Who’s this guy?
Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, I grew up loving four things: technology, reading, writing, and really fat squirrels. All of these interests brought me to the University of Michigan for my BA, where I studied History and wrote a thesis on angry medieval monks. I also started The Squirrel Club, which grew bigger than several of the colleges at the U. (I’m looking at you, School of Public Health!)
After a stint pursuing a career in academia, I decided to change paths and study digital preservation at the UM School of Information. In 2008, I went to Apple as an intern to write some documentation on H.264 video encoding for content producers. My article was published at Apple Developer Connection. In the meantime, I worked as a Workflow Manager for the Text Creation Partnership. Now, I’m working on Mass Digitization projects for the California Digital Library.
I love to write on technical subjects, especially when I have a chance to explain difficult topics to a nontechnical audience. Video compression is one of my favorites—ask me to explain macroblocks if you’re curious. I’m also fascinated by the problem of preserving digital files for the long term without ignoring user communities. I am interested in working as a Technical Writer, Digital Librarian, Digital Preservation Officer, Digital Archivist, or Video Encoder. Job titles aren’t important, though—if you have a good match for my skills and experience, tell me about it!