Working remotely from my home office in suburban Minneapolis, MN, I partner with designers and agencies to provide front-end web development and Craft CMS integration.
Self-employed and well-versed in many forms of abbreviational geekery, I've been writing HTML for almost 20 years. A proponent of content strategy and outstanding user experience, I groove on all things well-designed.
Most of my day to day work is spent in the front-end (HTML5/CSS3/jQuery) and CMS implementation (new projects with Craft CMS / legacy support of ExpressionEngine), but I understand relational databases, know my way around WHM/cPanel, can wrangle mod_rewrite, have authored many a primitive CRUD in the LAMP stack, setup a few droplets on DigitalOcean, worked extensively with FlightAware, Flickr, and Twilio's APIs, yadda yadda yadda.
I was born in Minneapolis, grew up in Northfield, MN, and dreamt about becoming a meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma. After the mathematical demands of junior year atmospheric physics proved insurmountable, I ended up graduating with a BS in Geography. Having been employed more or less as a student web developer for my entire time at OU, I applied (and was hired) to be a real one before graduating and moving back to the Upper Midwest in 2008. After five years in a small web development shop and the birth of Kid 2, I jumped into the world of self-employment, and have been doing that ever since.
Current projects will be keeping me pretty busy through July or so. If you're an agency or designer, not a recruiter, and have an interesting new Craft CMS project to pitch, I'm all ears - please reach out at 612-845-9880 or nick@ottergoose.com.
July 2013 - Present; Burnsville, MN
Build new websites with Craft CMS; support old ones built with ExpressionEngine. Started JetTip, a flight tracking/alert service for aviation enthusiasts.
February 2008 - July 2013; Woodbury, MN
Collaborate with designers and clients to build websites powered by ExpressionEngine.
February 2006 - April 2008; Norman, OK
Develop web platforms for analyzing location suitability of surface weather observation systems and another for anglers to report notable sports fish catches.
May 2005 - April 2008; Norman, OK
Process global climate model data for scientific analysis of severe weather climatology in the United States.
October 2003 - May 2005; Norman, OK
Build a CMS for librarians; learn a lot about web development from really smart people.