Summary

My largest client currently is Xcential Corporation, for which I act as Senior Consultant, developing Schemas and XSLT code for projects in legislative documents.

During my career time I've done many different jobs for several companies, both as a full-time employee (most recently at Design Science, where I was Senior Product Manager, and before that at Sun Microsystems, Inc, as a Senior Technical Program Manager in the Business Alliances Group of the CTO Office), and as a consultant with both short-term and long-term clients. One such client was the Lantana Consulting Group, for whom I worked as a Senior Consultant on a variety of projects around the design and implementation of Clinical Document Architecture (CDA)-compliant systems. I was Course Director for the XML Summer School, until the Covid pandemic and the climate emergency forced a change in direction.

Project Management

I have many years of experience in technical project management. I've led schema design committees and managed developers on software, hardware, and cloud computing products, including one project for Sun that involved hardware, software, the cloud, and developers living from California to France. I've successfully managed technical committees consisting of whomever the various companies wanted to send, where the representatives could be replaced by other people at any time. I chaired the world's largest XML Conference (hosted by IDEAlliance) from 2001 to 2005, managing the strategy, determining the content, and handling a large amount of detail work. Many of these projects involved working with distributed teams spread across many countries and timezones. Additionally, I am a Certified Scrum Master.

Website Development

I've implemented and maintain several WordPress and Drupal-based websites for myself and clients, including my personal site and my crafting site. I've tried out various web technologies, and taught some of them at the XML Summer School (most recently HTML5, CSS3, and ePub). This site uses Jekyll with a Bootstrap framework. I've also implemented static websites converted from XML with XSLT.

Identity Management

All of the projects I worked on at Sun had strong identity components, using SAML from OASIS and related standards such as ID-WSF from the Liberty Alliance. I chaired the Business Marketing Expert Group for the Liberty Alliance for much of this time. I also have experience at designing data use and privacy guidelines for identity-related services. I've taught introductory-level classes in web-relevant security, identity, and privacy.

Product Management

Product management is the intersection between development, marketing, and sales. I have experience in talking to customers (including resellers and consultants) to find out what they're using the products for and what issues they face, and then working with the development team to find solutions. I've written product brochures and given talks, both technical and sales, to technical audiences and strategic customers. I've also been on support visits to strategic customers and assisted in pre-sales visits. I've combined product and project management on agile teams, turning the vision of executives into reality.

Public Speaking

I am comfortable giving talks, and can explain technical issues in a way that is both correct and understandable. As an example, I evangelized the Document Object Model (I chaired the W3C Working Group) with the result that it is now the accepted standard in the area that is widely implemented. I've given talks (including keynotes) at several international conferences, written press releases, and given media interviews.

Standards

I'm probably best known for my work in standards. I have been chair, editor, and member of technical committees for several years, chiefly in OASIS and World Wide Web Consortium, where I was an elected member to the W3C Advisory Board, amongst other committees. I have seen committees that are successful and several that aren't, and understand what talents committee members need to have to be persuasive within the committee.

Event Management

I chaired the largest annual XML conference from 2001 to 2005, and watched the conference grow. During my tenure as chair it was the conference of choice for many XML practitioners, often the only one they went to each year. I helped organize Vancouver's Blogging and Social Media Conference from 2005 - 2012 and for much of that time was the President of the related Conference Society. I am Course Director of the XML Summer School, working with the Faculty Board to ensure the right speakers are teaching the right classes to meet the needs of the delegates, as well as chairing and teaching myself.

My LinkedIn profile contains more details of my professional life, and you can reach me at lauren@textuality.com. My full resume is available on request, as are references.