Greater Seattle Area
I 💛 communities, and connecting them with internal teams to drive reciprocal value is at the heart of why every company should invest in community work. I have 15+ years of experience creating global, high-impact communities. I believe AI has a role to play in building communities — it can accelerate analysis, unlock interesting data, and remove tooling barriers — but it can't replace human to human connection. I also care deeply about great customer experiences and eliminating friction at every point. The greatest threat a business has is not their competitors; it's the expectations of their customers. All feedback is a gift, even if the gift makes you go "Ouch" now and then. I strive to be a Linchpin, as defined by Seth Godin; being a vital part of any team and caring deeply about doing work that matters.
I all-up own the AWS Community Builders program. If you're a technical builder that uses AWS and likes to share what you learn with others, apply to join the program: https://aws.amazon.com/developer/community/community-builders/
Serving as the lead for AT&T Business' use of SessionCam, my main focus was to gather and interpret customer behaviour throughout our digital properties. Using this data, I provided recommendations to improve CTA performance, successful buyflow exits, address site errors, reduce customer friction, bounce rate, etc. I also used another tool, SiteImprove, to monitor various aspects of our site, and handled all vanity domain requests. I continued to help with AEM issues as needed.
When AT&T Business decided to combine their small business and enterprise top-of-funnel learn content sites into a single destination, and build it on Adobe's software stack, I was asked to co-lead the project. We launched Insights, built on Adobe Experience Manager, in less than three months and rapidly improved it through an agile development processes. I was the marketing lead for our development process over the course of 2017, leading the build-out of new site features and functionalities. Our site was a proof-of-concept partnership with AT&T's consumer AEM team; we were the first marketing team within AT&T to create our own content and run Adobe Target-based personalization campaigns. In 2018, I was part of a small team that led the migration of our site to a new AEM environment for all AT&T Business sites. In 2019, I was the team Adobe Experience Manager SME (subject matter expert) on our digital strategy team, helping leverage our technology investment. I also assisted with strategic projects, user testing initiatives, and site migration to AEM.
Doing director-level work, I was the hands-on leader of the small but mighty team for Business Circle, AT&T's resource and community site for small business owners. Sometimes I was tasked with big-picture strategies, and sometimes I was in the digital trenches doing the tactical work. My role focused on five primary functions: 1) Acted as a product manager + product planner for the site - with a special focus on our mobile adaptive design - working with designers to define the overall UX of a feature, and AT&T developers to implement, refine, and perfect that feature. I was the first line of QA testing before our QA team saw the site. I did feature ideation, along with WordPress configuration and some content publishing. I oversaw two major site redesigns and worked daily in Atlassian Arcade iTrack (Jira). 2) To be a cross-team point of contact for all SEO, SEM, social, and marketing efforts involving Business Circle. I helped align our efforts and deliver platform features and pages those teams needed. 3) Led our efforts to grow our community of small business owners. I worked with Communispace (now Cspace) running a community of 300 business owners we leveraged for research and community activation purposes. I oversaw multiple research projects that helped shape our approach. 4) Was the point person for all video content on Business Circle, including YouTube uploads and channel management. Whether that's was heading up our crowd-sourced video content campaigns with Zooppa (which saw our per-video cost drop by 3000% - no, that's not a typo), or working with internal and external teams providing video content, all video content passed through me and I consult on the storytelling, quality, and editing style. 5) To do anything else that was needed, from event photography to video editing, from copy editing to presenting our site at trade shows, from Photoshop graphics work to WordPress content publishing.
I created and launched HTC elevate, a truly unique world-wide customer VIP program for HTC. No other smartphone OEM had, or has had, anything like it. This was a blank-slate project; I created everything from scratch, working with internal and external partners to create a globally-recognized community that helped drive key objectives for HTC. My manager gave me a wide berth to figure out what needed doing. In 2013, I managed a yearly budget of around $1 million dollars (which included a large-scale device sample program). HTC elevate was, at its peak, a 5000-strong community of superfans and influencers. v1 was created in conjunction with Think Passenger, v2 was created with Chaordix. I was deeply involved in the creation of the Web experience for elevate, working with UX teams and developers. We created a killer mobile-responsive design. I hired and managed one team member and together the two of us evolved elevate over a period of 2.5 years to become an integral part of HTCs marketing and product initiatives. I travelled the world - several times - running fan meet-ups, launching products, and working with incredible team members at HTC. 10pm conference calls with Taiwan? Check. Travel 50 hours total to India to launch a phone and leave after 48 hours? Check. Superfans helped us create social impact about our products, helped us improve our software quality by being early testers, and gave us an unending stream of valuable feedback that helped us make our products better. Various teams across HTC globally - including the accessories, UX, software and device testing teams - worked with our community to improve the products they delivered to HTC customers. Other things I did: create and launch HTC's blog in a month for under $5K in a very scrappy solo project I was handed. Create and launch a global photographer influencer program to gather content for HTC's marketing and social activities.
As the owner of Thoughts Media Inc., I directed the day to day editorial and technical operations of six technology news + community sites: Windows Phone Thoughts (www.windowsphonethoughts.com), Digital Home Thoughts (www.digitalhomethoughts.com), Zune Thoughts (www.zunethoughts.com), and Laptop Thoughts (www.laptopthoughts.com). Apple Thoughts (www.applethoughts.com) and Android Thoughts (www.androidthoughts.com) were franchise operations where I had no editorial role, instead I provided technical and monetization infrastructure to the Executive Editors there. In my role as Executive Editor of four tech sites, I managed a team of 20+ editors, and at peak 30+ review team members. All were volunteers; my business model was finding passionate people who wanted a platform upon which they could write about and review products they cared about. I worked with many amazing people I'm still friends with today. Our YouTube channel was launched in 2007 and over a period of four years (through 2011), I created 219 videos that have had 6.3 million video views to date. I also provided consulting and technology writing services for companies such as Microsoft, Seagate, and various local Calgary businesses.