As a product manager at KickApps and Yuku, I've forgone my love of hand coding user friendly interfaces to product manage one of the world's most innovative social and media application platforms. Eric Alterman offered me a gig during KickApps' first months and we've never looked back, building an industry-leading social media platform that powers a lot of online communities for people and organizations in broadcast, publishing, cpg, entertainment, nonprofit, professional sports, and other areas.
First a tool user, now a tool builder, I am especially proud of KickApps' hackability, whether via admin tags, custom RSS feeds, REST APIs, or even the page templates' custom UI strings (go ahead, throw some HTML or JS in there). I also eat my own dog food as Dubman, the community organizer of the Dub & Reggae social network.
Additional titles
comic book illustrator, dog walker, husband, cyclone ranger, wordpresser, entrepreneur, gamer, brooklyn separatist, analog hackiste, dad, dreamer.
a brief history
After studying painting in college, I bought a one-way ticket to NYC and landed a gig expanding Juno Online Service's support organization from a mostly phone-based operation to include web and email support channels (while learning to troubleshoot customers' dial up modem connections in my spare time).
Since then I've created dozens of websites and online applications in a range of strategic, design, development, and production roles, contributing to projects for Disney, Topps, Nestle North America, Give Kids the World, Marriott Hotels, The American Legacy Foundation, Clairol, the Colombian Ministry of Defense, the Alliance for a Media Literate America, the Project on Transitional Democracies, and all those cool KickApps customers.
Before joining KickApps, I was a product lead for Meetup's "Mo' Members" team, where we combined usability testing, deep analytics, and a heap of strenuous debate to build the number of new Meetuppers month over month with products like the "URF" (Ubiquitous Registration Form), an ugly but surprisingly effective tool for increasing user registrations. As Mad Irish Group cofounders, Matt Ludwig, Justin Klein Keane, and I open sourced content management, web analytics, and expense-tracking web applications (oh yeah, and we built a few websites for small businesses and nonprofits). Along the way I also pitched in on some Plone projects with Benjamin Saller and Jonah Bossewitch that included early work on Archetypes, dynamic image generation libraries, and multiuser AJAX interfaces.
media
acrylic, actionscript, ai, css, fireworks png, html, ink, javascript, little army men, oil, pen, pencil, php, prd, psd, python, spec, tal, wireframe, words, too many sketchbooks.
Retired titles
painter's apprentice, trainer, mechawalrus bagman, cofounder, us army cadet, comic book artist, stroke seat, tech support lead, search engine marketer, dm, project manager, low rent ninjurai.
Oh, and cross-browser css specialist; if this page looks weird it's because i hate internet explorer and microsoft just wears me out.
Other interests
Abstractions, aesthetic gentrification, afternoon naps, blog link rabbit holes, criminal and secret society dialects, cyborg apes, dub music, facial hair, getting rid of stuff, graf-inspired art, learning to surf, light cavalry, mental models, movies that try too hard, multiple monitors, nonfiction, paintball, serial entrepreneurs, skulls, Steve Jobs cultists, tabletop strategy games, Tin Tin, walking at the speed of dog, walruses. A former INFP, I believe that less is beautiful.
I live in BKLN with Shannon, Winnie, and Mystery Dogg. Prospect Park rocks your park any day of the week.
Likely outcomes
cool stuff, renal failure, enlightenment, chronic narcolepsy.
Do your best, fake the rest.
