Who is Dave?

I always find writing about myself pretty challenging, especially in defining exactly who I am. I guess I’m proud of the fact that I’m a lot of things to a lot of people. To my family I’m a husband, father, son, and brother. At work I’m a technologist. In my free time I’m a coach, a very dedicated runner – logging up to 40 miles per week and enjoying 1/2 marathons very much (and just last year I completed a self-supported 37-mile Ultra on my 37^th birthday) – and I’m a life-long learner dedicated to the continuous improvement of myself. Formerly I was a teacher and world traveler. I’ve developed the ability to switch between these roles and equally enjoy each and every one of them because they are integral to who I am.

In addition to all of that, I’ve been described me as an overall geek. Education and Technology are probably my top-two passions, meteorology is another, but the same can be said about anything new that I can learn and apply on a personal or professional level. I guess you could say that I am extremely multi-dimensional and defy easy classification, but I like to think that the world is my classroom and life is too short to waste it not learning and developing.

If you’re interested in just the facts, instead of a narrative, take a look at my resume.

Professional Background

I am currently a Marketing Technologist for Higher Logic™, LLC. Higher Logic provides innovative social networking and mobile application solutions for associations and nonprofits seeking to increase member retention and generate non-dues revenue. Our premier offering is the Connected Community application that allows members to network and collaborate anytime, anywhere. Honestly, I get to work with some of the smartest, driven and real people in the association technology business, and I’ve loved every minute of it. In a lot of ways my move to Higher Logic was a timely and logical evolution for my career as much of what I’m responsible for doing – both inbound and outbound marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), automation (Marketo) and analytics – is what I had been doing for multiple clients at Altitude. Having a singular focus should allow me to help the company take it’s online marketing efforts to the next level.

Prior to getting back into the association world, I was the Director of Marketing Technology for Altitude Marketing. Altitude is a full-service integrated marketing and PR company based in Emmaus, PA. My role there was pretty varied but generally speaking I was responsible for Online Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media, SEO, PPC, Web Analytics, vendor and partner management and integration. Additionally, I was solely responsible for doing website analysis and evaluation, information architecture, UxD, development and launch activities for our client sites. Internally, I was responsible for all things technical from running, managing and maintaining our high-availability web hosting operations to making sure that our infrastructure was running at it’s best.

Before joining Altitude, and throughout my time there, I did freelance web design and development with a specific focus on FOSS (free and open source software). My areas of expertise revolve around platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Moodle, Vanilla, and vBulletin. However, through the process I became really comfortable working on any system that runs on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, mySQL, PHP) stack. I really enjoy consulting with small-to-mid-sized businesses, not-for-profit organizations and professional organizations, to help them make their web, social and technology goals a reality.

Earlier in my career, I was a Community Manager and Learning Technology Specialist for the Project Management Institute – a not-for-profit professional association dedicated to the advancement of project management as a profession – where I was responsible for the strategic and tactical implementation of an online leadership development program for our member-volunteer leaders and also the managing sponsor for a new virtual community project for our online components. I came to really appreciate and enjoy the world of association management and it’s something that I’d like to return to in the future.

I’ve worked and studied in the fields of education, human resources, technology and learning management (including academic institutions, start-up’s, Fortune 500 corporations and associations) for the past 15 years.

Education

I completed my Masters of Science Degree in Education with a concentration in Instructional Technology in December 2007. I also hold a post-baccalaureate certificate in web design and development as well as a Master certificate in Online Teaching and Learning. I have dual-undergraduate degrees; a BA in History and BS in Political Science, both areas that I’m still keenly interested in to this day. During my meanderings through the higher-education system I also completed numerous additional courses in project management, information technology and business administration.

Mi Famiglia

While I do find a great degree of satisfaction and fulfillment in the work that I do and field that I am involved with, the most important role of my life is that of a father, husband, son and brother. My family is extremely important to me and something that I am very proud of.

About the Website

My main goal is to use this site as a place to display some of my work, try out some new ideas and reflect and hopefully make sense of the ever-changing world around me.

If you are curious about the technical underpinnings of the site and want to learn more, you can visit my Colophon to find out just about anything you want to know about it. If you’re still curious and want more info, feel free to contact me, I’m happy to chat about what I know and help out if I can.

Disclaimer

Note: While I may occasionally discuss situations that take place at work, the purpose of this blog is cathartic and educational and not a place where I will be venting my frustrations about my clients or the work that I am doing. If you came here looking for that I am sorry but you won’t find it. Also due various privacy/NDA requirements of the projects that my company works on, I will also be vague as to specifics. I respect my clients a lot and do not want to compromise my personal reputation or theirs by revealing too much information.