Online Help

Some pens are mightier than others.

Résumé

My résumé is divided into two parts:

  • Primary résumé — Contains the following:
    • Summaries of the services that I offer
    • My favorite software tools
    • My most recent employment history
    • Lists of my publications and education
  • Résumé addendum — Lists additional salaried positions and contract-based projects that are not included on my primary résumé.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact me.

My résumé is also available for download in the following formats:

>> Primary résumé
>> Services
  • Technical documentation & illustration
  • Online & inline help systems
  • Publication & project management
  • Usability testing & design
  • Training materials & courseware
  • Information architecture & design
  • Technical articles & executive briefings
  • Screencasts & narration
>> Summary
  • Developer-oriented projects — For the past twenty years, most of my work has been on developer-oriented projects, including the following:
    • Installation & configuration guides
    • API references & code samples
    • Tooltips & inline help integrations
    • Product specifications & proofs-of-concept
    • Product testing & deployment
    • Runbooks & troubleshooting procedures
  • End-user projects — I have also completed many projects for less technical audiences, including the following:
    • Product documentation & information systems
    • Context-sensitive online help systems
    • Training materials & live presentations
    • Executive briefings, product summaries &~presentation graphics
    • Magazine articles & photos
  • Publications & development support — As part of my developer-oriented and end-user work, I have provided publications and development support on many projects, including the following:
    • Documentation & graphics templates, primitives & exemplars
    • Information designs & tagging structures
    • Editorial standards & guidelines
    • Usability tests & UI designs
    • Tools & utility scripts for writers & developers
    • Jira, Confluence & SharePoint project design, macros & maintenance
    • Localization standards & management
    • Export, legal & trade compliance
>> Software tools
  • Writing — Arbortext, Bear, Byword, Drafts, Editorial, Emacs, FrameMaker, FreeMind, LibreOffice, Notepad++, oXygen, Scrivener, SimpleMind, Sublime Text, TeXShop, TeXstudio, vi/vim, Word
  • Graphics — Affinity Designer & Photo, Amadine, Concepts, Focos, GIMP, Illustrator, Inkscape, Lightroom, Linearity Curve, Photoshop, PowerPoint, Procreate, Snagit, Visio
  • Audio & video — Audacity, Camtasia, Ferrite, ffmpeg, HandBrake, ID3 Editor, Linearity Move, Premiere, Reaper, Subler, TMPGEnc, Vegas Studio
  • Markup & tagging — CSS, HTML, JSON, Markdown, SGML, TeX/LaTeX, XML, YAML
  • Content management — Confluence, Drupal, GitHub, InDesign, SharePoint, WordPress
  • Source control & issue tracking — CVS, Git, Jira, Perforce, Subversion
  • Scripting & coding — Bash/KSH/ZSH, CGI, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python
  • Containerized deployment — Ansible, Docker, Helm, Kubernetes
  • Ab Initio — Authorization Gateway, Co>Operating System,
    Co>Relate, Control>Center, GDE, Metadata Hub, Query>It, Technical Repository
  • Operating systems — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Linux, Solaris, Windows
>> Work experience

Ab Initio LLC

Lexington, Massachusetts

June 2011–March 2024

Technical documentation & illustration, information architecture, graphics tools, custom consulting solutions

  • Embedded for five years (March 2016–February 2021) at JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) as part of several Ab Initio field-consulting and development teams
  • “Loaned” to JPMC for a non-Ab Initio Sheltered Harbor project
    (emergency standards and protocols under the auspices of the US Treasury Department)
  • Documented Ab Initio custom field-consulting solutions for various clients:
    • Ab Initio-on-Cloud Migration and Site Mover (Capital One)
    • Customer Interaction Platform (XL, Telkomsel)
    • Active>360 (XL, Telkomsel, Barclays Bank)
    • Co>Relate, Metadata-Driven Warehouse Platform, Productivity Pack (shared)
  • Established an internal documentation graphics standards team:
    • Cataloged and analyzed over 4500 images from the then-current product documentation to assess effectiveness, inconsistencies, and workflows
    • Wrote PHP, KSH, CSS, and cron scripts to generate nightly and on-demand image galleries from nightly documentation builds
    • Configured and maintained several Apache application servers to host image galleries and graphics tools
    • Created Illustrator, Photoshop, and Visio templates, styles, stencils and primitives; developed Snagit Profiles, Quick Palettes, and Stamp sets
    • Wrote graphics standards and tools chapter for the internal Writer’s Guide
  • Documented portions of the Co>Operating System Configuration Variable Reference and Co>Operating System Component Reference
  • Principal on the Control>Center documentation team through several releases

Oracle Corporation

Burlington, Massachusetts

February 2010–June 2011

Technical documentation & illustration, information architecture & tooling, German translation

  • Documentation lead for the Web Space Server project
  • Documented the first major releases of the commercial and open-source versions of the fully Oracle-branded GlassFish Server product
  • Contributed illustrations and German localization of code samples for the Java EE 6 Tutorial
  • Performed product assessments, workflow analyses, and provided tooling and script support as part of the Sun-to-Oracle transition team

Sun Microsystems

Burlington, Massachusetts

March 1993–February 2010

Technical documentation & illustration, multimedia authoring, information architecture & tooling, coding standards, German translation

  • Led Sun’s XML website for three years:
    • Developed overall information and site design
    • Wrote and illustrated more than twenty technical articles and executive summaries
    • Shepherded more than twenty new XML technologies through packaging, localization, copyright, and export control
  • Contributor on various Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and Java Community Process (JCP) API specifications and draft proposals, including WSCI, JAXB, WSPL, XML Pipeline, Java Management Beans, StAX
  • Awarded co-patent for inline help mechanism used in Solaris Management Console
  • Founder and co-lead of Online Help Development and Technical Authoring teams:
    • Member of SGML tagging standards team
    • Developed corporate-wide style guides and SGML tagging structures
    • Wrote PHP and shell scripts to migrate document sources from FrameMaker to SGML and to automate document source management and production
  • Documentation lead for Web Space Server project:
    • Wrote and illustrated documentation for open-source and proprietary products
    • Created and narrated several series of screencasts
    • Gave trade-show demonstrations
  • Documentation lead for Sun Social software:
    • Wrote and illustrated product documentation
    • Created and narrated several series of screencasts
  • Documentation lead for Java Compatibility Test Suite and TCK
    documentation sets for twenty-four individual Java technologies
  • Designed and wrote online help systems and Web-based programming guides for Solaris Enterprise Manager, Solaris Management Console, Solaris DHCP Server, NT-NFS, SunPC

Louisiana Energy Services, Nationa Enrichment Facility

Eunice, New Mexico

(contracts) July–December 2006, June–December 2007

German translation, technical documentation & illustration, courseware, content management

  • Wrote German-to-English translations of technical whitepapers, specifications, regulations, facilities procedures, and legal correspondence on nuclear medicine, nuclear safety, accident planning, nuclear enrichment plant design and maintenance, building codes and regulations
  • Wrote English summaries of German sources (abstracts, TOC, LOF, LOT) for fifteen nuclear enrichment plant, environmental, and health specifications
  • Translated UF6 Compendium (an introduction to uranium hexafluoride production and its roles in nuclear enrichment and reprocessing) from German into English
  • Developed information architecture for company-wide Documentum implementation
>> Publications
  • “The Java EE 5 Tutorial”; Addison-Wesley, 2006, 2008, 2010 (contributing author); ISBN-13: 978-0321490292
  • “The Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0”; Java Community Process (JCP) specification, April 19, 2006 (contributing editor)
  • “Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI) 1.0”; World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Note 8, August 2002 (contributing author, editor)
  • “XML Pipeline Definition Language Version 1.0”; World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Note 28, February 2002 (contributing editor)
  • “Wabi 2: Opening Windows”; Prentice-Hall, 1996 (wrote,
    illustrated, designed; named a “Best Book of 1996” by Unix Review magazine, June 1997); ISBN-13: 978-0134616179
  • “Visual distress signals”; SAIL magazine, December 1980, Volume 11, Issue 12 (writing and photographs for article about safety flares and other visual distress signals)
  • “Cross-Atlantic Yacht Race”; Nikon World magazine, January 1977, Volume 9, Number 3 (photographs for article about transatlantic sailboat race)
  • “A Seaman They Called ‘Young Boy‘’’; Long Island Newsday magazine, April 25, 1976 (photographs and was interviewed for article about transatlantic sailboat race)
>> Education

Tufts University, B.A. English, 198

  • Minor focuses in Engineering Sciences and Fine Arts
  • Completed five Independent Studies (Tufts affiliation) through Boston Museum of Fine Arts School: Animation, Choreography (x2), Painting (x2)
  • Fulfilled University Language Requirements in German and Spanishe)
>> Résumé addendum
>> Work experience

Infant Jesus School

Nashua, New Hampshire

(contracts) September 2005–May 2006, September 2006–April 2007

Network infrastructure, software installation & configuration, staff training

  • Designed network topology and physically installed all networking cabling, routers, switches, and computers for entire school (≈75 nodes)
  • Installed and configured software on all school computers
  • Performed staff training

Atrium Salon & Spa

Nashua, New Hampshire

(contract) June–September 2009

Website development, logo design, internal training

  • Designed and authored company website
  • Designed company logo
  • Performed staff training

Marguerite’s Place

Nashua, New Hampshire

(contract) December 2004

Video authoring & production

  • Created and produced promotional and fundraising video for a women’s transitional shelter

PeerDirect

Bedford, Massachusetts

(contract) February–March 2003

Technical documentation & illustration, online help

  • Wrote and illustrated documentation and online help for the PeerDirect Database Replication Engine

NuSphere Corporation

Burlington, Massachusetts

(contract) February–October 2001

Technical documentation & illustration, online help, information architecture

  • Wrote Getting Started guide, MySQL Advantage Installation Guide, MySQL Advantage User’s Guide, and MySQL Reference Manual for three release cycles
  • Wrote beta and FCS documentation for GEMINI MySQL table handler

Torrent Systems, Inc.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

(contract) June 2000–January 2001

Technical documentation & illustration, online help, information architecture

  • Wrote functional specifications for Orchestrate parallel processing Client/Server API Guide, Operator’s Guide, and Web House Operator’s Guide for clickstream processing, data warehousing, and data-mining operator APIs
  • Designed and wrote quick reference cards for Orchestrate/APT parallel processing classes and macros
  • Redesigned and updated Orchestrate online help system

Hurley Communications, Inc.

Norwood, Massachusetts

(contract) October 1999–May 2000

Technical documentation & illustration, online help, information architecture

  • Wrote and illustrated print documentation, training materials, and online help for integrated hospital switchboard and messaging system
  • Performed staff training

Thomson Financial

Boston, Massachusetts

(contracts) November 1992–February 1993, August 1998–March 1999

Technical documentation, online help, information architecture

  • Designed and wrote online help for several Java-based financial transaction management applications
  • Redesigned and edited API and programming guides for client-side development toolkit

Electronic Industries Data Exchange Association

Arlington, Virginia

(contract) July–September 1998

Technical documentation & illustration

  • Co-designed, illustrated, and edited EIDX API specification for managing electronic financial transactions

Gemsoft Corporation

Nashua, New Hampshire

(contracts) April–October 1995, January–February 1996

Technical documentation & illustration, online help, information architecture

  • Wrote and illustrated print documentation and several online help systems for Emerald user and administrator products and Gemsoft Preview
  • Wrote prototype demo for browser-based implementation of Emerald product

Scan Centers of America

Natick, Massachusetts

(contract) February–April 1995

Technical documentation & illustration

  • Designed, wrote, and illustrated Electronic Document Management: A ScanCenters Primer for Real People, a primer on electronic document management concepts

Xerox Imaging Systems

Cambridge, Massachusetts

(contracts) November 1992, April–May 1993

Audio scripting, narration & production, information architecture

  • Wrote and narrated intro/outro material for audio cassettes for four Reading Edge product manuals
  • Arranged all details of documentation audio recording, tone indexing, Braille labeling, and cassette production
  • Information architecture consulting for Windows-based online help systems

Attitash Software, Inc.

Nashua, New Hampshire

(contract) July–October 1992

Technical documentation & illustration, online help, automation tools, information architecture

  • Wrote and illustrated documentation and online help for SlingShot, WideAngle, and InfoPanel products
  • Developed style guide, PDF print specifications, and Microsoft Word templates for all documentation

Credit Technologies

Waltham, Massachusetts

(contract) May–July 1992

Technical documentation & illustration, information architecture, QA testing

  • Wrote and illustrated user guides for Remote CAS and Core CDS products
  • Wrote and illustrated beta and promotional documentation for CDS and 800/4‐CREDIT products
  • Performed alpha and beta testing and UI desgin for Remote CAS, CDS, and 800/4‐CREDIT products

Keyfile Corporation

Nashua, New Hampshire

(contracts) June–October 1991, February–April 1992

Technical documentation & illustration, online help, automation tools, information architecture

  • Wrote and illustrated documentation and online help for OS/2-based network document server product
  • Designed and wrote documentation and online help for Windows-based document management/office automation system
  • Developed an extensive set of WordBasic macros to facilitate Windows help authoring

Inmagic, Inc.

Woburn, Massachusetts

(contract) November 1991–February 1992

Technical documentation & illustration

  • Wrote and illustrated user manual for relational database product

Archetype, Inc.

Waltham, Massachusetts

(contract) May–June 1991

Technical documentation & illustration

  • Wrote and illustrated user manual for Netware/Windows client-server image-management product

Kurzweil Computer Products/Xerox Imaging Systems

Cambridge, Massachusetts

May 1989–June 1991

Technical documentation & illustration, multimedia authoring, accessibility design and testing, information architecture, German translation

  • Designed, wrote, and narrated (for audio cassette) all Reading Machine user documentation
  • Developed information architecture, editorial standards, and document formats specifically optimized for use with screen reader software
  • Performed extensive in-person usability and information design testing with vision- impaired users
  • Worked with Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to shepherd all
    documentation targeted for vision-impaired users through UL safety review processes
  • Arranged audio production, tone indexing, Braille labeling, cassette production and packaging
  • Wrote and illustrated user documentation for commercial optical character recognition products
  • Performed German translation and technical editing of German-language products

Project Software & Development

Cambridge, Massachusetts

February 1988–May 1989

Technical documentation & illustration, information architecture, internal training, test management

  • Wrote and illustrated user documentation for VAX and IBM
    mainframe-based project management software products
  • Designed and wrote online help and tutorials for DECwindows-based product
  • Wrote in-house tutorials for desktop publishing with VAX and PC WordPerfect and PostScript

Massachusetts Senior Action Council

Quincy, Massachusetts

(contract) February 1988

Newsletter, interviews

  • Conducted interviews, wrote articles for Council newsletter

IMEC Corporation

Charlestown, Massachusetts

(contract) January–February 1988

Technical documentation, German translation

  • Translated hardware manual for logic-driven electric servo motors into German

AT&T

Boston, Massachusetts

(contract) November–December 1987

Technical documentation, internal training, office automation

  • Conducted in-house training, wrote instructional documentation for various office productivity tools
  • Developed DOS batch files and SAMNA IV keyboard macros to automate billing procedures

Boston Center for Computer Applications

Boston, Massachusetts

(contract) September–November 1987

Technical documentation & illustration, courseware development, system configuration

  • Wrote curricula for AutoCAD and Aldus PageMaker software training classes
  • Taught customer classes (basic and advanced) in WordPerfect 4.2; trained staff in Lotus Freelance
  • Configured PC hardware, wrote DOS batch and instructional files for in-house and customer classrooms

Little, Brown Company

Boston, Massachusetts

(contract) April–June 1987

Editorial services, internal training

  • Performed staff training on MultiMate, Lotus 1‐2‐3, and DOS
  • Provided editorial services for several large internal reference publications

Arthur Andersen/Massachusetts Department of Revenue

Boston, Massachusetts

(contract) March–April 1987

Editorial services, office automation

  • Performed editorial services for training materials for MASSTAX auditing system
  • Developed DOS batch files and WordPerfect macros to automate office procedures

Keystone Provident Life Insurance Company

Boston, Massachusetts

(contract) February–March 1987

Technical documentation, office automation

  • Wrote internal documentation
  • Developed WordPerfect macro and merge files to automate tracking and billing procedures

Wang Laboratories, Inc.

Lowell, Massachusetts

(contract) February 1986–January 1987

Technical documentation & illustration, online help, editorial services, German translation, production automation

  • Editing, German translation, and document production for converting four hard-copy lexicons into CD/ROM format: Random House German/English Dictionary, Random House Unabridged English Dictionary, Random House Concise English Dictionary, Duden German Thesaurus
  • Developed extensive Wang glossaries (Wang’s scripting language) to automate editorial tasks and CD/ROM production
  • Developed extensive WordBasic macros to facilitate Windows help authoring
  • Wrote and illustrated several online help systems

Blackfoot Productions

Cambridge, Massachusetts

(contract) June–August 1986

Editorial services

  • Script editor for “Vig,” a stage play by Paul Hapenny

Solomon Shechter Day School

Newton, Massachusetts

(contract) May–June 1985

Multimedia scripting

  • Wrote narration and storyboard for annual fundraising video

Greater Boston YMCA

Boston, Massachusetts

(contracts) October–November 1984, January–February 1985

Multimedia scripting, narration

  • Wrote and narrated two radio public service announcements
  • Wrote audio/visual script for annual meeting/fundraising video

Seiler Corporation

Waltham, Massachusetts

(contract) December 1984–February 1985

Newsletters

  • Wrote two monthly corporate newsletters

General Electric/Media 1

Lynn, Massachusetts

(contract) May 1984

Multimedia production

  • Key Grip for 30-projector audio/visual production for GE “Family Fair Day”

The Yacht magazine

Newport, Rhode Island

(contract) August 1983–March 1984

Writing, photography, editorial services, production management

  • Editorial production manager for first edition of magazine
  • Wrote copy, took photos for several feature sections
  • Established stringer contacts and editorial library

Roger Vaughan

Newport, Rhode Island

(contract) November 1983–February 1984

German translation, biographical research

  • German translation and research for biography of Herbert von Karajan

SAIL magazine

Boston, Massachusetts

(contract) December 1980

Writing, photography

  • Wrote copy and took photographs for Visual distress signals, an article about safety flares and other maritime visual distress signals

Fluor Corporation/Daniel Construction

Greenville, South Carolina

(contract) May 1978–September 1978

Architectural drafting, technical illustration

  • Architectural illustration and technical drafting for industrial process piping and design facilities

Nikon World magazine

Garden City, New York

(contract) January 1977

Photography

  • Photography for feature about transatlantic yacht race