Creator of fine internet technologies for startups, nonprofits, candidates, organizers, & most other folks

Here's some cool stuff I've built

Hi, My name is Scott and I like building tools for folks doing good work.

Where I Come From

I grew up in Oregon and Singapore and went to school at the University of Chicago. My first website was the official Student Government blog – which I built as part of one of my campaign promises in my campaign for Student Government President.

After graduating with a degree in Chemistry and Political Science – I went  to work as an organizer for Obama for America in the general election in New Hampshire’s remote Carroll County. After Carroll County went blue for the first time since the 1950’s, I headed back west to work as an organizer at Focus the Nation, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering young people to do something about climate change.

One day the website broke and I fixed it – and I guess the rest has been downhill from there: I dove head first into teaching myself how to code, fork, hack, and debug, etc. From then on – code and bits were my vocation.

After Focus I worked at the Oregon Bus Project and then the national branch – the Bus Federation as a data and technology manager / director. While working at Focus, I started freelancing with friends – and have slowly built a small business in my spare time helping clients create affordable, quick, and beautiful solutions for their web and organizing problems.

In April 2013 – I moved from Portland to San Francisco to start a job as the Lead Developer at ShareProgress, a progressive technology company that helps organizations drive more sharing from their online community, and more clicks from their member’s friends.

After launching ShareProgress and building the initial technology stack, I moved on to Counsyl, a large genetics company – where I worked to improve the experience for patients and doctors as part of a 50 person engineering team. From Counsyl, I moved on to a very small genomics company called Karius, where I helped visualize and expose genomic data to a team of molecular biologists and a staff physician.

In August 2015, I moved back to Portland, Oregon – after leaving Karius – to be with my fiancé Katie. Since then I’ve been consulting for non-profits and business in Portland and beyond – working with folks like the Bus Federation, Jack in the Box, Rejuvenation Lighting, and Cofactor Genomics.

I also helped started Pizza to the Polls to raise money and help feed people for the 2016 election.

I’m currently a full-time Senior Software Developer at Renew Financial but still available to help if you think we could do something great together.

What I Can Do

I mostly make websites – although I’ve just started to dip my toes into creating mobile apps.

Generally these sites are built with WordPress, but I’ve also been known to work in Drupal, and even TextPattern (once). I’ve published a few WordPress Plugins, built countless custom WordPress Themes, and have become very handy with server migrations and backups.

For bigger projects, I’ll often work in Ruby on Rails or  Sinatra or for manual tasks Rake. On these projects I like to use SASS or LESS and HAML for cleaner code – and Heroku to hosting. With Ruby projects I try to abide by Test-Driven-Development, currently using Capybara-Webkit, Selenium, and RSPEC to test my code in the terminal.

Most of my projects involve extensive use of external API’s: SalsaLabs, Facebook API & Apps, Twitter API, Google Maps API, Target Smart, Stripe, FanBridge, Open Congress, Cicero API by Azavea. I also designed and built the ShareProgress API.

At Counsyl and Karius I worked with Python and Django and learned to deploy a scalable cluster on AWS with Vagrant, provisioning machines with Puppet.

And of course I’m very comfortable with Javascript – working with (and without) jQuery, AngularJS,  KnockoutJS, ReactJS, and D3JS.

I try to put as much of my code as possible on Github.

I host and maintain over 40 websites, mostly WordPress, on my WebFaction account – with custom automated backups and WordPress upgrades. Happy to help if you’re looking for a safe place to store your site.

Who I’ve Worked With

A lot of great folks

Nonprofits and Advocates

Candidates 

  • Rep Lew Frederick
  • Senator Jackie Dingfelder
  • Rep Jeff Reardon
  • Jefferson Smith for Mayor
  • Senator Cliff Larsen
  • Thuy Tran for State Representative
  • Rep Alyssa Kenny Guyer
  • Rep Ben Cannon
  • Rep Shemia Fagan

Businesses – big and small

Government Agencies

 

What I’m Into

When I’m not programming – I’m a big runner / hiker / skier / mt climber / climber / backpacker / biker / swimmer / triathloner. I’ve participated in the Coeur D’Alene Iron Man, Chicago Marathon, numerous Half Marathons and Half Iron Men, the Hood to Coast twelve times, biked the Seattle to Portland twice, the Bridge to Bridge, several Alcatraz crossings, and have climbed St Helens, Adams, Rainier, the Three Sisters, Hood, Whitney.

I am terrible at nearly every sport with balls (even bocce).

And for a shorter version of all of this – just check out my resume