Professional Highlights

Funding Raised & Grants Received	Software Development Demos
Project Examples	Journalism Clips
Technology Writing	Media Clips
Research	Patents
References, in progress

Funding Raised and Grants Received

• Raised $2 million in funding as CEO of startup GiftSpot. Built 35-person company in three months and set strategic direction. Acquired by GiftCertificates.com within one year.
• Awarded $689,500 in three grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to develop Facebook applications for education research and journalism partnerships.
  • Newscloud Study Shows Facebook As A Tool For Transferring News
  • Newscloud To Make Facebook-connected Communities Easy
• Awarded $580,000 in two grants from the Omidyar Foundation and AspirationTech to expand development of a suite of technology services for nonprofits.
  • Groundspring.org Acquires ActionStudio, Adds Engagement and Advocacy Tools (CSR Wire)
• Raised $102,625+ in two weeks for The Herbfarm’s COVID-19 Meals for Hospitals. Launched GoFundMe and Patreon and managed donor communications and PR.

Project Examples

Here’s examples of some of my publicly available efforts:

• Meeting Planner — my earlier startup effort to simplify planning social meetups and business meetings.
• Portland Wild — a community project using Google Maps with a collaboratively gathered database of Portland, Oregon’s beautiful street art, heritage trees and Little Free Libraries.
  • See also A Web Developer Created a Site Mapping Portland’s Murals, Heritage Trees and Neighborhood Book Shares (Willamette Week)
• Lead plaintiff in consumer security camera class action case, Reifman et al v. Canary Connect, Inc.
• WineCountry — acted as a technical program manager for the major redesign and rebuild of the suite of websites including Sonoma, and NapaValley. See recommendation from CEO Mike Cann.
• Black Women in Politics Candidate Database — I reached out to Luvvie Ajayi to voluntarily build a fully manageable candidate database expanding on their static list of candidates.
  • The site was built quickly in time for the elections.
  • Its detailed administrative/moderator back end is not viewable
• Twitter bot This Isn’t Normal — built at the request of 99 Percent Invisible podcaster Avery Trufelman to provide an irregularly timed reminder of the troublesome Trump era.
• ECommerce on WordPress: A Getting Started Guide, sponsored by WPEngine (pdf)
• Mailgun for WordPress — hired by Mailgun to manage development of a WordPress subscription plugin integrated to its APIs and related blog posts and documentation.
• Microsoft At Work
  • I started with Microsoft Research at age 20 as the At Work team’s Program Manager. At Work was intended as a long term effort to license an embedded Windows OS for office devices.
  • TV Commercial of Microsoft At Work Fax provides a glimpse of the early touch screen UX I prototyped and managed usability testing for with two Microsoft graphic designers

Software Development Demos

• Demo of MeetingPlanner’s Responsive JavaScript Calendar Date Time Picker — For Meeting Planner, I coded a responsive JavaScript calendar date and time picker. It allows selection of multiple date times, scrolling through and date time ranges, a drag handle for changing meeting length, and drag and drop date time change.

• Meeting Planner’s Multiple Language Google Translate Integration with Yii Framework — While building Meeting Planner and writing programming tutorials for a startup series at Envato Tuts+, I wrote one about using the Yii Framework’s translation files and I realized that imperfect translations could be automated by integrating them to Google Translate. This video demonstrates how Meeting Planner has imperfect translations for about 20 languages generated completely by Google Translate. The video shows language resource file examples as well as sitemaps that allow international users to discover the Meeting Planner service.

Media Clips

I have more than 200 media mentions, here is an assortment:

• Won Wired’s Vanish contest helping locate Evan Ratliff
  • Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened (Wired)
  • How We Caught Missing Wired Magazine Writer Evan Ratliff
  • Found, Wired’s Missing Man (Interview with CBS News)
• Habitat Espresso — not for profit coffeehouse in Seattle I founded, while at Microsoft
  • NBC Nightly News Big Perks
  • Habitat Espresso on the Lehrer News Hour (transcript)
  • ABC Good Morning America
  • Private Sector: Making Money, Giving Money (New York Times)
• Microsoft Hits $1 Trillion in All-Time Revenue (Time), also in CNet, Business Insider, GeekWire et al.
• Bill Gates Owes A Billion Internet Justice (Sometimes Daily with Amanda Congdon

Journalism Clips

I have more than thirty published articles, here are some examples:

• Commentary: Outrage over FBI’s online tactics highlights knee-jerk Internet culture (GeekWire)
• Investing for Change: A Microsoft millionaire wonders if his money can express his values (Seattle Weekly cover story)
• Where are Washington’s K-12 dollars? Just ask Microsoft shareholders (Crosscut)
• How to Save $420 on Your Comcast Bill This Year (Puget Sound Business Journal)
• Antarctic Traveler (Grist)

Technology Writing

• Wrote 215 articles for Envato Tuts+ such as:
  • Building Your Startup Series at Envato Tuts+,
  • Using Social Media to Locate Eyewitnesses: The Twitter API
  • Running Your Own Open Source Email Server Series
• Wrote eleven sponsored articles at Programmable Web for apilayer:
  • How the coinlayer API Helps Integrate Cryptocurrency Pricing Into Your App
  • How userstack Delivers a Scalable, Real Time Cloud-based User-Agent API
  • Introduction to aviationstack’s Flight Status and Aviation Data API
• Wrote several articles for Mailgun such as:
  • How Geogram Built A Free Group Email Service Using Yii For PHP With MySQL

Research

• Engaging Youth in Social Media: Is Facebook the New Media Frontier? (pdf)
  • Also discussed in Nieman Reports, Knight Foundation and Poynter
  • Introduction to $25,000 Facebook-based news contest (Grist)
  • Facebook app translates online efforts into real-world environmental change (Grist)
• Managing Consumer Credit Delinquency in the US Economy: A Multi-Billion Dollar Management Science Application
  • During my internship at GE Research and Development, I coded the PAYMENT system described in the research, including integration with Lindo’s Lingo optimization software

Patents

While at Microsoft, I received these patents as part of my Microsoft At Work:

• Method and system for providing touch-sensitive screens for the visually impaired, United States #6,496,182
• System and method for facsimile cover page storage and use, United States #5,438,433
• System and method for facsimile load balancing, United States #5,917,615
• Facsimile machine with custom operational parameters, United States #5,539,530

References, in progress…

• Client Recommendation: CEO Michael Cann, WineCountry Media (pdf)
• Black Women in Politics Candidate Database 2018: “Jeff has been an invaluable teammate to have on the Black Women in politics database. He took initiative to reach out to us when he saw he could concretely contribute to the project we gave ourselves, and what he has built has benefitted thousands of people. He’s great to work with, also, giving clear expectations and getting things done properly and quickly. I’d work with Jeff again, no doubt!” — Luvvie Ajayi, Writer and Speaker, author of I’m Judging You: The Do Better Manual
• This is Not Normal Twitter Bot: “I had this little pipe dream for a twitter bot, which Jeff immediately volunteered to build, entirely free of charge. He made it happen quickly and efficiently, and handed me the reins for complete creative control. Whenever it appears in my feed, I feel very grateful.” — Avery Trufelman, 99% Invisible podcaster