The "What": Skills & Projects

Most of this is also linked to from other pages, where it's more in context. But if you're an old-school type, you might also like all the skills and stuff in one spot.

• Publishing cleverness. See the Lonely Planet link.
• Tourism/travel nous, particularly regarding New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, but I've worked on Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and China too.
• Writing
• Editing
• Financial biz
• Project management
• Applying sciencey thinking to unsciencey problems, and helping non-scientists to look at problems scientifically (accuracy versus precision, uncertainty, wibbly wobbly gross profit). Number crunching and data-detective work.
• Problem solving, disaster management, creativity
• Enough sparky experience (courtesy of NZ Electricity) to have a stab at fixing basic electrical appliances (I figure if they're broken anyway, you can't go wrong, tho this has earned me a buzz or two from undischarged capacitors over the years). I can whip a motorbike engine out and put it back in without too many bits left over, and can do most of the maintenance my old Morris Minor needs.
• Looking after chooks (I need to get better at ...erm... euthanasia).
• Creating user-friendly tools and "dashboards" to make people's jobs easier, and help them devote time to the important stuff, not the number crunching
• Using market research, competitive information, destination data, to find out what's really happening, then move from that to what we should be doing.
• Resource/workload modelling and scheduling, for teams that don't fit the mould (commissioning editors; authors)
• Finding new ways of creating and reusing content: "drop in" guides and guidebook cascades on wonky, alternating cycles

• I'm not sure if I can yet claim website design, tho I reckon this site isn't bad for a rank beginner. What do you reckon?
• Putting up weatherboards, putting down decking, home plumbing and various other home reno/repair jobs
• Lots of Media work (TV, radio, print), mostly for New Zealand, Australia and Pacific travel stories.
• Other specific packages and software I can use.