Hi, I'm Steve,
I talk about making websites

Just before I got my college degree in theatre I found I could work more reliably by building websites for theatre companies. And it was more enjoyable than the regular grind in the Chicago improv and non-profit theatre world?

I didn’t expect that.

But after about a decade focused on building sites, mostly in WordPress and Drupal, I joined up with Pantheon where I’m now the Director of Developer Relations. It’s a dream job that encourages me to connect the technical surface details of web development to the deeper human forces that influence how teams operate. That’s led me to

On my personal channels you'll find videos and ideas that are even weirder, or more sincere, or both (I mean I don't know what exactly led me to summarize a Ted Talk as a sonnet).

I'm also married with children. While fatherhood has definitely influence the style and direction of my work (leading me into my Mr. Rogers era), I tend to keep family stuff off open social networks. Maybe when the kids get older they'll opt in to joining my shenanigans.

Take a moment to appreciate Git


Somewhere in the last 20 years version control changed from one detail of how I work to something more akin to the operating system of my work. From branches-per-Jira-ticket, to running CI through Pull-Request-trigger automatation, to the undying dream of a Git-based CMS, I marvel at the quiet and near-total ubiquity of Git in professional software development.

And one of these days I'll make time to reboot my joke GitHub accounts.

Explaining Git with crayons and Lego bricks

CLI, UI, who am I to judge?

When I started as a Pantheon employee in 2015 I looked askance at the "SFTP mode" style of working. Now I see that we were ahead of the curve on the "Cloud development" concept and that the sftp part was just an implementation detail.

A fully-functioning site for every branch

"From Laptop to Live Site" has become my rallying cry in the last few years. I think it started with this diagram. It is a given that web teams will have multiple branches in-progress simultaneously. They should have a fully-functioning copy of their sites available for each one.

If "code is poetry," then I will write poetry about code

As The Pandemic began, I was already reading (and listening) to the Emily Wilson translation of The Odyssey. That accessible adaptation primed me to think about what I'd do if my work ever got back to in-person conference presentations. Of course I'd adapt my last conference presentation from the pre-pandemic times into iambic pentameter.

Sonnet Summaries (mostly of other people's stuff)

Somewhat on a whim, I posted a sonnet I'd written that summaried a TED Talk to LinkedIn. It blew up a bit and I kept going.

You need three things to earn coworkers’ trust:
Empathy, logic, Authenticity
Form a stable stool that you can adjust.
But the stool wobbles in toxicity.

Read full sonnet

Sneaking in meter

This silly comedy sketch about the sprawling complexity of websites is written in iambic pentameter. Notice how the CTO's thoughts spill over to the next line :lol:

The Test-Driven Development Dream

"I'll write a poem about how Test-Driven Development feels always out of reach."

A few cases of La Croix later, I ended up with this fever dream of a video.

Changing the medium changes the message

Back at DevOps Days Minneapolis 2019 I presented an Ignite Talk in character as former Vice President and Technology Enthusiast, Al Gore.

Book in my Background: Understanding Media

In the “Book in My Background” series for LinkedIn I talked about how Understanding Media influences my work.

the thumbnail for a 'Book in my background' video

IoT: Tool or Toy? The 2017 Edition

In my last work-task before going on paternity leave I shared my reflections on the blurry line between jokes and tech insights at MidCamp.

An interlude of some silly vertical videos

What computer assembles the website?

The answer to this question is surprisingly slippery.