Resumé / CV
Deirdré Straughan
Skills
Reflections on My Career Strengths
- Community development, strategy, and execution
- Social media: use, strategy, production, execution and analysis
- Online marketing: program management, customer service, customer communications
- Production and online distribution of video
- Software interaction design, user experience analysis and design
- International outlook and experience, have lived for extended periods in Europe and Asia
Professional Experience
SmartOS Community Manager, Joyent
Director of Technical Education, Joyent
Dec 2010 to July 2011
- Designed and managed production and delivery of Joyent’s first technical training courses (internal and external)
- Produced online video training for internal and external use
- Streamed, publicized, and Tweeted live video of events such as nodecamp
Solaris Technical Content, Oracle Corporation
Feb-Nov 2010
Produced/managed production of technical content (video, white papers, web pages) about key Solaris technologies including storage, networking, and installation. Video samples here. Copyediting, technical review management, and marketing for the DTrace book.
Community Strategist and Social Media Producer, Sun Microsystems
Mar 2008-Feb 2010
As part of a small team within Sun’s Solaris engineering group, developed and executed strategies to encourage the growth and activity of OpenSolaris communities. This included acting as Secretary to the OpenSolaris Governing Board (2009-2010). Overall goal was to improve and increase communication between Sun engineers and our external developer/user communities; tasks included:
- Devised and managed social media strategies to encourage Sun use of blogs, Twitter, etc. to promote and communicate about our technologies. Analysis and strategies for specific blogs led to increased posting and traffic. For example, translation led to page view increases of 200-2000% in China, Russia, Brazil, Japan, and Spanish-speaking countries.
- Filmed, produced and published over 200 hours (300 items) of video on highly technical topics, garnering >180,000 total views (to 2010). Translation and subtitling increased global reach of these videos. Taught workshops to develop video skills among colleagues worldwide.
- Social media production (video streaming, live tweeting) to increase global reach/participation in events.
- Developed and managed technical content on websites, wikis, and blogs.
- Planned and managed community events, including Sun’s Open Storage Summits, student events at ISC, Sun participation in OSCON, LISA, SNIA SDC and other conferences.
- Constantly gathered and analyzed statistics to evaluate the effectiveness of all of the above.
Senior Web Producer, Sun Microsystems
2007 – 2008
Content development and management, blog management, web metrics and analysis, wikis, video, and web strategy for the Solaris Storage Software group.
Director of Customer Experience, TVBLOB Srl
2003-2007
Joining this startup at an early stage, I strove to create a unified customer experience across every aspect of the company, from software design to customer support and service. Responsibilities included:
- Software interface and interaction design: Developed feature requests into step-by-step schematics of UI states and behaviors, worked with engineers to ensure correct and coherent implementation, worked with marketing and graphics team on graphic look-and-feel. Edited UI language directly in Java resource files (via Eclipse). Tested and refined usability, general testing.
- Customer support process: designed custom web applications and SalesForce materials and processes to integrate with company’s custom back-end systems.
- Managed, wrote, edited, and translated technical documentation for TVBLOB’s software and hardware. Provided technical input, copy editing, and translation for marketing and other materials.
- Market research and monitoring: clipped 90+ blogs and other sources daily.
Freelance Projects
- Software Manuals/Help: WinOnCD 5 Standard Edition and Power Edition, WinOnCD 6 all Editions (for Roxio). Work included UI reviews and suggestions for improvement.
- Created Countries Beginning with I, and used it as a laboratory to learn about HTML, CSS, (later) WordPress, SEO, online advertising, etc. Applied this expertise to creating websites for clients.
Webmaster & Web Strategies Manager, Roxio
2000 – 2001
Roxio was spun off from Adaptec in May, 2001; see below.
Online Marketing and Customer Support Consultant, Adaptec
1995 – 2000
Created a unique online presence/community for the company and its software products (which for years shipped with many Windows installs), developing new tools and strategies for communicating with customers, with outstanding results in brand awareness and customer satisfaction and support. Activities included:
- Initiated and moderated the Adaptec CD-R discussion list, a then-innovative approach to communications between a company and its customers.
- Weekly newsletters launched in 1998, the largest list had 170,000 subscribers by 2001. These also encouraged reader responses and input – a pre-blogs example of online conversation between a company and its customers.
- Monitored and responded in any online forums where our products were discussed. Eventually headed a small team which carried out these support activities.
- For the Adaptec website, was solely responsible for all CD-R content: development and management of technical and marketing content, HTML, navigation design, information architecture. Managed an internal team and outside contractors. Designed and managed implementation of Web applications. This content brought in 70% of Adaptec’s overall website traffic.
- All this moved to Roxio.com in November, 2000. I was part of the management team which chose and implemented ATG Dynamo as the application server and personalization platform, and Interwoven’s TeamSite for content management.
- Had overall responsibility for content and community on Roxio.com, led the content and applications team which developed and launched the new Roxio site for the company spin-off in May, 2001.
Chief Technical Writer, Incat Systems
before 1995
Wrote the manuals and online help which helped make Easy CD the market-dominant, award-winning world leader in Windows CD-recording software, which led to Incat Systems being acquired by Adaptec in 1995.
Publications
Book: Publish Yourself on CD-ROM, co-authored with Fabrizio Caffarelli. A comprehensive guide to CD-ROM technology, for everyone from beginners to experts. Published by Random House Electronic Publishing, 1993. One of the world’s first books to include a CD-ROM, containing software and a hypertext version of the book. (Also desktop-published the book and created the hypertext, both using FrameMaker.)
Articles for Italian computer magazines (in Italian) and other publications.
Public Speaking
- Employees Making Videos webinar (Sept, 2010)
- CLS West, January 2010 – led an Unconference session on Community Video
- Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, 2009 – poster session on video, also interviewed about video and community.
- Community Leadership Summit, July 2009 – led an unconference session on Community Video
- New Zealand Ministry of Education, Wellington, New Zealand, July 2009 – series of presentations on social media and video
- FISL, Porto Alegre, Brazil, June 2009 – co-speaker on Using Video to Communicate About Open Software
- Innovating Employee Engagement/Executing Social Media for Internal Communications, Chicago, June 2009 – invited speaker on UTILIZING SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS TO BUILD ENGAGEMENT AND COMMUNITY
Education & Training
- Solaris 10 System Administrator’s Training, Parts 1 & 2, Jan/Feb 2010
- MBA, Open University (UK), 2004
- Bachelor of Arts with High Honors in Asian Studies and Hindi, University of Texas at Austin, 1987
- Woodstock School, Mussoorie, India (high school), 1981
Languages
- Native speaker of English
- Read, write, and speak Italian fluently
- Hindi/Urdu once fluent, could be revived
Volunteer Work
- Woodstock School (Mussoorie, India) – class secretary, former President of WOSA (Woodstock Old Students’ Association) Council Europe, fundraising, writing
- former Board Member: Studies Abroad for Global Education (SAGE)
- Founder/initiator Colorado Front Range Girl Geek Dinners
- Democrats Abroad, Italy – former board member of Milan chapter
Personal
Live in San Francisco. LOVE to travel.
 

