Education

University of North Carolina, School of Journalism and Mass Communications
Bachelor of Arts, Multimedia Journalism

Graduated May, 2001

Experience

Editorial concepts producer

MSNBC.com
Seattle, WA
March 2006 to present

Helped to establish the first editorial team dedicated to creating innovative new storytelling techniques. Work with editorial, sales, marketing and technology teams to rapidly develop new projects and evolve the design of MSNBC.com. Example projects include the MSNBC photoblog and FirstPerson user-generated content application. Very active in the current design evolution of the entire MSNBC.com website.

Broadband media producer

MSNBC.com
Seattle, WA
January 2004 to March 2006

Worked as a writer, developer and producer for a number of multimedia storytelling projects, mostly as a part of MSNBC.com's Big Picture format (examples include The Oscars, Civil Rights, and Discovery's Liftoff). As a producer, work varied from developing new story ideas to building interactive content (mostly using Flash MX 2004), writing scripts, working with designers, and editing audio and video content. Helped conceptualize, build and report for MSNBC.com's ambitious and award-winning Rising from Ruin package, a year-long look at the rebuilding of two Mississippi towns devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Editorial Information Systems Webmaster, Multimedia Producer

Chicago Tribune
Chicago, IL
May, 2002 to December 2003

Hired to a two year residency program with the Tribune to research, design, develop and maintain the editorial department intranet. Worked with the research department to provide tools and resources that would help facilitate communication between researchers and reporters.

Lead developer on the When Evil Struck America CD-ROM project, a multimedia time capsule remembering September 11. Worked with a team of photo and copy editors, videographers and designers to produce a Flash MX based CD-ROM.

Freelance Multimedia Developer

Chicago, IL
August, 2001 to December 2003

Worked with a variety of freelance developers, designers, programmers, and photographers to build multimedia modules for web distribution, using Flash, Javascript, XHTML, and server side scripting. Projects included corporate web work, multimedia storytelling, and Flash based portfolio projects.

Student Assistant

Multimedia Boot Camp
Chapel Hill, NC
May, 2001

Created a Quicktime-based tutorial CD-ROM, covering beginning, intermediate, and advanced Flash 5 skills. Worked directly with professional journalists during a week-long intensive workshop on journalism and new media covering the basics of multimedia documentary storytelling, including Flash 5, Dreamweaver 4, advanced Photoshop, and audio and video on the web.

Web Architecture Fellow

ibiblio.org and webslingerZ
Chapel Hill, NC
March.2000 to May.2001

Helped to maintain the infrastructure of one of the oldest and most heavily-trafficked web servers in the world. Redesigned the Open Source Metadata Framework (OMF) project. Built a database driven Collection Index from flat HTML files. Contributed design work to several smaller projects.

Teaching Assistant

Intro to Multimedia (JOMC 88) and Multimedia Design and Production (JOMC 189)
Chapel Hill, NC
August.2000 to May.2001

Worked directly with beginning and advanced students in the multimedia lab, providing help and instruction with Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, Flash 5, and Bias Peak audio editor. Gave lectures on advanced actionscript programming and using audio on the web.

System Administrator Intern

UNC Student Stores
Chapel Hill, NC
August.1998 to October.1999

Helped maintain over 100 Macintosh, Linux and Windows networked computers and UNIX and Windows NT servers. Wrote some Perl programs to handle system maintenance and administration.

Skills

Applications

Adobe Flash 8, Photoshop CS 2, Illustrator CS 2, TextMate, SoundForge, Apple Final Cut Pro

I use at least one of these apps daily. I'm a firm believer in using Flash intelligently and understand it's limitations on the web. I learned to code HTML by hand and still prefer to eschew WYSIWYG editors. I would consider myself an advanced Flash and Actionscript developer.

Programming

Actionscript 1.0, Actionscript 2.0, Javascript/DHTML, PHP, Perl, Ruby, MySQL

I would consider myself an intermediate web application developer using PHP and MySQL; I've been learning Ruby and the Rails framework. I am an advanced Actionscript developer, using both legacy Actionscript 1 and object oriented Actionscript 2.0.

Operating Systems and Servers

MacOS X, Linux, Solaris, Windows XP, Apache and Lighttpd Web Servers

OS X is easily my operating system of choice; I can set up and manage Linux and Unix based servers without a problem. I can use Windows without having to ask questions, though I prefer to avoid it.

Other

XHTML, CSS, XML

I believe in using web standards like XHTML and CSS to build functional, easy to adapt and maintain web sites and applications.

Awards

Outstanding use of Multiple Media, Online Journalism Award

MSNBC.com
October, 2006

Awarded by the Online News Association for the Rising from Ruin package

Peacock Award

MSNBC.com
November, 2005

Internal MSNBC award extended to the team responsible for MSNBC.com's coverage of Hurricane Katrina

2005 Society of News Design awards

MSNBC.com
October, 2005

Award of Excellence for The Big Picture: Academy Awards, bronze medal for The Big Picture: Olympics of Tomorrow and silver medal for The Big Picture: Campaign Adviser

Best Special Feature in an Internet Service (over 1 million) EPpy

MSNBC.com
June, 2005

Awarded by Editor and Publisher for The Big Picture: Civil Rights Today

Jones-Beck, Excellence in Digital Journalism

Chicago Tribune
January, 2003

Idividual award given for my contribution to the September 11 memorial CD-ROM project, When Evil Struck America

Publisher's Award

Chicago Tribune
December 2002

Awarded to the entire team that helped build the September 11 memorial CD-ROM

Eagle Scout

Troop 8
Asheville, NC
December, 1996