> [!important]+ 07/2025: IN DEVELOPMENT > Please note that I'm actively building this site. I have launched it while in development so that folks who have my CV can learn about me and see examples of selected work. # The purpose of this site I'm happy that you found this site. This is more or less the *starting page*. For me it is an on-going and somewhat organic project. And one that I intend on maintaining for a long time. For a little background, this is my 5th website since 2014. Generally, each of my websites has been a portfolio with focus on communicating my professional accomplishments. As I've grown in my career and in myself however, this narrow purpose does not feel right any longer. I'm no longer primarily a designer looking to communicate the (learning) design work that I've done. Fundamentally, my professional experience has been so broad that my thinking, capabilities, and objectives have changed. With this website, the core bits that I communicate: 1. Things that I'm finding interesting and/or learning about; 2. Research interests that I am exploring and/or hope to be able to do professionally; ^e19712 3. Perspectives and highlights from my mixed professional background; and 4. Experience and ideas for a future when I return to the classroom. There will no doubt be new sections added along the way. For instance, as I began drafting pages for this website, a number of new ideas came to mind in the evening hours. But those will come with time. ## How this project is built and organized This website is built with [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md) and shared on the web with [Obsidian Publish](https://obsidian.md/publish). I've used this app since well before v1.0, but primarily for capturing and organizing notes. This is my first attempt at using this app for both study notes and web publishing. (These are two separate vaults.) Prior to this, I used SquareSpace to build my websites. I really love SquareSpace, but there were 2 reasons that made me decide to go with Obsidian. 1. **SquareSpace is expensive at around $200 per year with an additional fee for the domain after the first year.** SquareSpace templates are *beautiful* and allow you to make really appealing websites. In the past, I have received many positive remarks because of this. But since I first used it, the service has moved to heavily emphasize visual content and a place for users to sell goods and services. This is not what I need. 2. **Obsidian focuses on writing, and customizing the content.** I really want to just communicate my content to you in a simple way. What is more, I want to be able to adjust the CSS for the site as I like. I'm not a (master) web developer, but it's a bit fun to play with HTML and CSS. With SquareSpace, my text usually conflicted with the template and so I was hamstrung. There are some limitations to how I can organize this website. Such as the pages and folders in the left navigation are automatically sequentially organized. I'll work around this, but hopefully one day I'll be able to manually arrange items. More importantly, pages in Obsidian are more or less a collection of interconnected notes. There is something called [Graph View](https://help.obsidian.md/plugins/graph) that allows the user to visually see how notes are interconnected. (I've turned this off for this site.) You'll be able to move around this site with the left navigation, embedded links, and links at the bottom of pages. ### Site development Please see this page on [[site development]] for an explanation of how I approached building this site. Getting started with Obsidian Publish required a bit more work than with other services, so I thought I'd provide my roadmap for others to potentially use to get themselves started.