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Michael's Resume
- Apigee Experience
- Conquent Experience
- Technical Skills
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Michael's Blog
Meaningful Work that I Get Paid For
How the TARDIS Travels in Time And Relative Dimensions In Space
Logging in with Facebook (and Google and Twitter and...)
Logging into Myspace in 2014
Heretics of Science
That's the time I feel like making text to you
We're Just Meta Uber Super Tool Users
Birthing and Idea
Fun With Chinese Hackers and Password Strength
How to Turn Off Google Location Tracking
Your Phone is Spying on Everyone
My New Not a Laptop
Advertising vs. Reality. Lays Kitchen
Brilliant Ideas in Dreams -- but it's still a dream
World Traveling Intros
Referencing your whacky theories
Is Being a Geek the Antithesis of Success?
3-Legged OAuth -- A Love Story
The Cost of Gentrification
Medieval Hoarding to the Hive Mind
Stealing money with bad web design
Newspaper Hospice
The Conversation of Learning
Watching Myself
Driving through a fly-over
Death of the Save Button
Deja-Google and the world traveller
The Loss of Everything or How I Lost my Phone
I'll Never be a Space Tourist
Global Training Director (and MacGyver)
Amateurs vs Idiots
Why I {heart} APIs
Buying Respect on Layaway
Latte Swilling Robin Hoods, sort of
Amateur Coffee Drinkers
The Houses are Trees
Why I Drink Starbucks in Europe
Polite Drinking
The Sounds of Spring
The Wizard's Gift
Another Country: The United Federation of Airports
I'm a Business Tourist
Traveling through Time And Relative Dimensions In Space
Resistance is futile... But it doesn't mean people won't resist...
We're Cybernetic Creatures
The Thing about Vegas
Middle Earth: Post-Apocalyptic Hell Hole
Surrounded by Technology
The Metaphysics of Nuclear Physics
How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All
Media is Plural (and the blame game isn't about the news)
Treasures, Junk and Corporate Serfdom
Reality is Mind Blowing Enough
Number 1 Star Wars Fan
False Engagement (or "My bank isn't really my bank...")
The Emperor's New QR Code
On Kings and Colonies -- Running Government as a Business
Just Another Day in Portland
Over Explaining Things
In a World Where I Have to Pay for Healthcare
Google Has Replaced Context
The Internet's Memory is Fuzzy
STOP HELPING ME (or My Computer is Killing Me with Helpfulness)
My Cat Thinks He's a Great Manager
Neglecting my Navel
Masterful Service
Warning: Do Not Operate Heavy Equipment while Thinking
"None of Your Business" by Anonymous
Hoarding Information
Attack of the Season
Subjective Facts
Portland Rain Isn't for Everyone
Visiting My Mother in the Hospital
My Dirty Little Secret is I'm not a Vacuum Cleaner
It's not Facebook, You May Already be an Idiot
Portland Composts and I Simmer
Japanese Manners Poster -- Please do it in America
Complicated Stuff that I'm Forced to Use
Get the Money out of Politics
Everyone is Special
Redberry vs Blackberry
Tea and Occupation
Advertising that smells like the man you want your advertising to smell like
Lack of Privacy as a Celebration of Life
You say ADD like a bad thing
My Private Life is Public, my Public Life is Private
I have an unnatural relationship with my phone
Mr. Monopoly sells gas
Do no evil... unless you can't help it
Cool off with a Pepsi... Air conditioner?
My Brain is Full
Pandora becomes more like Radio
Tony Chachere vs Big Easy Foods
Upgraded to Death
Now THIS is a collectable figure -- Darth Vader 'Star Knight'
Netflix Is Watching
Session vs. Red Stripe... Mmmm... Beer...
Netflix and @Qwikster
Pepsi Steals Christmas
Shanzhai -- The Ancient Chinese Art of Brand Identity Theft
Dealing with Google+ Spam
WhiteCube.com vs WhiteCu.be
Old Rasputin -- Beer and Nostalgia
Fake Republican Twitter Accounts
Pacman Noodles
Random Change
Oil of Okay
Sun Bucks Coffee
Ball Star Classic
KFC or KF China?
Johns Daphne vs. Jack Daniels
Interjecting Infidelity
The Case of the Identical Tablet: Apple vs. Samsung
They Know Where You Are: Privacy and Google Maps
Lazy logo design and a naked blue guy
The Season for Ignoring the Season
Apple Story
No one can resist my Schweddy Balls
Give me appIebees over Applebees any day
The Mystery of the Two Applebees
What's on the Other Side of that Link?
Losing millions... insiders cashing out... Surprise! GroupOn delays IPO
Facebook Party vs. Jane Eyre Introductions
Full Metal Internet
Branding Irons
Your iPhone is like Your Bifocals
Death of a Salesman's Store
Living in dots and vibrations
Virtual Disasters -- Watching the Hurricane on the Internet Traffic Report
Facebook Hates Your Link and other stories from arts meets geeks
Apple's Innovation of One Control Freak
Hashtags on TV
GroupOn -- Good for Meth Dealers, bad for Fishing Guides
This Video Is Not Available on Mobile
'Join The Conversation' Yeah... Corporations are sexy
"Did you mean?" -- Google's chiding nanny of search results
The Next Fad: Adword Optimization
The double standard of Mobile Web vs Mobile Apps
Branded Technology
Sharingspree.com -- Stealing more than GroupOn's Idea
The Internet Isn't Entertaining Enough
The Bullfighters EULA
Global Chit-Chat and the Norwegian Isolationist
It's not your bank... It's Apple's and Amazon's
Violated by Madison Avenue
Goodbye Murphy
Frustrated social-media serotonin hit
'Narcissism' by Michael R. Bissell -- Reading myself...
Facebook Reinvents the Meta Tag. Evolution? Or just weird mutant?
Dude, you were looking at web stats and laughing
If real life was like the world we see in commercials
"We need to..." Internet Marketing Myths
Facebook's deal with the Devil
My cool new phone is a little too cool.
You are never alone
Aw Snap
Promotion vs. Distribution... You'd think they'd know that one...
Miracles and Meetings
Facebook Causes Depression
The I-Don't-Understand-It-So-It-Must-Be-Valuable Valuation
Countries less valuable than Groupon
Politics and instantaneous communication
Live by your wits, until you get the flu
Who owns your friends?
Agonies of Programming for Facebook
Content for Social Media
Walking to Surreality
Fact Free Zone
Facebook did not topple Egypt
The Value of Ideas
Frustrating Miracles
Social Media Slot Machine
Anonymous vs Me
The Numbers Game
The Internet and our Sedentary Society -- maybe some hope?
News from the Twitter Follow Campaign Trail
The Death of... Well, everything...
The art of Indiscriminate Twitter Following
The Cloudy Meaning of The Cloud
My Emotional Repsonse to iAnything
Alien Technology and Government Conspiracies
Portlandia... Yeah... it's probably true
A Short Rant about Los Angeles
Time for a New Reality
The Great Popularity Contest of the 21st Century
The Death of Email
Protecting Free Speech... Anonymously (and geekily)
Farewell to Doug -- the Dali Lama has moved on
Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks
Google isn't the bad guy... this time
Thankless Jobs
Making Money -- Or Money Making You
Kids In Charge
It's Okay that Roger Sterling's Book Sucks
Sex, Seduction and Manipulation
The Superpowers of the Hive Mind
Big Brother is Finally Here
Time for New Ideas
Comcast, Netflix and the Mystery of the Modem
Custom Tailored Crap
The Great Technical Disconnect
New for the Sake of New
A Retail Store Built Like the Web
A Quick Rant -- The New Twitter and Real People
Disposable Personas
When did Google Start Policing the Internet?
Getting back to HTML basics, thanks to Apple
Inspecting my Navel Base
Quantum Entanglement and the Death of Radio
A shoebox vs. an online backup
Cave Man Distribution Networks
Dressing for Work
The team that hates itself -- Visionaries, Managers and Technicians
iBooks -- Creative Epicenter or Gatekeeper?
The Failure of Success
The Economy is Going to Get Worse, but that's okay
Time lost on Twitter
Common Sense of the New Economy
Twitter's back alleys and dark places
Social Media is NOT Advertising
On censorship
Microsoft Courier
Form (designers) versus Function (geeks)
Bad Restroom Health Sign
PDXBOOM -- The power of social media and the portland pipe bomb
China and Apple -- Different organizations, same management
The volume of screens
Logorama
Sleeping through miracles
Who needs an URL anyhow?
Transmedia
That magical little tablet
The complications of making coffee
How your website can be in two places at once
Masterpieces created by sheer volume
Suing over lack of originality
A Primer on Internet Fame -- dancing babies, hamsters, numa numa, and more...
The Lawsuit Lottery
Checking my messages
Another Random Night of Arts in Portland
Rules are made to be broken -- in a reasoned, systematic way
So many accounts, so few passwords
The Dali Lama of Hillsdale
Who really uses Twitter? 60% of Twitter's traffic isn't on Twitter
Riding the commute route on Saturday
Not everyone is like you
The Web is a Jerry Rigged Kludge
Portland Bike Plan: Too Expensive or Playing with numbers?
Twitter: Asleep at the Mouse Wheel
Where regulation is good: Google Voice and Vonage
How Facebook is (unintentionally) forcing programmers to piss off users
The Twit Cleaner
Perfect Secretary's pitch for @Adbroad (and the Youtube API)
The Emotions of Text
The Shorty Awards Scandal -- Manual Spam is still Spam
Google Analytics, the cloud and missing numbers #fail
Helen Klein Ross & Michael Bissell Interview at Adweek's Social Media Strategies Conference
The Internet is the New 60's
Getting back in the saddle (bicycle saddle, that is)
Ranting about Portland Drivers
Cougars from New Zealand (and I don't mean big cats)
Adding facts together, or why you can't charge your cell phone from wifi
Social Media and the Destruction of the World
Rabid Fans vs Passive Viewers -- The Coco vs Leno saga
How to tell someone to retweet (without using up your 140 characters)
You can't buy social media
A book unopened is but a block of paper
Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes
Holiday SPAM (or the lack thereof)
Archiving Twitter
Too Many Toolbars
Random Censorship with Google Adwords
Accessibility and Shopping Online
"Upgrading" my flight
Twisted path to customer service
Flash: Shiny objects blinding your audience
Twollow and other gold rush scripts
Arthur Miller's All My Sons
GPS in a Laptop computer
Thinking outside the box... There was a box?
Twitter was designed for Text Messaging
It's not the corporations, damnit
Entrepreneur or Dreamer?
Adweek Social Media Twitter for Brands Presentation
Socializing is more than Social Media
Generational Marketing is a Myth (or Who's your Daddy?)
Social Media is Just the Way We Use the Internet
Twitter Followers Don't Matter (ask the porn sites)
The Internet is Gooder than Books
Sometimes you don't want your campaign to go viral
Best Twitter Branding Campaign
A Good Explosive Recipe and other found knowledge online
Like flies to crap, Spammy Twitter Followers don't really go away
Video Projectors for your phone
iPhone SMS Security Hole
How Flipmytweet works
Cell Phones as Microscopes
Markie's Birthday
Digg is not the Hijacker -- You Are
Steve Ballmer -- the walking dead?
Twitter as an open mic poetry reading
Automatic Social [un]Awareness
New York, New York
First splash for United Against Malaria
New Media/Old Media and the CLIO Awards
Interview at SXSW: Mad Men Twitter And Tracking
Saturday Yard Work
We've got an App for that -- it's called the Web
Made it to SXSW in Austin
What is Conquent?
The trouble with Wordpress and other templates
Wayward Words with Baggage
Speaking at SXSW March 17th
The fleeting Memory of the Internet
It's okay to say 'I don't know'
Good Morning America, now Go Fight Traffic
More surreality in Portland
Nike Takes Over Conquent
Facebook owns this title
Excuses, excuses
A little on Social Media
Feeding on Content
Attack of the Bots
Irish Music in Oregon City
Landing on an Aircraft Carrier
Got Curry? And some bizarre art?
Web 1.0
Random Music and Random Life in Portland
To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump
Flight Simulator
Cold night, hot fire, happy cat
Net Neutrality
Walking to work in the snow
A window into Moreland of the Past
Getting clever with data feeds
Big and Little Beirut
The Other Credit Crisis
The Broadband Inauguration
T-Mobile owns Magenta and Other Patent Stories
The Risk-takers, Doers and Makers of Things
The noise of 20,000+ Twitter Followers
Reflections on my DC Trip
Born Again American
30,000 feet, 500 MPH Suburban Strip Mall
Cellphones, toilets and the Inauguration
The wall of pissing
National Treasure/National Archives
My trip to DC so far
Everyone is insane
Getting ready for DC
The End of Days (of song): Microsoft Songsmith Example
The Very Model of a Modern Major General
Browser Bigotry
The Death of your Soul: Microsoft Songsmith
Creative Development or Developing Creatively?
Race to Witch Mountain
The Myth of Wikipedia (or the Wiki-1400)
Online/Offline Sales -- is it really that bad?
Is PayPal Tacky?
Old School Web Design Still Works
Domain Squatting
Christmas Fire
Green Chri$tma$
QA 101
Portland Snow
Get some return on that web traffic
I think they have a backup...
I'd love to have that problem
The [un]importance of statistics
Don't be a tool of viral marketing
CAT Scan!
Follow up to the shoulder injury
Emails, discussions, blogs, wiki and web content
Ironic Injury
On the Santa Monica Pier
You Designed for Print First
You let someone else register your domain name
You figured .biz, .info, .us would work fine
What's after the Integrated Circuit?
Intelligent life is out there (but it's bugger all down here on earth)
Subject Matter Experts Talking Other Subject Matter
The Totalitarian Regime of Apple
Oversimplifying how people work
crowdSPRING
Creative Services for the New World
Reverse Anthropomorphism
The End of Time
Oil prices and birdsong
Watching Starship Troopers AGAIN!
Better Living Through Twitter
Lessons Learned From Apple
It's the Brand, Baby
Business Architecture vs. Web Construction
On Truth
You can't build life
Accidentally Drunk in Portland
Al Gore the Winner
Intelligent life is out there (but it’s bugger all down here on earth)
Aussie Rules Football
Trip to Nostalgia Land
I am such an idiot
Long day of travel
Miami -- as far from Portland as you can go in the US
Inverse Peter Principle
COMPLETE GEEKOUT:MD5s as database keys
Random Knowledge
I'm fascinated with modern plumbing
Leaving Seattle (or why you should keep your ticket close)
On the Rails
The Hive
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Meaningful Work that I Get Paid For
2015-02-22 15:00:00
It took me a little while to decide what to do after Apigee, and even longer to update my social networks because what I’ve landed in is so amazingly engrossing that it has taken 110% of my brain lately.
There were the offers for consulting gigs, which paid better than my last job and would have built on my previous knowledge, but would have been grueling travel. Then there were the standard tech companies where I could do vague things for vague projects, but I wanted to do something more meaningful than simply advancing the tech of another company.
And then there was NWEA.
NWEA is a $100+ million non-profit. Yes, that dollar figure and the term “non-profit” go together. The company was founded in 1977 to help all kids learn, which is a pretty big mission statement when you think about it.
The primary product is an assessment tool that lets teachers find out exactly where a kid is in their learning -- a student might be good at math but behind in reading for example, so keep giving hard math stuff to that kid but adjust the reading materials to match their actual reading level.
It’s modern tech -- the assessment tests are delivered online and generate huge traffic to the NWEA web services. But, while the product is fantastic and scales brilliantly to let tens of thousands of students access the test at the same time, there’s more to a modern tech company than a functioning product. Every aspect of the organization needs to support the rigors of modern digital strategy.
This is where I come in.
The puzzle I have taken on is how to bring the rest of the organization into a modern, nimble, digital world. A digital strategy isn’t just having a great web-based application; it’s about delivering your business goals consistently across all parts of the organization.
I’m working with the Support team to organize their knowledge base and provide more relevant information to the right people, with the Professional Development team to deliver more sophisticated online training to teachers and the Research team to deliver cleaner, easier to access reports.
If I do my job right, this is a transformative process for NWEA, making it easier for people outside to get the resources they need, and making it easier for people inside focus on providing those resources, not fumbling with delivery systems.
But most importantly, this helps with that core mission, “Helping All Kids Learn.” While I’m not a big fan of modern education, I’m an enormous fan of knowledge and learning -- NWEA is about customizing learning, not conformity tests that leave the kids outside the bell curve out in the cold and make a kids education into a political football.
It’s interesting, exciting and meaningful. And I get paid. Definitely worth taking a pause to figure out.
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