Web design, which I have come to appreciate as a supremely useful skill in creating new media applications, is decidedly a new proficiency directly linked to my learning in this program. Though I am not an artist in the sense of painting and drawing, I would argue that my latent sense of visual design and composition and graphic skill are a great deal more sharpened as a result of my effort to learn web-building software.

Many elements included on this site attest to learning and problem-solving issues I encountered in the process: Animating my homepage photograph (one that I took of my daughter playing the violin, and manipulated in Photoshop); embedding a soundfile (which I recorded and edited); password protecting my files (which took me in several complicated and fruitless directions before finding a simple solution); developing a pop-up window and slideshows for images. These are simple skills for the advanced web designer, to be sure, but I find I'm catching up quickly, one design/software challenge at a time.

But my grasp of the scope of web design and the reach of digital and web-based media go far beyond my learning curve in site-building; my study of this technology confirms for me that web-work is a multi-media expression in and of itself, but also a democratizing medium of dissemination. It is a vehicle of cultural works, but it also reflects and informs culture. It is a digital gathering place of visual arts, textualities, sound-works and motion. Its virtual nature complicates the notion of "real" and "permanent"; its expansive properties invite analogies of space, universe, and potential worlds. If I sound philosophical, then I am making my point: the web invites new apprehensions of community and being and temporality, and demands new readings of older philosophies of technology.

In addition to the Personal website you are currently navigating, my degree-related Web Work extends to other specific sites I have either managed or built entirely. Links to these sites follow:

AUSACE 2008 Conference Website
This site directly supports the 13th Annual Conference of the Arab-US Association of Communication Educators (AUSACE). VCU and the School of Mass Communications will host this conference in November of 2008. Although parts of the site are still under construction, identifiable, static elements are established and currently in use. The site graphic, which functions as an anchored page header, is based on the committee's visual concept of International exchange, and echoes the Conference theme of "An Interconnected World." Construction of this site represents a valuable learning curve in the cultivation of web organization and layout skills for a real-world, professional, international site. Further, the site includes streaming video harvested from promotional materials provided by Richmond Tourism, which necessitated researching and learning auxiliary software for this purpose. The site will also include a secure page for Conference registration purposes, and thus, represents another phase of development and learning for its architect. The AUSACE site is a professional resource, as well as a promotional tool highlighting VCU, Richmond, and the surrounding region, including historic Jamestown, Williamsburg and Washington, D.C.

VCU School of Mass Communications
During my first year of coursework, I served as the Webmaster for the School of Mass Communications in conjunction with my assistanceship. Independently learning Dreamweaver (a software for coding and designing websites) was a pre-requisite of this position. In addition to updating information relevant to students of the School, as well as Development, Staff and Faculty, Alumni Relations and public relations, I established a number of blogs (via Tech Svcs) for individual faculty members, Mass Comm Internship and Job Opportunities, and Research/ Scholarship, which are still in use via links from the Mass Comm site. I made significant photographic contributions to the site, as well as to Intracomm, the Mass Comm Alumni Relations publication also linked to the site.

Consumument
This website marks my very first attempt to build a site for someone else... and I fear it shows. It's purpose was to provide an online forum for student work generated by Dr. Tracy Tuten Ryan's "Mining for Consumer Meaning" assignment in Advertising. Though not as slick as the current design for that site (built by someone further along the learning curve!), my work does demonstrate some specific skills I earned: web collage, a gallery page, basic links, etc. If nothing else, it should illustrate some sort of progress. Please note that I am providing screenshots of my original site design, as well as a link to the current design, which still contains the project gallery on a sub-page.

China: Multimedia Journalism
Though not currently live, this site was also designed to provide an online forum for student work directly related to Dr. June Nicholson's Multi-media Journalism in China course. The site design, which uses photographs and work generated by Dr. Nicholson and her students, is meant to convey the cultural diversity and color, and even a bit of cultural noise so readily associated with contemporary China.

Please note that you will be linked to a homepage design, and a subsequent (unfinished) navigation page, but all links from that page are inactive. Once this project goes live, I will provide the appropriate link.