Sample Portfolio

Rackspace Blog

I wrote more than 50 posts for the Rackspace blog over my almost 5 years with the company, all on a volunteer basis. The unofficial motto of the Community and Social teams was “#BeHelpful.” I found I could best be helpful by writing down what worked for other customers, sharing it with a larger audience.

• Tips To Steer Your Startup To SXSW Success - My first piece for Rackspace. In March of 2013, there were few events that would throw as much traffic at your startup’s app as South by Southwest. I wrote Rackspace’s guide to surviving that spike.
• How O’Reilly Media Uses Containers – An Office Hours Hangout Recap - I conducted many customer interviews, including this one with Andrew Odewahn, CTO at O’Reilly Media.

Rackspace Community

As a Community Manager at Rackspace, I took a proactive approach to our customer success content. Many of the guides and resources I created were intended for our newest customers. My firm belief is that the first few weeks with a new customer determine how long they’ll be a customer, and so much of my content was written to help get the newest customers ready for success.

• Rackspace Cloud Getting Started Guide - A collection of best practices for the newest customers.
• Tips for a Successful Migration to Rackspace - Most of our customers were switching existing projects from another host. This 2 part guide helped not only new customers, but also prospective customers, feel confident in migrating their applications to Rackspace.
• What to do if Webmail is not available - Sometimes the best instructions are what not to do when things go wrong.
• How to Thrive on Black Friday - Beyond how to content, we created content designed to help customers achieve their business goals when it mattered most.

My Blog

My personal blog has morphed a bit through the years. Recently, I’ve been writing helpful tips for my friends and family. I try to find a way to document and capture the things that I think will help others.

• How to make Outlook for Mac act like Google Inbox - I use Inbox by Google for my personal email, but I used Outlook for Mac at work. I wanted to replicate some of the useful features of Inbox in Outlook. I found a way to make a few of them work, then shared my secrets with anyone else who might be interested.
• Slack is the amplifier, not the problem - In response to a lively social media discussion, I collected my thoughts on behavioral vs technical issues with the popular communications app, Slack.

Beer Reviews

I’ve been known to enjoy a tasty beverage or two, and recently San Antonio Flavor has given me the opportunity to share reviews for local craft beers. A few of my favorites:

• Freetail’s Oktoberfiesta: South TX Take on a Classic German Beer
• Ranger Creek San Antonio Lager: Ode to SA in a Can
• Branchline Brewing’s Silver and Black IPA: San Antonio Beers