DATES:
May 2000-November 2000

SPECIFICS:
Technical writing, HTML design and production, graphic design and production, image editing, layout design, user interface and experience design, logo deisgn, features writing and editing, quality assurance testing, brand management, marketing.

OVERVIEW:
As Senior Producer for eHobbies.com, it became my responsibility to take on the duties of updating NextPlanetOver.com when it was purchased from its original owners in San Francisco. With the help of the site's previous senior producer and chief technical officer, I compiled a complete set of API documentation and helped transfer the servers from San Francisco to Santa Monica.

Once properly transplanted, I took over the day-to-day production and updating of the NextPlanetOver site, assisted mainly by one editor. This also involved integrating the processes and codebase into the existing companys framework -- making sure version control was handled in SourceSafe, maintaining an image library from the prior administration onwards, et cetera. I began the redesign process almost immediately, realizing that much of the old graphical design was difficult to read and faced significant user experience problems in both tying content to product and for users reaching the products in the first place. I also became a regular on the message boards, helping regulate and moderate conversations, as well as helping the company decide on what methods to use in marketing the site to the entrenced demographic.

I devised the name and approach for the one-year-anniversary event, NPO: Year One, which was inspired by an industry-standard term for stories told in the early part of a character's "career." I also began to take a role in the editorial process, writing numerous product reviews and a column at the site. Since I was an avid comic book collector and action figure fan, it was some of the best work I've ever done, allowing me to bring to bear almost all my skills and experience and letting me have a fair amount of freedom to create.

When the parent company started having economic problems and laying people off, I made the hard decision to leave, heading for Disney Channel. Unfortunately the websites, eHobbies and NextPlanetOver, went bankrupt six months later, and both names were sold and retrofitted to new business models.