Home Us

Carl's Skills

Product Manager, Program Manager — I've led varying types of development teams. At Verisk I set up four kanban teams, and have been business analyst. At Allen I was Program Manager over the team that incorporated the then-new Agile XP development methodology. While at Allen I was also Program Manager and Product Manager, setting the direction for our training software tools Designer's Edge (intructional design tool), Quest (multimedia authoring), and Manager's Edge (content management). At aVinci I was Product Manager over the development team, and Development Manager over the creative team.

Technical Support Director — I led the aVinci and Allen support teams, and I'm adept at handling escalated and all types of support. I've resolved complex technical issues. I've worked with development, the product manager, and management to determine the impact of bugs and new features on the customer, and prioritize software changes according business resources and priorities. My communication of the customer experience to our teams was something I found enjoyable and our CTO found critical to the success of the company. I created and assembled the technologies and processes needed to support customers. I also created the FAQs, documentation, phone systems, and support email systems.

Quality Assurance — Everywhere I've worked I've been involved in some aspect of quality assurance because of my aptitude with debugging software. My programming experience, combined with my experience working with customers, has taught me how software can be used in unexpected ways, and how to discover problems. I'm adept at sleuthing complex technical bugs reported from customers and working with development to fix and find them, and to create workarounds for customers when needed.

Training — For live training I've written the curriculum, outlines, training materials (student and user manuals and handouts, quick-references, etc.), as well as presented the training using instructionally sound teaching principles. I've presented web-based live training. For online, written, interactive, and other types of computer-based training, I've done instructional design, much development (using Allen's Quest tool as well as Adobe Captivate), and dealt with the corporate training management.

Consultant / Trainer — For Allen, I was trainer and consultant for Fortune 500 companies, and government and military agencies. I solved problems, trained, and helped make those successful who used our software.

Technical Writer — I've been a technical writer of programmer reference manuals, Agile user stories, use cases, design documents, user manuals, online and product help, support FAQs, web pages, and marketing and sales materials.

B2B Representative and VAR/Distributor Liaison — For Allen I supported our North American VARs and international distributors. For aVinci I represented the customer to the development team, meeting with customer teams to determine needs.

Business Relationship Builder — As VAR and distributor liaison at Allen, as well as at Samson Cables, I managed and built new relationships, worked with resellers of software products, and created a patent.

Business Analyst — My BS degree in business and my Associates degree in accounting, as well as my varied experience working with small entrepreneurial companies, gives me good business acumen. I understand tradeoffs of business decisions, and how to answer customers' concerns with alternate solutions as needed.

Business Acumen — With a BS in business, Associates in accounting, and minor in computer science, and having put myself through college as a bookkeeper/accountant for all of the university's traveling performing groups, I learned the fundamentals of finance, ROI, forecasting, and budgeting. My work with small entrepreneurial companies taught me fiscal responsibility in decisions made in every department of a business. Owning my own small business cemented this knowledge.

Trainer and Training Content Creator — As a programmer I understand technical concepts, and as technical writer, trainer and support engineer I'm adept and patient at expressing the complex to the novice. I've trained many dozens of Fortune 500 companies in the use of programming and training development tools.

Programmer — Oh how I miss programming! My skills are now rusty, but I've programmed business, accounting, training and multimedia applications. As a programmer I understand technologies, and as a trainer and technical writer I bridge the gap between developer and customer.

Sales Support Engineer — For a few years I traveled with the outside sales team of Allen Communication. I made custom presentations, consulted, helped close deals, set up and ran trade show booths, created content for and presented hands-on classes, and sat on software product discussion panels at trade shows.

Agile Development — I'm an proponent of Agile development. I've led a teams using all aspects of XP, am a certified scrum master, helped host the 2010 Agile Roots Conference, and at least got ot attend in 2014. I espouse the fundamental Agile concepts of communication that should exist in every relationship, from business to personal and family.

IT Engineer — OK, I'm not a true-blooded hardware geek (although I do wear glasses, and am often caught with a pen in my pocket), but I know hardware, Windows, networking, hardware peripherals, computer technologies, programming, web technologies, etc.

Configuration Manager — I've maintained software product installations and created the experience around them, and have been adept (yes, past tense) at creating InstallShield installations.

Media Editor — I'm an experienced media creator as it's presented in training, documentation, web pages, and programming. But I'm not an artist, as much as I'd like to be (but I admire those that are). I use PhotoShop (and use similar tools such as Gimp, XNView, and other open-source tools), audio and video editing (mostly with Audacity, some GoldWave, and I'm a pro at Pinnacle Studio).

Memberships and Certifications