Teaching & Public Speaking
I enjoy teaching and presenting, mostly at content strategy and UX conferences and events. My latest talk was on modeling and managing product content at the Button conference in October 2021. My next teaching assignment is the information architecture class in the new UX Writing/Content Design certification program at the School of Visual Concepts in fall 2022.
Community Events
I love to bring people together and to hear what they’ve got to share with each other. So I am always involved as an organizer or promoter of community events. I also participate in a number of virtual and real-life communities.
Being a juggler, I always seem to have at least three things in the air. Right now I’m:
- participating in several UX, content strategy, and semantic-technology communities
- hosting a content strategy podcast
- co-organizing the Content Strategy Seattle meetup
Over the years, I’ve also helped produce TEDxRainier, Seeds of Compassion, Seattle Empty Bowls, and many other community events.
Since 1993, I have volunteered for Seattle arts events like Fremont’s Moisture Festival, Honk Fest West, the Fremont Solstice Parade, Bumbershoot, and the World Rhythm Festival (I also served for two years as a board member for the Seattle World Percussion Society, the organization that stages the festival, which used to draw as many as 10,000 rhythm enthusiasts to the Seattle Center every spring).
Fremont Noodle House Group
From 1998 through 2013, I convened a monthly gathering of independent business and creative professionals.
World Music and Dance
I love world music and dance, and I study and enjoy playing West African, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban and other percussion-heavy music.
Entrepreneurship
I worked as a senior manager in three internet start-ups during the original dot-com boom (one of which, workz.com, provided information to entrepreneurs about how to do business online).
I also founded and ran two startups on my own — Bodywork U and Well9to5 — and tested an idea for a content-strategy startup called Virtual CCO.
I maintain my interest in and connections with the entrepreneurial world, regularly participating in events like Startup Weekend and Hacker News meetups. I was also a founding member of Seattle’s social entrepreneurship co-working space, Impact HUB Seattle.