Ken Hawkins' CV
Ken
Hawkins.
Ken Hawkins.
Web front end lead.
I empathise with people and organisations to help deliver the potential of the web. With developer outreach and content modelling, I work to understand the root cause.
Web front end lead
Since 2015 I've been helping EMBL make a better front end toolkit for life-science websites.
My work is used by more than 250 developers at EMBL across a range of systems from Angular to React, to static sites and CMSs like WordPress and Drupal. My most-frequent tools are CSS (Sass), JavaScript, Eleventy, Lerna, npm, component systems and writing lots of documentation.
I seek out challenges of efficiency and communication.
Professional experience
Web expertise
- Rich understanding of HTML and CSS fundamentals
- CSS (Dart Sass), JavaScript (typically vanilla modules for portability), a component system (Fractal+Gulp+JS modules), distributing (npm+lerna+yarn) and cross-wiring into a system (Eleventy+Nunjucks)
- Component and design system expertise
- Managing geographically distributed projects with GitLab, GitHub, Kanban, Slack and the similar
- Strong content experience: Drupal configuration and development, Eleventy, WordPress, metrics and so on
Structure
- Maximising content for discoverability and context-aware content
- Storytelling through visualisations
- Utilising social media as a tool for content creation, collaboration
- Tooling abstraction for content editors
Leadership
- Governance through triangulating content, actions and goals
- Developer outreach and mentorship
- Stakeholder consultation and expectation management through roadmaps
- Feature prioritisation and sprint-based project planning
- Training and fostering web content creation from the general public to experienced developers
Professional work history
Web Front End Lead
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)
June 2018 β ongoing
Heidelberg, Germany
EMBL is Europeβs flagship laboratory for the life sciences and employees hundreds of developers to deliver online scientific services. We've created reusable front end tooling to speed development, reduce cost and improve UX. It's been especially interesting for the breadth of technology and wide the range of user needs and developer backgrounds.
I lead the creation of this tooling, the Visual Framework, and serve as its lead advocate to help developers and product designers to utilise and implement. I also ensure the Visual Framework adapts to those needs. This is an expansion of my role for the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).
- Grow, evolve legacy projects into pan-EMBL solutions
- Sass, Nunjucks, Lerna, Fractal, npm, yarn, eleventy, component systems and many more
- Information architecture and component tooling for EMBL web content, design systems
- Architect abstracted web content platform, navigation
- Facilitate collaboration between UX, developers and content teams
- Foster design system growth, adoption by coordinating with development leads
Related writing
Major technical tooling and processes: HTML/JS/CSS, Sass, GitHub, GitLab CI, Visual Studio Code, Google Analytics, Gulp, npm, Eleventy, Fractal, Drupal, Continuous integration, Kanban
Web design architect
European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)
July 2015 β June 2018
Cambridge, UK
- Lead information architecture and design tooling for EMBL-EBI web content, design systems
- Facilitate collaboration between UX, developers and content teams
- Foster design system growth, adoption by coordinating with development leads
- Drive for reusable patterns in web interfaces
- Close gap between web analytics and content effectiveness
- Improve intranet information architecture to focus on user activities
Related writing
Major technical tooling and processes: Content modelling and architecture, HTML/JS/CSS, Sass, Adobe Creative Suite, Atom, MapBox, Google Analytics, GitHub, Gulp, npm, Jekyll, Foundation Framework, Drupal, Travis, Continuous integration, Kanban
Web developer and information designer
DRS Technical Solutions
February 2011 β June 2015
Stuttgart, Germany
- Manage user-focused efforts (UX, research, metrics) for company web projects
- Website project lead for a Drupal platform to support more than 150,000 user accounts, provide e-commerce tools
- Information architecture and infographics for business proposals, strategic planning
- Numerous intranet-style websites to manage contacts, resumes, documents by consuming JSON and XML feeds for custom dashboards and processing
- Create and implement software projects with multi-company team members in the U.S., Europe and Middle East
Major technical tooling: Drupal, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bitbucket, Agile, Amazon EC2, Route 53, Google Analytics
Technical and editorial lead
TheDigitel
May 2008 β February 2011
South Carolina, USA
I co-founded TheDigitel.com way back in 2009 to help advance newspaper methodology in the age of websites. This broke down barriers in collaborating with the public and created a more efficient and highly-networked data model of hyperlocal news.
- Lead team of eight staff and an array of freelancers and volunteers to report, market and implement web features
- Lead community editor outreach with physical, online, podcast events
- Help our students grow through our intern partnership with the local college
- Pioneer use of Twitter hashtags for local media community reporting
- Dynamic Advertising: a new advertising model powered by social media
- Speak at events for the creative community about code, reporting, startups
- Refine Drupal UX, content editing experience for community collaboration with staff editors
- Raise funding, manage investors, expand TheDigitel to three cities
Major technical tooling: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Drupal, LAMP hosting optimisation, daily briefing newsletter automations, reverse proxy caching, Adobe Creative Suite, Google Analytics, Google G Suite admin, A/B testing, Google AdSense and AdWords, podcasting
Graphics reporter
The Post and Courier
March 2006 - May 2008
South Carolina, USA
- Newspaper infographic design and reporting
- Produce daily deadline-driven information graphics based on news reports
- Create interactive HTML and Flash information graphics for the Web
- Process geographic data to create maps (GIS)
- Design and produce newspaper pages
- Photo management and copy editing
Major technical tooling: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat, QuarkXPress, Flash, ArcGIS, Modo 3D modelling, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Mac OS
Graphics reporter
The Beaufort Gazette
May 2003 - March 2006
South Carolina, USA
- Newspaper infographic and page design
- Produce daily deadline-driven information graphics based on news reports
- Help lead the visual design of newspaper pages
- Work to educate staff on photo cropping, type kerning, general principles of visual structure and directing the reader's focus
Major technical tooling: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat, QuarkXPress, Mac OS
Production manager
The Daily Journal
May 2000 - April 2003
South Carolina, USA
- Newspaper pre-press production, advertising
- Pre-flight and technical management of daily newspaper pre-press production
- Lead production of in-house creatives for advertising clients
- Manage pre-press team of 4 individuals
Major technical tooling: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, QuarkXPress, Mac OS
Education, speaking
- Clemson University, Bachelor of Science in Graphic Communications, May 2003
- Charleston Drupal meet-up and co-working
- Co-founder of Fuse843 networking and business development group
- Charleston PechaKucha, Charleston Drupal user group, Create South conference, Startup Stuttgart, various others