Hi, I’m Ben! I live in Greenville, SC and work remotely as the Director of Customer Success for Gatsby. In my free time I enjoy hiking, spending time with my wife and children, and learning to play the banjo.
I create fun, innovative, accessible, and fast websites. I try to leave every bit I code I touch more readable, performant and accessible than I found it.
These are the accomplishments I'm most proud of:
- Speaking at the first ever Gatsby Days conference on trends in modern web development
- Wrote and marketed an email course on web accessibility to 500+ developers
- Spearheaded the agency use of pattern libraries at my first job and wrote about it for CSS-Tricks.
- Learned Drupal 7 on the fly, developed an award-winning Drupal 7 site for the University of Kentucky and became lead Drupal developer.
- Led the team at my first job in documenting front-end and server configuration best practices to streamline current development and help onboard new developers.
## Speaking
### MagMutual.com: On the JAMStack with Gatsby and Drupal 8
- Event: DrupalCon Global 2020
- Date: July 2020
- Slides
My colleague Bob Kepford and I shared our decoupled architectural approach to rebuilding https://www.magmutual.com on the Jamstack.
It is an inside look at our decoupled approach for MagMutual.com: combining open-source frameworks like Gatsby, Drupal 8, and Serverless, as well as third-party services for user management, a learning management system, and private APIs to build a robust custom platform.
### Gatsby at Mediacurrent
- Event: Gatsby for Agencies and Teams: Better, Faster, Smarter Webinar
- Date: March 2019
- Recording
In this webinar I shared a little bit about how we've introduced Gatsby into our workflow at Mediacurrent and how things have changed as a result.
I discuss:
- how Gatsby has changed our development process
- how Gatsby has influenced the types of projects we are able to take on
- how even things like hiring and advancement are changing as well
### Move Fast, Don’t Break Things: Trends in Modern Web Dev
- Event: Gatsby Days
- Date: December 2018
- Recording
In this talk at the first Gatsby Days event, I discuss how trends in modern web development and moving away from "CMS-Centered Development". I share a case study from our first decoupled Drupal and Gatsby project at Mediacurrent.
I also discuss the different ways decoupling can change things at an organization, including the development process, but even beyond into hiring and client diversity.
### Common Accessibility Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
- Event: DrupalCamp Asheville
- Date: July 2018
- Recording
I discussed four of my own homegrown principles for developing accessible websites:
- Web Design is more than graphic design
- Be ASAP: As Semantic As Possible
- Websites should look good naked
- Talk to your computer (Use ARIA attributes)
I also covered 10 common accessibility mistakes that I come across (and that I’ve personally made), and how to fix them.
### Component Based Development
- Event: DrupalCon Nashville
- Date: April 2018
- Overview
This full day training session starts with an overview of component-driven development, typical workflows, and benefits for teams and stakeholders, and then we dive deep into the workflow by building out a sample Drupal theme using the UI Patterns approach. We cover:
- An in-depth look at creating patterns including markup, styles, and behaviors
- Composing complex UI patterns by nesting simple patterns in larger patterns
- Integrating front-end patterns with Drupal using the UI Patterns module to simplify the process and preserve Drupal’s baked in goodies
- Advanced workflows with Sass, a Drupal 8 theme generator, incorporating ES6/Babel with patterns
## Experience
### Gatsby
Director of Customer Success | May 2021 - Present
Engineering Manager, Customer Success | July 2020 - May 2021
Staff Software Engineer, Customer Success | July 2020 - July 2020
Senior Software Engineer, Customer Success | January 2020 - July 2020
Helping customers succeed using Gatsby beyond their wildest dreams!
### Mediacurrent
Senior Frontend Developer | December 2017 - January 2020
- Lead front end development for complex architectures utilizing Gatsby, Drupal, Auth0, and Apollo Server.
- Define requirements, estimate new features, review pull requests and provide constructive feedback for other front end developers.
- Refactor a complex React/Redux application for a major insurance company, increasing stability and maintainability of code and introduced unit testing strategy to increase test coverage by 1370%.
- Perform accessibility remediation for enterprise clients to bring them into WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.
- Speak and write effectively on various front end development topics including accessibility, component-driven development, React, Gatsby, and remote work.
### Up&Up Agency
Front End Developer | February 2015 - November 2017
#### Key Responsibilities:
- Transform static design comps into fast, accessible, interactive, maintainable HTML/CSS/Javascript
- Develop efficient, user-friendly backend content management systems
- Integrate front-end development products with content management systems.
#### Accomplishments:
- Spearheaded the agency use of pattern libraries and wrote about it for CSS-Tricks
- Developed an internal CSS style guide for standardizing our approach to CSS/Sass for across all projects.
- Learned Drupal 7 on the fly, developed an award-winning Drupal 7 site for the University of Kentucky and became lead Drupal developer.
- Developed documentation templates currently in use in all agency projects.
- Streamlined build tool setup with Webpack, npm scripts and Grunt.
- Led the agency adoption of SVG and automated build tools.
- Led the team in documenting front-end and server configuration best practices to streamline current development and help onboard new developers.
#### Projects:
##### University of Kentucky Help Center | 2017
- A knowledge base for students, alumni, and faculty to find the information they need to succeed.
- I used CakePHP as a caching layer between a React.js front end the Salesforce Knowledge Base API.
##### University of North Carolina | January 2017
- A simple Wordpress microsite for the Friday Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
##### University of Kentucky Academic Exploration Tool | November 2015
- A tool to help current and prospective students discover their majors and programs based on their interests or career aspirations.
- I developed the front-end of this project as well as the majority of the Drupal site-building/backend.
##### Design @ Up&Up | October 2016
- A custom Drupal 8 application that integrates with Bugherd.
- Our team uses it to upload jpg or png comps to a client project, and the client can use Bugherd to markup the comps with feedback.
- It provides an intuitive way for clients to see their comps in the browser and a much easier way for us to collect and keep track of feedback.
##### Post, an internal content calendar tool | January 2016
- I built an internal tool to help our account management team, our content strategy time, and our clients manage the content strategies that we are developing for them.
- I developed the front end and backend.
#### Technologies Used:
- HTML5
- Sass
- CSS
- SVG
- Javascript
- React.js
- Grunt
- Webpack
- Drupal
- PHP
- jQuery
- Wordpress
- CakePHP
- Python
- Django
### Freelance
Wordpress / Frontend Developer | October 2014 - June 2015
- Designed and implemented custom dashboards for a family of new and used car dealerships to provide high- level sales metrics for each dealership and the business as a whole, as well as monitoring the ROI of paid advertising campaigns to the upper management.
- Developed and updated custom responsive Wordpress themes.
- Technologies Used: HTML, CSS, SCSS, Less, Javascript, jQuery, PHP, Wordpress, Grunt, custom dashboards.
### Gannett
Digital Strategist | October 2013 - September 2014
- Utilized Polk automotive market data, Scarborough, Nielsen, and other marketing resources to help plan the sales strategy for automotive advertising sales teams at both our Greenville and Asheville newspaper locations.
- Planned and executed strategic integrated marketing campaigns—paid search, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, print, and targeted digital display—for franchise and independent automotive dealerships.
- Developed a web analytics consulting process to help qualify new clients and increase revenue, achieving year- over-year revenue growth of 22%.
### Chicago Tribune
Digital Advertising Sales Consultant | February 2012 - September 2013
- Collaborated with marketing directors, property managers, and leasing directors to plan, budget, and execute successful multi-platform advertising campaigns for apartment communities in Chicago’s western suburbs.
- Developed advertising plans utilizing the Chicago Tribune Media Group and Apartments.com portfolio, including SEO services, web development, paid search, digital display, mobile, print, and pre-print advertising.
- Negotiated with new and existing clients to protect profit margins while securing customer satisfaction. Managed $800,000 of revenue from local and national Real Estate Advertisers, achieving 15% growth.
## Side Projects / Volunteering
### Engaged Encounter
My lovely wife and I are presenting couples for South Carolina Catholic Engaged Encounter. We provide weekend-long marriage preparation retreats for engaged couples. I am also the treasurer.
### Second Nature Journal
2013 - 2017
I started and ran (with the help of some friends) an online journal for critical thinking about technology and new media in light of the Christian tradition, Second Nature.
### IISTC
2013 - 2017
The IISTC (International Institute for the Study of Technology and Christianity) is the non-profit we started to publish Second Nature. I was executive director.
## About this site
This site is a Gatsby site I designed and built. The type is set in IA Writer Duospace.