Portfolios
— Here's a five-page, what-have-you-done-lately collection of SEO, IA and Web design. Even in my newspaper days, I used to stand on whatever was my latest work. Anybody can show their best and try to live off their rep.
— Couple years ago, I did a similar collection of content, information architecture and Web editing. It's in show-hide layers and takes some time to load but holds up fairly well.
— For years, I built modular portfolio pages in QuarkXpress and customized PDFs for specific job opportunities. Here's a Web design / print design example from February 2003, including 10 screenshots of long-sense updated URLs.

Content
— One night after a particularly hard day, I wrote down downthing I do in terms of quality Web site improvements. At the time I wrote it, I wanted to be replaced by a machine.
— As 2001 rolled in, I wrote exactly 2001 words on writing for the Web in a new century. Still holds up today.
— On the night before a job interview, I whipped up a short primer on information architecture and how it applied to intranet portal planning. Not my finest work, but I got the job.
— At 5:10 one afternoon, my current boss asked me to write a generic page on graphic design overhauls he could use over and over in proposals. This is what I e-mailed him at 5:42 p.m.
   As A.J. Liebling used to say, I'm better than anybody who is faster than me, and I'm faster than anybody who is better than me.

Standards
— A resume in MS Word format
— in PDF format
— and one in HMTL.

Personal
— I took an online personality test once and came out as a "visionary philosopher." Not exactly standard resume material, but I bring it up because back in '95, when my buddies were asking me why I was changing careers, I told them I had a hunch this Web thing might take off.

Education
— Growing up dirt poor and doing lots of hard jobs is a great education. Being a reporter is a great education, not only for how much you have to read, but how much you learn by interviewing people. Ohio University's J-School was a great education. I'm tempted to say all that education was a big factor in my years of IT consulting, from Fortune 500 companies to little Web boutiques, but truth be told, my education continues every single day.

Recent Rant
— I've spent an IT career focusing on the front of the screen. This works well when it comes to big corporate projects that can afford usability engineers and user experience folks. In the real world, on smaller scale projects, it means your versatile. Otherwise you wouldn't have gotten the job.

What drives me crazy is when opportunities are lost, when technological people are making editorial and marketing decisions because the old-line interests are intimidated by the technology.

The Gannett Corporation launched a long-term project to redo every one of their newspaper's Web site, and their want ad listed every possible required skill -- except how to make the sites better. Here's the letter I wrote. If you only read one thing in this section, please read this one. I wanted to make it a home page, and wound up burying it instead.