Career Theme

My career has been a mixture of formal education, start up businesses and a lot of trial and error as new technologies exploded onto the scene. As old world industries and professions were trying to catch up, one was forced into the role of “troubleshooter” in what seemed like uncharted territory. I would be hired for one role and within a short period of time I had to adapt to a new role to address core problems.

Technology made everything seem new. And so there were battles between the new “way” and pre-Internet fundamentals. While this “teething” was going on, adapting to leadership and problem solving challenges meant being a “jack of all trades” (and keeping a right-left brain balance). They wanted us to be bold and disruptive ("But get it done in an organized manner, ung-kay?"). Traditional project management practices too were being challenged by the agile flavour du jour. To meet this challenge I developed a more adaptable leadership role called a “producer.” This role would balance the tasks, risks and objectives of the project while driving the creative and conceptual heart of the product.

I would continue to integrate the producer model throughout my foundation years.

Career Overview

The transition to digital media technology after a brief career in direct marketing as a direct mail copywriter. The Web was in full swing and my techno-curiosity in database marketing sent me in search of a digital education. After graduating, I landed in the online learning space as a founding member of the educational environment, Brainium. Initially hired as a production generalist, I was soon promoted to production manager to put in better processes to manage the large volume of work. I developed a rights management system and an intranet-based task-management system using MS-Project, Cold Fusion and ODBC.

Stratford Internet Technologies recruited me as a project manager for a new project. There were problems from day one. The project in question was a cluster of ideas without much heart and soul or a clear business objective. There was no real definable product; hence there was no real definable project to manage. It was then I started from scratch building a new team switching from a proverbial clipboard to an actual whiteboard as a creative director. The result was a lifestyles division called Avenue Zero Inc that would provide information, e-commerce and entertainment to young urban dwellers through convergent media. Stratford Internet was going to abandon its agency model and go all in on Avenue Zero. And then the dot com meltdown hit in 2000.

With my educational and production background, I returned to the Vancouver Film School (VFS) as a Senior Instructor. I was initially approached by VFS to be a full time project management mentor to students. Instead, I spent over 100 hours of my own time to create and lead the Client Group Project program. This practicum program provided students experience working with real clients, solving real problems, in a dedicated project space. I taught project management and production process, mentored students, and facilitated over 30 projects: websites, CD-ROMs, DVDs, physical kiosks, non-linear stories, productivity tools (e.g. intranet publishing system; project management system) etc.

I moved on to Riptown Media on the reputation of my "producer” approach to user experience which I developed further while at VFS. However, like Stratford, Riptown was not ready. They did not have the foundation to put a proper producer system in place. I spent the first year putting proper project management, issue tracking and release management programs in place as production manager. The structure (org chart ) and processes (case study and process flow) in place would allow the design team to deal with a massive volume of work for an ever expanding brand called Bodog.com. Half way through my tenure I was promoted to head the design team which I later relabelled User Experience. This rebranding was designed to bring UX professionals and business people together in a common cause to meet the goals of the end user. Overall, I took a ragtag team of 10 and turned into a very diverse team of 30+. The team wasn’t just composed of aesthetic designers but front-end developers, UX analysts, usability researchers and testers, content strategists and eventually producers that would lead the UX charge for a half dozen product channels.

As Riptown was to move its operations to Montreal, I parted ways and embarked on a new business enterprise. It started with my experience in developing ideation techniques particularly in the area of lateral thinking. It was from this experience that I conceptualized a new enterprise called Landing Gear centered on products and services to improve creative brainstorming as a pathway to innovation with value. I designed the service to allow organizations to be more effective in developing innovations, developed & implemented a workshop that trains facilitators to conduct proper brainstorms, designed a prototype for an online multi-user brainstorming service (StormQuick) and tested behavioural techniques as a method to evaluate brainstorming participants. This research led to a model for user-centred design professionals which I call ReCITE. It also led to a mobile framework called SAMURAI.

When the entrepreneurial activities ran their respective courses, I sought the advice of a career counsellor in determining my next move. I was so impressed with careers as a field of study, I completed 720 hours of training toward a Career Development Practitioner certification. Once completed, I had the difficult choice of becoming a practitioner or using the knowledge to develop new business ideas. I chose the latter.

Returning to the technology world, I worked with a family member on a new assessment instrument called Workstyle. There were many plans with this tool such as using it to help marketing communications craft better product messaging and/or helping employers hire better. Naturally, with my years of experience as a hiring manager and my new emphasis on taking an interest in people’s careers, Workstyle inspired me to develop Hiremony - empowering hiring managers to hire better without relying on HR or Recruiters. In not being able to secure a satisfactory arrangement to use Workstyle, I literally moved on and relocated to my native Ottawa.

Since 2015, my main focus has been creating 2D digital content for Facebook ads, concept pitches and producing content for various entrepreneurial and personal projects. One of these personal projects is a non-for-profit concept called Sagebrite. Please continue to explore this and more of my projects at johnkeyes.ca.

I am a graduate of Carleton University, the Vancouver Film School’s Digital Design (nee Interactive Media) program, UBC’s PMI-endorsed Project Management program and have a Diploma in Employment Counselling from Cornerstone International Community College.

Downloads

Riptown UX Team Structure

Riptown UX Process Flow Case Study

Riptown UX Process Flow Case Study - Appendices