Software & E-Commerce Industry Experience

My daughter, age 3, surfing the Net

Search Vocabulary, Taxonomy and Indexing Specialist (freelance contracts)

Nokia Music, Bristol UK Dec ‘08

Corbis Images (now Getty Images) Seattle WA Aug ‘06 – Aug ‘07

Amazon.com, Seattle WA Aug ‘99 – Dec ‘99

• Presented seminars on Findability and Usability and consulted on taxonomy redesign for Nokia Music

• Developed and standardized thesauri and taxonomies underlying bibliographic cataloging at Amazon and image cataloging at Corbis, to improve e-commerce customers’ user experience

Online User Assistance Specialist

Guy Carpenter, Seattle WA (six freelance contracts) Nov ‘99 – Sep ‘08

Visio (now Microsoft Visio), Seattle WA (permanent full-time) Jul ‘96 – May ‘98

• Wrote, edited and designed online instructional materials, including step-by-step procedural instructions, for online Help systems in actuarial and diagramming software programs to guide end-users.

• Project manager for technical documentation projects: recruiting, training, and terminating contractors. Tracked projects resources and staff with Excel.

• Managed time and budgets for teams, and for myself as an independent contractor.

• Worked independently and as part of teams.

• Created single-source content management tools using Microsoft Word to split source text into print and online formats after translation into 22 languages; trained colleagues in US, Ireland and Europe to use my tools.

• Conducted usability studies of software and web pages, and collaborated with programmers on UI design improvements to the user experience.

Freelance Indexing Consultant, Seattle WA Jun ‘88 – Jul ‘96

• Created indexes of nonfiction books, software manuals, and online Help for clients including Harper & Row (now HarperCollins), Putnam (now Penguin), Seal Press, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Attachmate (now Microfocus), and Aldus (now Adobe).

Education