Stewart Mader: Resume

Key Skills

  • IT Project Management – Managed enterprise wiki, content management and learning management system projects at multiple organizations, and managed multi-year, grant funded research projects.
  • Curriculum/Training Development & Instructional Design – Led a NASA-funded curriculum development project, provided pedagogical and UI design guidance for Emerson College Learning Communities, and co-led the Brown University Chemistry Language Project. Worked with faculty at multiple universities to redesign and enhance curriculum materials.
  • Speaker & Facilitator – Developed and led strategy sessions with IT project teams, delivered training and technical workshops for line of business users; frequent speaker at industry conferences
  • Web Development & Information Architecture – Experience with PHP, XHTML, XML, database integration, Confluence-SharePoint integration, search and UI engineering
  • Published Author – wrote two books on managing enterprise wiki rollout and adoption: Wikipatterns and Using Wiki in Education, produced two educational films, and published numerous articles and papers on collaborative curriculum development.

Experience

Principal – Future Changes 2005-Present

  • Led or advised wiki, blog, social networking, and content management system rollouts in Fortune 500 companies, R&D organizations, nonprofit organizations, universities, and small and mid-size companies.
  • Led strategy sessions to elicit business and technical requirements, and plan adoption from pilot to large-scale rollout.
  • Facilitated BarnRaising seminars to guide individual teams on software adoption & best practices, and delivered workshops on project & meeting management, building organizational knowledge bases, and onboarding new employees.
  • Managed stakeholder expectations, issue tracking & resolution, and assessment of user adoption & satisfaction.
  • Wrote and published Wikipatterns, a book that contains my methodology for managing enterprise wiki & social software projects.

Wiki Evangelist & Consultant – Atlassian Software 2007-2008

  • Advised Atlassian customers in US, Europe, and Australia on managing enterprise wiki & social software rollout and adoption.
  • Delivered public and in-house workshops and seminars on wiki uses in business and education.
  • Assisted in scoping the timeframe, major phases, and deliverables for software rollout projects.

Senior Instructional Technologist for Life Sciences and Alpert Medical School at Brown University 2005-2007

  • Led university-wide, phased adoption of Atlassian Confluence enterprise wiki, led Medical School adoption of iTunes U, and guided faculty through transition from WebCT 4 CE to Blackboard.
  • Identified groups, departments, and courses for wiki and iTunes U pilots, and guided their use with workshops, group sessions, and one-on-one meetings.
  • Worked with IT to establish wiki request procedure, retention policy, and integration with other enterprise services including LDAP for authentication, user and group provisioning.

Educational Technologist at Emerson College 2004-2005

  • Provided pedagogical and design guidance for the Emerson Learning Portals Project.
  • Worked closely with faculty to redesign curriculum and assignments to take advantage of technology tools like group discussions, wiki collaboration, and blogging.
  • Introduced wikis for teaching, research and administrative uses. Worked with faculty to integrate wikis into their courses, and tailor group assignments to take advantage of the wiki.

Interim Director and Instructional Designer – Faculty Center for Learning Development at University of Hartford 2001-2003

  • Led university-wide adoption of Blackboard course management system, and provided pedagogical and design guidance to faculty.
  • Managed department budget in excess of $150,000, set priorities for major software and technology equipment purchases, and hired part-time and student staff.
  • Secured $34,000 in grants to enhance and update department technology and services and create Teaching with Technology Colloquium, an intensive week-long summer workshop.

Instructional Designer and Principal Investigator – The Science of Spectroscopy 1999-2005

  • Secured $51,700 from NASA to fund project that uses a wiki to enable collaborative curriculum development among geographically distributed teachers.
  • The project has been featured in the journals Science (PDF) and Chemistry International, is listed by the Royal Society of Chemistry and Intute, and was named a member of 33 Wikis, a showcase of the best in wiki-based collaboration.

Education

  • M.S. Curriculum Development and Instructional Technology – University at Albany
  • B.S. Chemistry – University of Hartford

Books & Publications

  • Wikipatterns
    A practical guide to improving productivity and collaboration in your organization.
  • Using Wiki in Education
    10 case studies from education show how to collaboratively build curriculum, guide students’ teamwork, and manage research projects.

Full list of publications in magazines, academic journals, and conference proceedings.

Educational Films

Stewart has produced two films in collaboration with NASA. Seeing the Scientific Light and Skysight let students hear directly from scientists who use spectroscopy in their everyday work. The films have aired on PBS stations and are currently in retail distribution.

Awards and Recognition

  • Award for Excellence in External Fundraising, 2002, University of Hartford
  • NASA Research Citation, 2001, 2002
  • Official Citation from Connecticut Lieutenant Governor, 2001, 2002
  • American Chemical Society Award for Outstanding Accomplishment, 2001
  • Alpha Chi, National Honor Scholarship Society, 2001, University of Hartford
  • Marc. W. Feldmann Memorial Organic Chemistry Award, 1998, University of Hartford

This is one of my talks. Like it? Hire me to speak at your company


BARNRAISING WORKSHOPS
A BarnRaising is a planned event that I use to help teams get started using the wiki. I start by having people look at examples of social software use in organizations to help focus their thinking on how it can help them, then identify specific workflows or business processes they want to improve. During the half-day workshop, the team gets its workspace set-up, structured, and seeded with content directly tied to the uses they've identified, so that when they return to their day-to-day work, the tool is embedded into their day-to-day workflow.


PILOT, POLICY & PATTERNS
I can work with your team to define project scope, assess cultural readiness, create policies and procedures, run a pilot, and manage large-scale deployment. I recommend developing a procedure to handle requests for new workspaces, a scalable naming convention, data retention policy, and careful communication policy. I’ll help you define content and workspace structure, develop templates and procedures for seeding the wiki with content, and migrate information to the wiki from tools that will be deprecated as a result of this project.

Based on our information gathering, we’ll compile a list of people and groups who should be involved in the pilot phase. As their use gets underway, I’ll advise them as needed, assess their progress, and suggest refinements. To prepare for large-scale adoption and use, we’ll analyze usage patterns from pilot groups, identify critical integration and performance issues and recommend solutions. We’ll also capture anecdotes and examples to share with other groups during broader adoption.


RETURN ON ADOPTION (ROA)
I measure success in terms of Return on Adoption (ROA). This means that we take more into account than just the financial investment, and look at metrics that can’t easily be manipulated or give “red herring” results. For example, we'll look at the average number of edits and comments on pages, and based on content types (referential, workflow, project, etc.), and business units, because these directly indicate the level or participation by employees. Trends, or patterns, in these figures over time help to assess the pace of adoption, where usage is most active, and where we need to spend more time guiding people.

PUBLIC SPEAKING
Date Event
March 19 Keynote DocTrain West
March 20 Workshop DocTrain West
June 15 Keynote Web Content 2009
June 18 Panel Sloan-C Symposium
October 14 Keynote Traction User Group
October 19 Featured Speaker WebWorks RoundUp
October 25 WikiFest Session WikiSym 2009
November 2 Invited Speaker Enterprise 2.0 Conf.

CLIENTS
Organizations with whom I've worked:
Adobe
Airbus
AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
Booz | Allen | Hamilton
Brown University
Drexel University
Fidelity Investments
Johns Hopkins University
MARS Information Services
MBF Group Australia
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Queensland University of Technology
Records Management Association of Australasia
Sacred Heart University
Stanford University
Thales Group
The Seed Company