More About Me

My name is Julie Meloni, and I am lousy at talking about myself.

You can get the particulars about my work in general via LinkedIn, and you’ll see that I’ve worked in all things web-enabled from almost the beginning of the web (yes, there was a time before it!). I’ve seen a lot of booms and busts, but I still think we have a long way to go before we’ve Built All the Things.

It’s true that I can build things, and I can build teams, and I can build teams who build things. My preference leans toward the latter, as I’m no longer the fastest coder in the west (I never really was). Many years ago I made the conscious choice to move away from the hands-on building of things and into the architecting/direction/management side of things, because I can provide more value to organizations by creating solid roadmaps and plans, and managing and mentoring groups of people, than I could by simply being a single developer. While I’m not the faster coder in the west, I do think I’m the fastest blocker-clearer in the west, and that’s something.

Although I’ve worked in web application development since 1994, I took a few breaks along the way—for instance, I took some time to warp young minds teach undergraduate courses in composition, technical and professional writing, literature, and digital technology and culture. Once upon a time I wrote some short-form stuff online; you might have seen some of my work in the late 90s version of Wired’s Webmonkey, or within the last few years at The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s ProfHacker blog (here’s a list of the more interesting posts there). Over the years, I’ve also been writing the introductory-level books on web development that you can see on this web site (available in 18 languages, from Arabic to Chinese to Polish and just about everything in between).

These days I spend most of my time working, thinking-about-but-not blogging here, and never anymore tweeting. If it’s warm outside, you can bet I’ll either be camping or wanting to go camping.