> [!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. # Purpose and overview of this site I'm happy that you found this site. You can think of this page as the *starting page*. **The purpose of this site is to serve as my professional portfolio.** This is an on-going project and something that I hope around building. But I'm in it for the long-haul. This site is broken into the following sections: 1. **Welcome** - The high-level overview of me, how to contact me, my professional background, and interests. 2. **This site** - General background to why I built this site, how I'm approaching it, and how it is being developed. 3. **What I…** - Bits of thinking that I found insightful, inspiration in, and/or interesting. These highlight somethings that I hold onto, that drive me forward, and that I have used. 4. **Areas of Interest** - Some particular areas of continued learning and research interest that I am spending time on. 5. **Profession** - The portfolio section of this site. While not everything I have done, I demonstrate and discuss the things that I can share on the web. 6. **Teaching** - Highlights a foundational part of my professional root and growth. It is what got me started down an education career path and where I aim to return one day. Included are various examples and thoughts. ## Some background This is my 5th website since 2014. Generally, each of my websites has been a portfolio with a focus on communicating various professional accomplishments. As I've grown in my career however, this purpose needs to expand. I'm no longer only a learning designer looking to communicate the (learning) design work that I've done. I've had a number of rich leadership experiences that cannot be communicated through a demonstration of productions. Because my professional experience has been so broad, I have changed in my thinking, capabilities, and objectives. So with this website, I hope to 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; 3. Perspectives and highlights from my mixed professional background; and 4. Experience and ideas for a future when I return to the classroom down the road. ## 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.