Dec 10 2007
Web Development
The first Web project I developed for a real live client was the original Youth Radio site in 1997. In those days, the writer, information architect, visual designer, programmer and project manager were often all wrapped into one person. It was insane. At the same time, and central to the project, I was teaching a handful of Youth Radio teens what I knew about the Web. They probably knew more than I did. Anyway, our collaboration yielded a fun, imaginative site that I wish I still had archived somewhere. Sadly, it’s not on the Wayback Machine. By the way, I recently learned that one of those teens has gone on to be a graphic designer.
My next major Web project — one with which I’m still deeply involved — was/is also radio-related: SoundVision’s The DNA Files. In 1997 I led a team of content developers, a programmer, a visual designer and others in developing a deep and content-rich resource for public radio listeners, researchers, students and others. That original site remained live — albeit antiquated by Web standards — until just recently when we unveiled its replacement. With Drupal as our database, it’s been an enormously challenging project and we’re still actively in the iterative development process as we continue to create new material and functionality.
While I know enough to be dangerous (though sometimes helpful) about visual design and basic programming, my expertise has remained on the content side — strategy and planning, information design, writing and content development — as well as project coordination and management.
Don’t worry: I won’t haul you through a description of every site I’ve done since: about 50 of them by now, from small to huge, and many for nonprofits. Well, I’ll name a few. When I worked for the Sacramento design firm Wallrich Landi (1999–2003), we did sites for the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, California Rebuild America Coalition, Sierra Health Foundation, Foundation Consortium and a lot of others. Oh, and the Kennelly School of Irish Dance. No point linking to the others because they’re probably different by now.
Since returning to the tenuous but adventure-filled life as a freelancer, I’ve developed a number of sites, primarily ones related to noncommercial radio, including the Pacifica Radio Archives and several for SoundVision Productions: The DNA Files, the Science Literacy Project and Science & the Search for Meaning.
I’m also a volunteer editor for the Open Directory Project, which I joined a number of years ago so I could learn about Web directories and search engines. I’m hopkins, editor of the Irish dance school category. Did you know that Google pulls its listing annotations from what we write for Open Directory?
