Word (expert), Excel (advanced), PowerPoint (advanced)
  • Miscellaneous: TextMate, WordPress, Movable Type, Eclipse,
  • Streaming Formats: Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media, Real

Awards and Recognition

  • Webby Award — five time winner (best sports site, people’s choice best sports site)
  • Macromedia Site of the Day — for K2 Skis, K2 Snowboards, K2 Skates, and K2 Bikes
  • Envision Award — three time winner (best overall site, best streaming video site, and best sports site on the net)
  • Seattle Show Award — six-time winner (two golds, two silvers, two merits, and a Best of Show runner-up)
  • Seattle Online Network Award — Best Site to Kill Time On (Seasonticket.com)
  • CoolHomePages.com — Multiple works on display
  • Featured on the cover of the 2000 Macromedia Annual Report
  • Featured in Print Magazine
  • Member Emeritus of Seattle Show Board of Directors
  • Designed Safeco Field inaugural ticket and all commemorative tickets for the Mariners on a recurring basis
  • Designed world’s first virtual observation decks in Flash

Speaking Engagements

  • Online News Association (ONA) Conference Speaker
  • An Event Apart (AEA) Seattle Speaker
  • Interactive Media Conference Speaker
  • Syndicate Conference Speaker
  • SXSW Conference Speaker
  • WebVisions Conference Speaker
  • DV/Web Video Expo expert panelist
  • Flash Forward expert panelist
  • Instructor of Advanced Web Design and Advanced Flash classes at the School of Visual Concepts
  • Creative Assets and ArtSource seminars
Shared

Michael Lewis thinks only 10 to 20 investors really knew what was going on in sub-prime. Fascinating 60 Minutes interview.

John Gruber's beneficially paranoid advice about maintaining recent and complete backups.:
“Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times.”

I still rely on TimeMachine for everything but it’s probably time to buy an external disk and at least do a full monthly on it.

Hundreds of headlines wash over us every day. And part of why many of us engage in this flow is because we have faith that over time, this torrent of episodic knowledge is going to cohere into something more significant: a framework for genuinely understanding an issue. And we live with it ’cause it sort of works. Eventually you hear enough buzzwords like “single-payer” and “public option” and you start to feel like you can play along.

But mounting evidence indicates that this approach to information is actually totally debilitating. Faced with a flood of headlines on an ever-increasing variety of topics, we shut off. We turn to news that doesn’t require much understanding – crime, traffic, weather – or we turn off the news altogether.

- Matt Thompson on why the way we report and consume news is precisely wrong. Matt is, of course, precisely right. If you’re at SXSW next week, I don’t know how you could justify missing this talk.

Cameron’s Colosseo letterpress poster is now available: The only question is, black or white? The black is oh so tempting!

Jon Stewart Skewers Media’s Obsession with Chat Roulette: Funniest Wii Craps reference ever, as well. It’s really interesting to me that Chat Roulette is getting this much “attention” when TinyChat has been around so much longer, essentially does the same thing and more, and is much more useful to the average person. Just goes to show how viral public sex acts can be.

"Add features and customers forever and rake in the dough.":

The 2005 email that spawned Picnik, Google’s latest buy. If you’re thinking about launching a startup, you should study this e-mail carefully. It’s a perfect example of exactly how a crazy little thought becomes a big idea, and even on its own, it’s better than most “official company business plans” people present to VCs.  I gave a talk at Webstock in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago about creating a startup and I wish I had this to dissect at the time. Really good stuff.

50 Useful Coding Techniques (CSS Layouts, Visual Effects and Forms):

(via doug)

Tumblr Finally Rolls Out Comments. Sort Of. Trolls Not Welcome. :

I actually really like how clubby it is.  Unfortunately it means I won’t be commenting on any Tumblrs since I don’t officially “follow” anyone besides via RSS, but that’s probably ok. Maybe the answer to the world’s wide-open commenting problem is something like this.

Episode 2 of Dan Benjamin's "The Conversation" is Live:

I was a guest on Dan Benjamin’s new weekly radio show last week, along with Merlin Mann, Christina Warren, Adam Keys, and Dave Nanian. Subjects discussed include Newsvine, keeping your own identity after becoming part of a big company, and the RADICAL concept of only publishing stuff to your readers and followers that is actually true.

LESS - Leaner CSS:

Given that pre-compiling CSS is an official “best practice” these days, why not use that compile step to extend CSS in powerful ways? LESS lets you use variables, nested rules, and other niceties at author-time to clean up your rules and keep everything tidy. I believe The Wolf made something like this a few years ago, but I haven’t heard about it since.

How 3D works, and why it's back:

Great article on the ins and outs of three dimensional imagery. Still doesn’t change my opinion that well-shot conventional cinematography is more impressive than the novelty that is Avatar.

The Importance of Removing Features:

This is one of the most useful articles I’ve read in a long time. As we work on focusing, strengthening, and simplifying Newsvine, the concepts discussed by Lukas ring true. “Saying no” has never been a strong suit of mine. It’s very helpful to remember how important of a quality it is. (via fullstopinteractive)

Newly released video of the space shuttle Challenger disaster: It was 24 years ago, I was in 5th grade, but I remember it like it was yesterday. School was stopped immediately and they wheeled out televisions in every classroom for us to watch the news footage. It’s great that this video has been released, but holy crap, how do you tuck something that away for two decades???

A nicely done british parody of 60 Minutes style video journalism. It’s easy to miss how formulaic our news is sometimes. (via B-Tizzle, originally via E-Chizzle)

Colosseo: This is why Cameron is a king and we are all just pawns in his world. I can’t wait to get my hands on this poster. I will point out, however, that the outro credits on the video need some kerning. Someone is going to lose their right hand for that.

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