It’s been a looooong time since I’ve blogged, and I’m finally dusting this thing off and getting back to it.

Lots of changes have happened. Most notably, I’ve changed jobs. Formerly doing information architecture and content management consulting, I’ve sidestepped fields slightly into web analytics at another consulting firm, LunaMetrics, also here in Pittsburgh.

Web analytics is all about measuring what people are actually doing on websites. You can’t create a good site without relying on information architecture best practices (my old role), but you also don’t really know a site is working as well as it could or should without measurement and experimentation (my new one). My role is again a mix of technical and business knowledge. I have to be able to tweak JavaScript tracking code, but I also need to be able to elicit the goals of a website and interpret the analytics to understand what that means to the business behind it. And, I get to play with numbers, which is fun (I was a math major, after all).

So far, I’m very excited. I like learning new stuff, so I’ve been immersed in web analytics blogs and books, and learning Google Analytics (GA), since we’re a GA Authorized Consultant. Last week we did a one-day training in NYC for about 70 people, where I got to speak about creating a data-driven culture at your company. (The challenges of changing company cultures I am all too familiar with from my previous work.)

So I’m sure you’ll hear more on this blog about web analytics. I also am far, far behind on a post I started writing ages ago about mashups, which I’ll be finishing soon, and I have a handful of other things I’m itching to write about too. It’s been a long dry spell of blogging, but I’m back. Hmm… this place could probably use a redesign, too…

Jessamyn tagged me with the (seemingly totally unavoidable) “5 things you don’t know about me” meme. I really hate bloggy, email-y, chain-letter-y things… but who can say no to Jessamyn? So, with no further delay:

1. I am familiar with more than half the seasons of the Real World, though I’m not watching The Real World: Denver (this season) because I don’t have MTV any more. I have also had other guilty addictions to reality TV, although currently there’s only Wife Swap. (Watch it. It’s about developing understanding across classes and cultures. Or something. Really.)
2. Someday, I want to design and build my own house. Other things I would like to build: a boat. A big wooden one, with sails.
3. I have never broken a bone. (None of mine, and no one else’s either. Except turkey wishbones at Thanksgiving.)
4. I sometimes burst into song when I’m home alone. Loudly, and with feeling. This time of year, mostly Bing Crosby tunes. The cat thinks I’m a little nuts, but I don’t mind.
5. If I had been a girl, my parents were going to name me Amanda.

I hate to pass this on, but I’m sure if I don’t a tree will fall on my car or I will be forced to surrender my firstborn child to a mysterious dwarf. Or something. So, in honor of Time magazine’s person of the year, I tag… YOU. Enjoy.

I realized I’ve never really talked much about what I do and where I work on this blog.

I’m an Information Architect* at a consulting firm in Pittsburgh that employs about 20 people. Our specialty is streamlining business processes that involve information, including things like policies and procedures, product documentation, and portal design. The company has been around since 1989, when it started as a technical writing firm. In the 90’s with the advent of knowledge management, the company got involved with wider issues around organizing information, such as portals and intranets.

I’ve worked here since 2003, and my job duties involve all parts of the information life cycle. On some projects, I’m essentially a technical writer: I gather source materials, interview subject matter experts, and write documents like procedures or user manuals. I’m also the “techie guy”, and much of my work involves designing efficient publishing processes that can take advantage of reusable information and publish it in many formats. Much of our documentation is based on XML formats that can be flexibly repurposed into, e.g., a print manual, online help, training slides, web-based interactive training, and so on. And finally, we help businesses organize and manage all this information as well, helping them understand their needs for content management systems, portals, intranets, etc., and how to integrate those tools into their ways of doing business.

So that’s what I do. It takes a broad range of skills, from technical writing, to indexing and classification, to thinking about usability and accessibility, to markup and scripting, to systems administration. I can’t say I’m especially good at many of those, but I muddle through somehow.

*I’m still not sure I really know what that means, but it looks pretty on my business card.

There’s currently a lot of discussion about techie women in librarianship (which now has far too long a string of episodes for me to sort out and link here, but somebody should collect them all together in some appropriate spot: Lazyweb?). Kudos to Karen Schneider for her recent post on LGBT librarians. I’ve felt some kinship in the discussion of women in technology librarianship, but I didn’t really feel I had enough library experience to talk about it coherently. Karen’s done a good job pointing out the similarities and differences in relating to the techie library world being LGBT vs. being a woman or of color (namely, it’s pretty obvious that someone is a woman, but LGBT-ness isn’t very visible). She doesn’t really have any answers, and I don’t either, but her observations are good.

I noticed this myself about a year or so ago, but someone else just brought it to my attention again. I am, apparently, a character in some kind of Christian thriller:

Jonathan Weber, Harvard professor and biblical scholar, is looking forward to a sabbatical year on an archaeological dig in Israel. But a spectacular discovery-a skeleton almost 2,000 years old!-will either shed light on the life of Jesus Christ or be the death rattle of the Christian faith. Meanwhile, Weber’s interest in Shannon Jennings, daughter of the dig’s director, proves to be an exciting complication.

Delving into the worlds of science, archeology, politics, and religion, this fast-paced thriller explores the tension between doubt and faith and one man’s determination to find the truth-no matter what the cost.

I just took a stupid career quiz on MSN: Do you love your job? In the tradition of all stupid quizzes, it doesn’t really tell you anything you don’t already know, or couldn’t figure out on your own with a little consideration.

I was a mixture of D’s and C’s, with a B or two thrown in (the “Answer Key” is at the bottom). Basically, if Goldilocks is an A, she likes her job too much; a B, she doesn’t like it at all; a C, she likes it just right. D… well, D is what I’m most interested in, because it’s where I identify most closely. Here’s a little of what it says:

D: It’s the first letter in “dilettante,” which is what you tend to be when it comes to your professional life. You are most likely ambitious and multitalented, but have trouble settling down because it means foregoing other choices. This isn’t necessarily a bad quality — many people change careers several times throughout their lives — but you should try to make sure these switches in direction are based on careful thought and consideration rather than impulse.

This is so me. I was a scientist who got burned out on grad school, so I quit and completely reinvented my resume and started a career as a technical writer. (File this under: Benefits of a liberal arts education.) Now I feel like I’ve pretty much mastered all the things I do in my job, and I’m ready for something new, so I’ve applied to go to library school.

I start to have a problem with what the rest of the description says, however:

Perhaps you’re reluctant to commit to one job or career because you haven’t prioritized your goals. Since it’s impossible to do everything, try narrowing your options by assessing your talents and preferences. Ask basic questions – do I like to work with people or am I happier with solitary pursuits? Do I have a knack for mathematics, science, languages, music, art or sales? Could my interest in a particular field lead to a career or merely a hobby? Can I make money at this? Do I want to do this work 40 or more hours a week? Finding the answers to these questions is the first step toward committing to a career choice.

Well thank you, MSN content-creation monkey, for so neatly mapping things out for me. Now my life is complete.

Seriously, who says I have to “commit to a career choice”? I just don’t really think there’s any single career that’s for me. I know it’s normal for people to change careers once or twice (and change jobs many times), but my life is shaping into changing my career every couple of years or so. And that’s OK with me. (For K folks, see the article in the last Lux Esto about alumni changing careers. I swear that K’s quarters ruined me for anything lasting longer than 10 weeks, and apparently I’m not alone in this feeling.) I think an MLS is also a super idea at this point, because (1) I’d love to go back to school about now, and (2) it’s the handyman equivalent of the academic world, a sort of jack-of-all-trades with information, which I feel will serve me well in lots of careers down the road, whatever they may be.

Yeah, I like this career-changing-every-so-often track. I imagine by the time I “retire” I will have been a climate scientist, a technical writer, a librarian, a car mechanic, an artist, and a fry-cook on Venus, and eight other things. All of which sound like a lot of fun, at least for a couple of years. “[I]t’s impossible to do everything”? My ass.