Initially, I managed a shift of CNN Interactive’s web engineers and coordinated with writers the publishing of news stories and the associated graphics or videos. Later, I was promoted to managing the development and creation of special projects such as the Spanish and Portuguese version of CNN.com. I was also involved in promotional efforts to drive viewers from online to on-air and vice-versa.

A few random memories…
Near the anchor’s locker room was a small room/closet where the online team created CNN.com. At the time, the primary focus was updating Compuserve and Prodigy, the Internet site was a small side project. Everybody used a a dial modem to get connected, the VP checked the site on a 14.4k modem (which was the average speed back then).

Shifts/shift meetings – the day was broken up into several shifts, there was a editorial producer and webmaster in charge of the shift and holding meetings to discuss what news would be published during the shift. Deciding T1, T2, T3, important news above the fold – the shift revolved around managing the Top story 1 or T1 which was the main story and then deciding the other two. Whiteboard and yellow sticky workflow – publishing a story was extremely efficient. The stories were written on a whiteboard during the shift meeting. The authors and editors would write the story name on a yellow sticky, which was passed to the web engineers to code, then to the webmaster to publish, then to the producer to review. It was then checked off of the whiteboard.

Associated Press stories needed to be removed after a certain number of days, there was a small application that removed those articles, it was called The Angel of Death. Stories were published to the millions of internet viewers by dropping an HTML file on a small script that simply put the file on the live servers, it was a very manual process since content management systems were not advanced enough at the time to provide an easier way of publishing.

The editorial producer would always look at the competition to see who published the latest breaking news story first.

The 1996 election brought down most of the servers and came close to crashing the entire site, the system administrators did a great job of plugging in additional machines.

AT&T U-Verse – Interactive U-Bar  (Demo Link)

AT&T U-Verse TV (a 100 percent IP-based television service) brings some of the most dynamic and feature-rich services to its users with its IP technology. Through AT&T U-verse, consumers can now benefit from integrated services that converge across the three screens they value the most: the TV, the PC and the wireless phone. U-Bar is one of those U-Verse services that offers a great convergence experience.

AT&T U-bar is the Interactive TV application that shows customized weather, sports, stocks, and traffic information all at the touch of one button, without interrupting the current program. Users can launch the application from their remote control by just pressing the “Go Interactive” button. AT&T High Speed Internet subscribers can personalize the U-bar from the AT&T portal to display weather at multiple locations, your personal stock portfolio, scores for your favorite sports teams and local traffic information.

My role on the U-bar project included writing up the requirements, managing the team, providing creative direction and coordinating with both AT&T and Yahoo! teams to release the product.

Yahoo! Fantasy Football Application

During the NFL season users can track their Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football team from within the U-bar. They can create their own league or join an established league and view their team’s results updated as the games are played.

AT&T Press Release


Yahoo! College Basketball Brackets Application (Demo Link)

Users can view tournament brackets, their personalized completed bracket, game summaries and box scores, and video clips of game analysis and commentary.

AT&T U-connect article

I was responsible for gathering requirements from stakeholders, managing the development team, directing creative efforts and providing strategic direction to Florida’s CIO and her web team.

The coolest part of this project was attending a party at the governor’s mansion and hanging out with then Governor Jeb Bush. The most rewarding aspect of the project was creating a small tool that allowed the web management team to quickly post Amber Alert messages about missing or abducted children.

You can visit the site at www.myflorida.com.