Examples of Work

I am a Liberal Arts guy who has followed a technical career path, starting with end user (punched cards and mainframes), through end user trainer, then programmer trainer, then programmer, then consultant. This mixture of skills I consider a differentiator which I always claim when offering my services as an IT contractor. The beauty of the Internet is that I can put examples of my work online for decision-makers to peruse in whatever detail they desire. Since most of what I have done is covered by non-disclosure agreements, however, actual computer source code and other examples for most of my work cannot be provided. What I do offer instead for that area of my skill set is a relatively rich selection of technical tips which I assembled over the years during my various gigs as trainer and course developer. Links to these technical examples are found further down in the page.

I have written a large amount of course material, articles, and support material for courses, in addition to writing program code. I pride myself on my ability to communicate to diverse audiences; I have spoken at seven vendor and user group conferences during my career, as an employee of Abbott Institute and Cogent Information Systems during the late 1980's and the 1990's, on end-user, AREV administrator, and IT developer topics, using presentations I wrote.

As an instructor for many years, I developed proficiency in AREV, Powerbuilder, HTML, Sybase, Unix (AIX) and Oracle, for employer Cogent Information Systems, later for various clients as a contractor, mainly Chubb and Data Quest. In addition, I did more end-user oriented courses like Multimate, Displaywrite, Lotus 1-2-3, Crosstalk, Multiplan, Harvard Graphics, dBase, Wang, 'Introduction to Computers', 'DOS', 'Creating web sites' and others, for Abbott Institute, Essex County College, Raritan Valley College, and others.  I long ago took to writing short notes and handouts for students, in order to reinforce a novel concept or powerful feature we had seen that class day. A representative selection of this content is provided here.

Having done lots of course material in my life, and having offered a slew of custom and customizable courses, I long ago recognized the usefulness of capturing an actual real life situation in a tutorial/slide show, since it has a coherence, a narrative backbone, and a built-in progression, as we document and explore the search for a solution to a system design requirement. Capturing what you are doing as you go through it, which I do when I build tutorials, also gives me as the author/instructor a lot of consolidation of learning in the early phases of addressing a new knowledge domain/requirement. Finally, the use of a narrative provides informative, isolatable reading material which can 'stand alone' as a training resource. I provide tips on CDEIS.COM about various topics, to give evidence of my written style, and depth of technical understanding.

Technical Tip Examples
PowerBuilder tips
Oracle tips
Miscellaneous tips
Click here for (a few) examples of course materials and curricula I authored over the years

Technical Document Examples
I provide below links to sets of screen shots of some user documentation I have authored over the years, to give some sense of the detail and quality of the work, and its easy style. It is fragmentary, but representative; if interested in more examples, or more complete examples, by all means let me know. As you might have gathered, I have done a LOT of these type documents, but non-disclosure agreements have limited what I was able to retain and offer as examples.
Pharmaceutical Company Employee Training and Train-the-Trainer
Police Dispatch System User Guide

Technical Articles
These articles are from the early days, and are cited merely to document the assertion that I am a published writer, and to show some samples of my written work.  My liberal arts background has given me the ability to capitalize on my mature communications skills in service to my IT career, and to benefit my clients and employers over the years. Lately, my writing skills have mainly been applied to web site content, both for my CDEIS.COM site and for my client sites.

Article

Publication

Subject Area

Novice Corner

Powersoft Application Developer (PAD) Volume 2, #1

PowerBuilder Pop Quiz

Notes on the new Paradigm

RevTech Magazine, Jan/Feb 1996

OpenInsight and Windows for AREV Users

Notes on the new Paradigm

Infocus, Mar/Apr 1997

Object Orientation, GUI

Notes on the new Paradigm- Object Lesson

Infocus, Nov/Dec 1997

Object Orientation

Objects, Classes, Variables and Instances

PAD Vol 2 Num 2/3

Object Orientation, as it relates to instantiation, encapsulation, other topics

Report on PowerBuilders' Pre-Release Classes

PAD Vol 3, #1

New features of Release 5 of PowerBuilder

Notes on Code and Command

RevTech

AREV Catalyst subroutine as a hub of functionality

Creating a Lotus 1-2-3 Administrative Assistant

Words, June-July 1987

Macros and Formulas to automate common tasks

Browsing Environment Sets

RevTech, Nov/Dec 1995

AREV system administrator, configuration

Keystroke Programming with DisplayWrite 3

Words, Dec-Jan 1987

Using keystroke capture to create macros for word processing package from IBM

Leading desktop DBMS gets reviewed

Words, Oct/Nov 1986

dBase III Plus Product Review

Self-Joins Self Oracle RDBMS

Web Site Prose Style Examples
Here are a few sample pages, gathered from different web sites; the most salient characteristics of the examples are the verbiage I authored and the clean visual style of the pages. They are not 'FLASH-y', as my focus is mainly on pleasant and/or punchy prose (although I AM learning FLASH, as it provides fast-loading graphics and animation).

Sample Page or Web Site Discussion
Dial M Promotional web site done for musical artist; has downloadable samples
Nu Beta of Phi Gamma Delta Note: The historical pages are largely obtained from an archival source. My contribution is the other pages
Questioning Duality Interview of an artist for my web site
Carolina Winesellers An overview of wine, with references assembled from various sources
Bill and Josh's Excellent Adventure Photos and observations from a trip I took to Europe with my nephew
What Exit? New Jersey notes
Hinterlanders hit Nieuw Amsterdam Short essay