I’m currently a graduate student at Berkeley’s School of Information where I study information visualization, user interface design and the social use of information.

Why Study Information?

I came to the information sciences in a roundabout way; my background is in molecular genetics. I worked as a laboratory technician for two years sequencing the proteins in the Chlamydomonas flagellum and building an online repository for all of the subsequent information myself and the others on the project discovered (Paper | ChlamyFP).

Those initial PHP scripts were the beginnings of my foray into the information world. I spent some time off traveling and returned from my adventures, eventually joining the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University. While at CHNM I worked with a group of developers and designers, heading up development on what is now Omeka, an open-source digital archive manager written in PHP. Omeka was inspired by Jim Safley’s (also at CHNM) Adaptable Digital Archive Manager (ADAM) and prior work CHNM had done.

The central theme in both in my laboratory work and my work on Omeka was the premise that information should be available to everyone, that information had a story to tell and that story was not relevant to just a single person. In a world where biology research happens behind close doors, I pushed for, and thankfully had the support of my Principle Investigator, the release of our discoveries as an online tool that other Chlamydomonas researchers could use to link our findings to DNA sequences and eventually back to their own work. Similarly the entire concept behind Omeka was to provide any individual the ability to setup a simple online archive built upon open archival data standards allowing them to share not just their physical and digital artifacts with the world, but the history and story behind those artifacts. I came back to school with those experiences in mind and with the interest in finding other ways to bring communities together, so they might tell their own stories by building information resources which could ultimately help advance the greater general knowledge of humanity.

My Arsenal

I cut my teeth on Coldfusion, PHP, MySQL, HTML and Javascript way back before PHP knew what objects were. I’m now particularly fond of Python and Ruby. For better or worse I spend a lot of time coding in Rails. I think Firebug is about the best Javascript tool money can buy, CSSEdit is currently helping me make my HTML look Web 1.6ish and Omnigraffle has probably saved my life or at least made my wireframes passable. When I’m not dealing with school work or working on a project I like to snowboard, for that I use a 156cm Burton Custom. I get my other speed fixes from my road and mountain bikes. Lately I’ve been appreciating slowing down a bit as well. My 17mm lens and SLR have been handy documentation tools on my adventures around the world and in the California wilderness.