I am an American by birth but have lived in Asia since 1995. During that time I've worked throughout the region -- Korea, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. Since late 2003 I have been based in Bali, Indonesia, where I am a partner in water&stone, a full service digital agency.
I built my first website in 1995 and began building sites professionally for others in 1999. My first web design company, Dots & Loops, operated in Hong Kong during the dotcom boom. The company was an early mover in the CMS field in Asia and the first Cold Fusion Premium Partner in the region.
After the dotcom meltdown, I moved to Bangkok where I served as the Creative Director & Head of Product Development at Inetasia (a Microsoft Gold Partner). At that firm I supervised the creation of a proprietary CMS built on the .NET platform.
In 2003, I left Inetasia to start our present company - water&stone. The inspiration for water&stone came from the rise of open source CMS products, like Mambo and the 'Nuke family. After watching the open source space evolve over the years, we decided the products had reached a level of maturity that made it practical to offer them to clients in a professional fashion. We quit our day jobs and built a new company based entirely on open source CMS technologies. That firm -- water&stone -- is now over 7 years old and is located on the island of Bali in Indonesia.
Over the years I have worked on a number of major projects and have built CMS-powered websites for BASF, Colgate-Palmolive, Tesco, FPDSavills, Sino Group, CBRichard Ellis, Amari Hotels, the University of North Carolina, Mercy Corps, and many others. I am a member of CM Professionals and served as the President of the Open Source Mambo Foundation in 2006.
I also have a background in travel & tourism. Not only have I worked with a number of the premier brands, including Novotel, Pan Pacific, Alila, Amari, AYANA, Karma Resorts, but I also worked for four years as the Managing Director of The Elite Havens Group, a boutique luxury travel firm. As a result of this experience, I frequently speak at industry events in the region and consult for a number of clients in this space.
The ability to match up business requirements with practical open source technologies is at the heart of what I do. My background allows me to act as the bridge between business decision makers and technologists. In this capacity, I work with organizations that are planning to undertake web application development projects. Typical services include: project planning, information architecture, usability, system design and project management.
Recent projects include:
Contact me if you have a project you would like me to look at.
I have been writing about technology since 1999. I worked as a columnist for That's Shanghai from 1999 to 2001 and for the Bangkok Post from 2002 through 2006 and finally for ComputerWorld (Hong Kong), where I wrote the BackPage column for a year.
I began publishing tech books in 2006, with the publication of the Mambo Visual Blueprint for Wiley & Sons. In 2007, I released Drupal 5 Themes, the first of two books on Drupal theming for Packt Publishing. The follow up edition, Drupal 6 Themes, came out in September of 2008. I followed that with my second book for Wiley: The Ubuntu Desktop Visual Blueprint, released in April of 2009. In 2010, I published the Joomla! Bible with Wiley. In April of 2011, Wiley released my second Bible title: The Drupal 7 Bible. I recently completed the third in the Drupal Themes series, Drupal 7 Themes. That book is slated for release in May of 2011.
At present, I am working on another title for Packt Publishing: The WordPress 3 Cookbook.
Over the years I have spoken before a large and varied number of groups on Internet-related subjects, particularly on how open source technologies can help businesses compete. Among the events I've participated in: Internet World (throughout Asia), The LinuxWorld Open Solutions Summit (New York City), the Linux Business Conference (EU), and the Travel Distribution Summit (Singapore).
Among the topics I deal with:
I enjoy photography and, though I am by no means a professional, I have been fortunate enough to have a few of my images published. The cover image used on the Drupal 6 Themes title for Packt Publishing, for example, was taken in my garden in Bali. I also have images in a UK travel guide, a Bali travel guide, a series of children's books in Japan, and a travel and tourism campaign in the Philippines. All the images used on this site were taken by me. If you are interested in using any of the images you see here or elsewhere, please contact me.
