Communication and Community

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Skills

Reflections on My Career Strengths

Professional Experience

Community Strategist and Social Media Producer
Sun Microsystems
Mar 2008-present

As part of a small team developing and executing strategies to grow open source communities for Sun’s Solaris engineering group, I have:

  • Filmed, produced and published over 150 hours of video on highly technical topics, garnering >50,000 views. Have also managed a translation and subtitling project to increase the usefulness of these videos worldwide.
  • Devised and managed social media strategies to encourage use of blogs, Twitter, etc. to promote and communicate about Sun technologies. Analysis and strategies for specific blogs led to increased posting and traffic. Translation led to page view increases of 200-2000% in China, Russia, Brazil, Japan, and Spanish-speaking countries.
  • Social media production at events
  • Developed strategies to encourage the growth and activity of OpenSolaris communities.
  • Constantly gathered and analyzed statistics to evaluate the effectiveness of all of the above.
  • Developed and managed web content
  • Event planning and management

Senior Web Producer, Sun Microsystems
2007 – 2008

Content development and management, blog management, web metrics and analysis, wikis, videoblogging, and web strategy for the Solaris Storage Software group.

Director of Customer Experience, TVBLOB Srl
2003-2007

  • Software interface and interaction design: Developed feature requests into step-by-step schematics showing UI states and behaviors at each step, 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 bench testing.
  • Writing 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 per day, covering broadband, telecommunications, usability, interaction design, social/ new media, participatory culture, user-generated content, general high tech, etc.
  • Customer support process: designed custom web applications and SalesForce materials and processes to integrate with company’s custom back-end systems.

Freelance Projects

Webmaster & Web Strategies Manager, Roxio
2000 – 2001

Consultant to the Adaptec Software Products Group
Online Marketing and Customer Support
1995 – 2000

Created a unique online presence for the company and its software products, with outstanding results in customer satisfaction and support.

  • Created, developed, and managed the extended Web content and community team.
  • For the Adaptec website, solely responsible for areas devoted to CD-recordable products and technology, including development and management of both technical and marketing content, HTML, navigation design, information architecture, and management/integration of internal team and outside contractors. Designed and managed implementation of Web-based applications. My contributions brought in 70% of Adaptec’s overall website traffic.
  • All CD-R content and applications were moved to Roxio.com in November, 2000. For this new site, was part of the management team which chose ATG Dynamo as the application server and personalization platform, and Interwoven’s TeamSite for content management.
  • Overall responsibility for content and community on Roxio.com, led the content and applications team which developed and launched the new Roxio site ahead of the company spin-off in May, 2001. This included management, implementation, and use of TeamSite.
  • Email marketing: Editor-in-chief (often also writer/editor) for weekly newsletters to opt-in mailing lists. Launched in 1998, the largest list had 170,000 subscribers by July, 2001. (Subscriber comments.) These newsletters encouraged reader responses and input – a pre-blogs example of online conversation between a company and its customers.
  • Online support and marketing: In 1996 founded the Adaptec CD-R discussion list. Widely acknowledged to be the most useful source for help with CD-R, it was praised for allowing end users to discuss all aspects (positive and negative) of products and customer experience.
  • Communication: As a global, cross-cultural manager, and a technical writer working in marketing, I was uniquely qualified to facilitate and promote communication between various teams and locations within the company, and between the company and its customers.

Chief Technical Writer, Incat Systems (1991-1995)

Part of the team that made Easy CD (later Easy CD Creator) the market-dominant, award-winning world leader in CD-recording software.

  • All software manuals and context-sensitive online help for a wide range of software products.
  • Worked with engineers from beta stage, testing and making suggestions for improvement.
  • Online customer support and marketing efforts established the company as a friendly, available presence in various forums as they became relevant (CompuServe, mailing lists, Usenet groups).
  • In 1995, developed material for an Incat Web site, which was eventually used on the nascent Adaptec website after Incat Systems was purchased by Adaptec.
  • Sales Support/Evangelism: Technical assistance to sales staff, conference presentations, seminars and lectures, trained business partners such as Hewlett-Packard.

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, January, 1993. Included a CD-ROM containing software and a hypertext version of the book – one of the world’s first books to include a CD. (Also desktop-published the book and created the hypertext, both using FrameMaker.)
Articles for Italian computer magazines (in Italian) and other publications.

Education

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, now being revived.

Volunteer Work

Woodstock School (Musoorie, India) – class secretary, former President of WOSA (Woodstock Old Students’ Association) Council Europe, fundraising, writing
Board Member: Studies Abroad for Global Education (SAGE)
Democrats Abroad, Italy – former board member of Milan chapter

Personal

Very willing to relocate, including internationally. LOVE to travel.

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