christian yates

Interactive strategy, design, content and development.

Contact

843.298.2579 | p.christian.yates@gmail.com

Experience

• 9+ years of developing large-scale Web sites, intranet applications and back-end processes in a high-pressure deadline-oriented enterprise.
• Hands-on experience and management of development with multiple languages and platforms.
• Strategic evaluation of enterprise technology needs, and implementation of solutions to improve user experience, drive revenue and lower costs.

URLs

beaufortgazette.com, islandpacket.com, destination-hiltonheadisland.com, heritage.islandpacket.com, Mom2MomSC.com, christianyates.com, blogsavannah.com, LinkedIn profile

Expertise

• Design of large scale Web sites for maintainability, customer/reader ease of use, search engine optimization.
• Leadership of multidisciplinary teams.
• Development of custom workflow tools, to enable non-technical users to publish complex content to the Web and in print efficiently.
• Selection, management and development of commercial, open source and proprietary content management systems.
• Management of vendor relationships from RFP to training and project go-live.
• Development of proprietary software on multiple platforms, including web-based applications for project management, reporting and publishing tools.
• Installation of large-scale hardware and software systems.
• Expert in interactive design, HTML, CSS, Perl (including mod_perl, CGI, HTML::Mason, Template Toolkit), AppleScript. Unix, Linux, Mac OS X environments, Drupal, other open-source systems.
• Skilled in Javascript, AJAX methodologies, PHP.

Employment History

• Vice President, Interactive Media

  Lowcountry Newspapers, division of The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI)
  Mar 2007-present
  • Guide company vision for interactive media
  • Develop content, advertising and marketing strategies
  • Supervise web site design, usability and standards
  • Architect software development for public-facing and intranet applications
  • Lead interdepartmental teams to develop new online products and services

  Technologies: PHP, Perl, LAMP/SAMP, Sybase, MySQL, Drupal, Javascript, AJAX, analytics, SEO

• Director, Interactive and Information Technology

  Lowcountry Newspapers
  2002-2007
  • Architected development of interactive features and products
  • Planned and implemented strategic IT and Interactive initiatives, balancing needs of different business units within the enterprise
  • Planned technology projects, dealing with vendors, partners and department leaders
  • Managed operational and capital budgets, one and five year plans
  • Spearhead community publishing and multimedia initiatives online
  • Developed interactive applications on open-source frameworks and content management systems for internal and public use
  • Planned and implemented installation of Digital Technology, Inc. integrated advertising and accounting management system (http://www.dtint.com). Supervised multi-departmental implementation team, coordinated project workflow and managed project from RFP and vendor selection to final testing and go-live
  • Implemented VMware, blade server and SAN infrastructure for support of multiple applications and operating systems
  • Key player in design process and systems selection for new state-of-the-art newspaper production facility, including CTP, networking, VOIP systems
  • Develop integrations between legacy systems and to Web-based front ends
  • Created interfaces for prepress operations in Perl, applescript and PHP, streamlining workflows
  • Supervised IT and Interactive staff

  Technologies: Linux, Solaris (9/10), LAMP, Sybase ASE, MySQL, Perl/Mason, PHP, Drupal, Avaya VOIP, Extreme, Cisco IOS/PIX

• New Media Director

  Lowcountry Newspapers
  2000-2002
  • Developed islandpacket.com and beaufortgazette.com on Vignette and McClatchy Interactive Digital Workbench platforms, and grew site traffic from fewer than 500,000 to nearly 3 million monthly page views, 275,000+ monthly unique visitors
  • Developed perl and php based web publishing tools for internal use
  • Managed online advertising sales and production
  • Responsible for all interactive P&L, budgeting, capital planning
  • Directed design and development of all Internet products

  Technologies: Perl/Mason, Tcl, PHP, HTML, CSS

• Web Site Manager

  The Island Packet
  1999-2000
  • Responsible for award-winning design of islandpacket.com newspaper Web site, mylowcountry.com regional portal
  • Managed content development and flow, special projects development, programming in tcl and perl

  Technologies: Perl, Tcl, HTML, CSS, Applescript

Education

Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, 1999

Interests/Current Projects

• Exploring Ruby on Rails, Django, Flex
• Low cost print-to-web with flash, ajax, jquery (link)
• Social media (blogsavannah.com)
• Photography, SEO

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