1. A Short History of Nearly Everything
I am primarily a business and technical writer who began as a would-be poet about thirty years
ago. When I grew tired of self-publishing poems and working as a free-lance photographer for
local newspapers, I developed my interest in technology, informal logic, and rhetoric, and got on
with the business of making a living by writing proposals and managing grants for the National
Science Foundation at Arizona State University. The focus of all such research was the use of
high technology primarily in the mathematics education of grade-school students and in the
training of pre-service teachers. In my time at ASU I managed two, award-winning research
grants, and wrote or co-wrote two research proposals funded by the NSF in the neighborhood of
ten million dollars.
After five years in the academy, I took a position as a Senior Proposal Developer for the
Computer Task Group (CTG) whose documentation group was based in Phoenix. My primary
responsibility was to write, edit, and publish professional-quality, high-impact proposals to
secure new business in CTG’s focus market of Fortune 500 companies. During my tenure at
CTG, I worked on six successful IT proposals totaling more than 375 million dollars in contracts,
most notably a preferred vendor proposal to IBM in the amount of 350 million dollars -- the
largest contract ever awarded to CTG.
When CTG moved back to Buffalo, New York, I declined their offer and remained in Phoenix,
where technology vendors and software companies were securing venture capital at record
rates, and hiring writers and trainers by the thousands. I worked for such companies in a great
variety of roles, but my job title was always some variation on ‘technical writer’ regardless of my
duties. I spent most of my time researching and publishing technical documentation for
engineers and end-users, but also writing white papers, steering committee reports, and formal
presentations for IT managers and vice-presidents of software development. Somewhere along
the line, I was paid to master the principles of modern learning theory and design, and thereafter
began developing printed and online instruction primarily for ‘coders,’ but also for other company
personnel of various kinds and experience.
When I grew tired of the 70-hour work weeks routinely required by software companies, I
purchased a chunk of Apple stock, then ‘headed for the door,’ intent on being my own boss and
working from home on projects I loved. That’s when I started several ’S’
corporations centered around my interest in historic preservation and in music.
At Do You Remember When, Ltd., I used a wide variety of digital technology tools to develop
custom-made family history products that run on computers or televisions, or that can be framed
for display. This job allowed me to add ‘graphics designer’ to my resume, as I spent thousands
of hours mastering Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign in order to create DYRW’s custom-
made products. Regrettably I haven’t used those tools for some considerable time, but I’m sure
it would all come back to me pretty darn quickly if needed.
My music webcast, Ain’t That a Groove, was a DJ-hosted (that’s me) internet radio show that
featured long-forgotten or little-known recordings of interest to drummers and other
connoisseurs of high art and the fundamental wisdom of the big beat. I spent most of my time
for ATG doing research on music and music trends, writing detailed scripts, and editing digital
audio.

2. Somewhere in the middle of this ‘work from home in my underwear’ phase I began accepting
editing assignments for online courseware, most often from SMEs with little writing experience.
I spent most of the last seven years caring for a mother with Alzheimer’s disease, while hosting
ATG on the side. But I’m ready to write again, and have now completed a 200-page story that
wants to a real, grown-up novel. And I find that after three decades of writing and editing, I retain
a special fondness for assignments that require significant re-writing.
Of course, none of this accounts for my career as a musician in the 70s. That’s another story
altogether.