Community Management

Community management has been my passion for over 15 years. As you may have gleaned from the rest of this website, one of my main goals in life is to create safer community spaces for all kinds of people and projects, with a radically inclusive approach that focuses on the safety of those that need it the most.

Every project or organisation worth its salt deserves a high-quality community space to match. All projects are ultimately driven by their users, and it's important to ensure that these users have safe community spaces to hang out, discuss the project and seek support, without having to worry about discrimination, harassment, or other problematic behaviour.

I'm capable of helping your community in the following ways:

• Administrative work, defining spaces and getting them working properly
• Automation work, for example, chat automation via third-party and bespoke bots
• Conflict management, helping people to get along and de-escalating or stopping discussions before they become problematic
• Inclusivity work, helping staff (and users) to be more inclusive of minority communities, and supporting minority users
• Moderation work, boots-on-the-ground moderation and safety work
• Policy work, setting up rules, Codes of Conduct, and other documentation
• Team-based work, leading and supporting other teams, and working with teammates
• Website work, for communities that don't have their own, to aid in the above

For transparency, the following is a list of things I do not have experience with:

• Graphic design work, aside from document creation and basic vectoring
• Marketing work, which some companies like to include under "Community Manager" titles
• Mixed media work, including video production and audio processing

Please note that I reserve the right to turn down offers from groups that I have ethical concerns with – for example, cryptocurrency communities, far-right groups, groups that are known for harassment, companies that don't treat their workers well, organisations that are known to be discriminatory, and so on.

Writing & Editing

Through my long history of community management work, I discovered that I have a love for writing – something that I've had plenty of time and opportunity to work on, and that has proven to be a rather useful skill.

Writing is currently something of a small hobby for me – something I don't just do when needed, but also when I have the time and find a subject worth writing about. Throughout most of my community management work, I've been deeply involved with building a public image for the organisations I've worked with, and I now feel that it's time that I put this experience to wider use.

Some examples of things I've worked on include:

• This website's blog, which has been recreated in various forms over the years
• Non-blog copy for QuiltMC, throughout most of the site
• Project usage documentation, such as this user guide for a Discord bot module that I maintain
• Definition and process documentation, such as this RFC describing Quilt's Community Team
• More long-form content and articles that have yet to be released...

My areas of experience include:

• Technical subjects, such as software and programming
• Social subjects, such as community management and diversity
• Organisational subjects, such as community policies, process documentation and team definitions

While writing is not something I've done professionally (yet), it's something that I have a firm interest in getting into, and I'd welcome remote opportunities in this field.

Smart Home Consultancy

Note: While I'm happy to do this remotely, it'll be difficult or impossible for me to advise on some things (or to source and set up devices for you) if you're not located in (or around) the Killarney area. I'll still do my best, but please bear that in mind before contacting me!

As the world of technology grows, so too does our reliance on it. While some people see this as a concerning trend, my beliefs are to the contrary – I've seen how technology can benefit everyone in their daily lives, both at home and at work, and I believe that everyone can improve their lives using it.

For the most part, when we bring technology into our lives at home, it's what we call "Smart Home Technology". This type of technology includes things like smart lighting and voice assistants, but a lot of people don't realise just how deep things can go – this technology can be used for security, to help you automate your day, or just to keep you on schedule!

The following is a short list of things I can help you with, but it's by no means exhaustive:

• Setting up home networking solutions, like whole-home WiFi
• Creating smart home dashboards
• Setting up central smart home control solutions (like Home Assistant)
• Figuring out ways to improve or automate parts of your life using technology
• Integrating your smart home, so that everything works together
• Setting up home monitoring and security solutions, including camera and alarm systems

This is a very broad ecosystem, and one I'm very happy to dive into. If you're curious about getting started with smartening up your home, please feel free to get in contact!

Programming Work

At some point in their lives, almost every person or business has had a need for a piece of custom software. In today's technology-oriented world, we all make use of software in one way or another – and in a lot of cases, that software doesn't necessarily do what we need, in the ways we need it to.

I have development experience with a wide range of technologies, as someone that's been a relatively prolific programmer for over 15 years. However, I find myself working most comfortably in Kotlin/JVM, on automation projects (such as chat bots), web development projects, and general backend work. I have useful experience with:

• Discord bots and frameworks, including maintaining my own Kotlin framework
• Frontend web development work without SPA frameworks or unnecessary JS, though I do use it when it makes sense
• Web backend work with technologies like KTor, and basic experience with Spring
• API design and integration work, including both library and REST API work
• Database work, including some experience with SQL, but I prefer document-based NoSQL databases like MongoDB
• Designing tools that are friendly to their users, rather than difficult or user-hostile
• Developing software with accessibility in mind
• Quite a few other specific technologies – check my GitHub profile!

If you have a project in mind, please contact me for a chat, and we'll see whether I'm suitable!