The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

I started with PCMI in February of 2024 as a Contract to Hire role4 for three months.

However, after 1 month, I was brought in as a full-time employee as the Curriculum Manager.

I was the third training employee to be brought in for 2024, as they were not sure as to what exactly they wanted.

I immediately began working on a couple of CBT courses for all employees to take, using Articulate Storyline 360. One was an introduction to the Company that would be assigned to all employees and as part of the New Employee Orientation. The other was a 50-question exam on industry terminology.

Next up was a course to understand the SaaS Product from the Customer's perspective. This course was also assigned to all employees and added to the New Hire Orientation training.

After that I began working on a certification program for all Business Analysts, which ended up being 16 CBT courses. I released those courses for assignment 3 months later.

I then researched and found an LMS through Articulate Reach 360, whereby those 16 courses can be assigned to PCMI's Customer base.

I was also responsible for the online Knowledge Base website for Customers.

Once again, for the third time in 12 months, the company changed direction and eliminated the only training position as of the end of 2024.

After one year as a contractor, in August of 2016, I accepted a full time position with Abbott as a Senior Instructional Designer, working for the Corporate Quality division. While there, I developed mostly interactive computer-based training modules (CBTs) using Articulate Storyline  360. These courses received high praise from both management and end users. I also created several processes, procedures, checklists, and job aides. These ensured the entire team was following the same processes, using the same procedures, and documenting the same steps for each course created or updated. I mentored two other developers while there. I also created several micro learning CBTs that used a more modern, iconic design.

At the start of 2022, I had accepted a new position in a divisional Quality organization, Abbott Rapid Diagnostics (ARDx) with a direct report. I brought over the same documents I had previously created and modified them for divisional use and modified them to suit the new division.

I created all the process and procedure documentation that would be used for all curriculum development in this division.

I created many quality courses, including software demonstrations for a Complaint Management System. I worked directly with the subject-matter experts to create 16 high-quality CBTs that received praises from management and users of the courses.

I also was responsible for the assignment of the courses in the Cornerstone LMS.

I introduced the use of course numbering to the division, and created a database to track the development progress and course numbering.

I was also tasked with creating another database that was used to compile training requirements for individuals by their role, then report it out my manager. An example is shown below.

This database also tracked job descriptions, which made them all formatted consistently. A Job Description is also shown below. My position was eliminated in October of 2023.

When my Access Engineer role finally ended with ICONMA, I went back into Instructional Design, working for Abbott Labs as a contractor with Collabera. My original contract was scheduled to end on December 31st of 2015, but was extended into March of 2016. While there, I was responsible for the development of all documentation, eLearning, and online help for an upcoming web-based product. I used tools such as Adobe FrameMaker, Word, Help and Manual, and Articulate Storyline 2. This role was the most challenging role I had accepted to take on, as I was required to complete my deliverables two full months before the product was released. This was due to the localization of most of the deliverables in five other languages. The toughest part was the screenshots, as the product was continuously changing. Delivery of the five languages was fortunately not due until the product was released. Due to the time involved in getting the documents translated and approved, there was no way to get this done much before release. And because of product delays, I was also delayed, which is why I was extended. 

 TekSystems ended at in February of 2014. In June of that same year, I was hired in my very first contract as a MS Access Developer! I had always loved working with Access, and I always built very nice databases to support my roles. But to actually get paid to build them was like my own little slice of Heaven! I was Hired by ICONMA to develop a database for a large health insurance company out of Southfield, Michigan. It was originally for 90 days, but three databases later, it was still going strong after a year and a half, albeit down times in between database development.  

After working at Clipper, I contacted my old boss back at State Farm, who just happened to have one opening for a communications BA. So I contacted TekSystems, who had the position, and started working three weeks later.
Initially, I created standard communications, such as announcements and articles. But after about three months, I was once again assigned to project work as an analytics BA, doing things like conducting needs assessments performing risk analyses project coordination, and, of course, communications.
That all changed when I was assigned to a huge training project, and was finally back in the saddle. After being there for four months, I was finally developing training. My first project was to lead a team in the development of 25 CBTs on Verint, and I only had 8 weeks to get them done! They used Adobe Presenter, which I had never used. But after an hour, I was building courses. Since Verint is a software tool, I convinced everyone to also allow me to use Adobe Captivate, so I could build in some demos with the training.
After the Verint project, I move over to end user training for all of the enterprise. I built several courses on the Cisco IP phones, and another tool called Exony.
About a year later, I moved over to the support side and built online curriculum for the support teams on the Cisco infrastructure and hardware, such as VOIP 101 and VOIP 102, CDP, PDP, ICP CUCM, and CUC. During the entire time on this project, I recorded my own voice-overs for my training, as well as for many other courses.
When that project ended, I was transferred to the company's Learning and Development department, where I continue to develop training and record voice-overs until February of 2014.

I went to work for Clipper after my contract with Ciber ended. Clipper was quite a challenge, in that I had to drive 230 miles each way, each week. It was also challenging due to the fact that the role was to lead a brand new team of developers, and take over development that the existing instructors had previously done. This left some with scars, wondering why we needed to be there. It also came with the difficulty of having them as your SMEs.
But once again, it gave me the opportunity to build the policies and procedures for development. I once again used my Access skills to create a Training Management system that tracked every detail of a course.

Clipper was my first time with a manufacturing company too. We had a small hallway, just off the manufacturing floor, which, at times, was very noisy, and difficult to concentrate. It reminded me of being in the electronic shop in the Air Force - take of all watches and jewelry, have hearing protection with you at all times, wear safety shoes and goggles anytime you enter the floor. Sound familiar?
Anyway, safety training became my area of expertise, aside from management. This was another challenge, as it was my first exposure to building OSHA required safety courses. I built plenty of safety courses that came with graded tests. Each employee that was required to take them had to pass the test to receive credit. About a quarter of the courses were required by OSHA, with annual recertification. The rest were required by Clipper, with annual refreshers.

While working with the safety team, I discovered that they did not have a documented field training program. They just delivered the training, then provided a printout of the student's completion. But there was no list of objectives, assessments, anything that would show a court of law, exactly what the student was training on, in case of an accident.
So I built them an OJT program, documenting all of the requirements, a checklist for the instructor on the topics that had to be covered and a standardized assessment form that also listed each requirement, and had to be checked off by the instructor and the student, certifying that the student understood what he was trained on.

I had an excellent team of experienced developers and we worked very well together.
One of them spearheaded the implementation of a new LMS using Moodle.
Working with the LMS Administrator and a contracted PHP resource, they were able to turn it on after a week of development!
Once that was up, I contracted with Skillsoft to bring in about 150 soft skills courses, like listening leading teams, teambuilding, etc., as well as PMP and CCNA.
I also built an Access front end to connect to the Moodle MySQL database, and print out professional-looking student transcripts.

While that was going on, another member of my team was assigned to fire off a new Six Sigma program tailored for Clipper, using a purchased SSGB template.

I also was able to travel on a regular basis to Santa Barbara, California, where the company's headquarters were. I would fly out there on a regular basis to meet with Human Resources, Travel, and Engineering, to discuss their training needs. These connections became critical when the company was purchased by a conglomerate, and I had to quickly create an ethics course, based off of their existing course. I worked very close with Clipper's leadership and get it built in a week. Everybody loved it, including our new owners.
We also started to communicate with our new owner's other acquisitions. It wasn't long before we realized that we were the only company that had a unified training team. The more we investigated, the more we realized our time was limited.
After reaching my 2-year anniversary, and on my 50th birthday, the entire training department was released, except for one instructor. A few months later, the entire company shut down. Back to job searching again. Yay for me...

 While living in California, I was contacted by Ciber to work in Bloomington, IL as an Organizational Development Specialist for State Farm Insurance. My wife and I had already discussed leaving California for a more family-oriented part of the country. Since I was raised in Upper Michigan and also spent time in Omaha, I like the Midwestern lifestyle. We already had out home sold and we were just waiting on a final close date, so it wasn't an issue for us. After receiving the offer, I immediately began making arrangements for the move.
When we arrived, we were put up in a Hotel for 30 days by Ciber, and that first weekend we were out house-shopping.
Ciber had hired me to work as a contractor at State Farm Insurance. My job was to be a member of various project teams and perform all requirements for training, communication, technical writing/editing, and organizational change. For training, State Farm followed the CEP process which I didn't know, so I was allowed to use ISD. After doing some research, I found that CET was nothing more than a watered-down version of ISD that can be taught in a month-long class.
For Change Management, they followed the ADKAR methodology by Prosci. I didn't know that one either, but I was given a book to read. I learned it is very similar to ISD, since ISD (the real ISD), includes change management in all of the ADDIE steps anyway. ADKAR just minimizes the impact of training as a small part of the process and puts for emphasis in acceptance. But the tools used are the same, just different names.
During the year I was there, I worked on more than 2 dozen projects, developing hundreds of communications, news articles and courses, both ILT and ELT/WBT. I was really enjoying myself, as each project was different, and I was always learning new things.
But being a contractor is definitely different than being an employee. I learned very quickly that I was only there, to provide my expert opinion and recommendations, and not there to make decisions. This did cause me some initial grief, but I was able to quickly adapt.
Unfortunately for me, the recession also caught up with the insurance industry, as unemployed people began to cancel policies, reduce coverage, and cash in life insurance policies. State Farm was forced to temporarily suspend many of their technology projects. This affected thousands of workers, both internal and external. As the internals would lose their work, they were given the work that was assigned to externals. They began cancelling contracts, and after about 4 months, I lost mine. But two and a half years later, I returned to work for the same boss, but with a different vendor. 

I came to Ariba because of my Instructional Design skills and database skills. I was assigned to the reporting functions as the Educational SME. I began creating instructor-led training on Ariba Analysis, which involved decision trees, XML, SQL, Spreadsheets, and pivot tables. After a year, I had everything caught up and I was asked to take over the web-based training from a younger ID that wasn't making very much progress. I was given Adobe Captivate v2, which was Adobe's first release of the product after buying out Macromedia, who had released Captivate v1. I was asked to present a sample course in a week that would be presented to the VP of consulting, but after spending a couple hours learning the tool, I actually produced a 10 minute sample course the next day. I had created one of my project management databases, so I did the demo on how to use it. They loved it, and I spent the next 2 years developing and maintaining their entire online curriculum offering.
However, the recession hit Ariba as companies reduced their spending or went belly-up, and since my courses were free to customers and didn't bring in any cash, I was released and all online curriculum development was halted.
Years later, I was contacted and asked to come back on a temporary basis to help them with their customer's training. Over the next two years, I was brought back in three times, each about 3-4 months, to develop online training that was branded for each specific customer. I did this on evenings and weekends, averaging 30 hours each week. 

After being unemployed for a couple of months, I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere without a college degree, and my two AS's didn't count. This was frustrating. 10 years' experience meant nothing without a degree. So I decided I was going to have to return to my Air Force Electronics roots.
I accepted a position at Comcast as a technician level 1. I went from making $85,000/year to $34,000/year. But I was able to supplement that with overtime and sales commissions, bringing it up to about $60,000/yr.
I really enjoyed the freedom of being a technician. You're basically your own boss. You pick up your work package in the morning, then head out the door. For someone as dedicated as me, the daily route was never enough. They would give each of us 12-14 jobs each day, and I would usually pick up 10-15 more before the day was out. The only thing bad about working there was that several of the other techs didn't have the same dedication as I did. I was able to repair many customers' cable television problems that the previous technicians were unable to solve.
I was also the leader in sales. Having a sales background really helped me spot opportunities for upgrades or conversions. Many of them came from cancellation requests, where the customer was fed up with the cable problems. Instead of disconnecting them, I would fix their problem, then sell them back the service. My sales background goes way back to when I was around 10 years old. To earn money, I started selling flower and vegetable seed to neighbors. I then moved up to greeting cards, trinkets, and the Grit (publication). When I was old enough, I delivered newspapers and sold new subscriptions.
Years later, while in the Air Force, I had a part-time job as a telemarketer, where I was their top seller for 4 quarters. A few years later I took a part-time job at Sears, selling computers and small appliances. I was once again their top salesperson for 3 of the 4 quarters that I worked there.
Anyway, back to Comcast. Because of my selling, I was offered a position in the office, developing sales training for the techs. I would travel to the other offices in the region once a month, providing sales statistics and pointers. I would also do a ride-along with any tech that had trouble selling. Most of the time, it was simply because they were too shy. So I would go with them and talk to the customers. Any sales I made were given to the tech, along with the commission.
I also created a super-powerful Access database. Comcast employed to girls to manage all of the commissions for all three sales areas: technicians, store employees, and sales associates. These two girls worked full time, extracting data from a mainframe, then creating spreadsheets for each person. This process was very inaccurate.
In a matter of a month, I built a database that did the same thing, but with 100% accuracy, and only an hour's time!
It was loaded with sales rules, ensuring the correct sales codes (discounts) were being offered and the right times and by the right teams. It would turn out a report of all anomalies. This had the unfortunate consequence of getting a few guys fired for consistently abusing discount code to make sales. After building this, I received the Employee of the Quarter award.
I created a second database that was simpler in design. This one imported address information, then parse it out by sales routes. The Sales Supervisor would then assign the data to the Sales Team, including all associated sales metrics.
Each sales person would then log into the system and print out their sales sheets on a weekly basis. Each day, the salespersons would log in and update their sales into the system, providing the Supervisor for the first time, live statistics on her team.
To improve myself, I also enrolled in and completed a BS in Information Technology with the University of Phoenix at their San Jose campus. I even enrolled in a Master's program in education and went through about half of the program before leaving Comcast.
So why did I leave? Well, now that I had my degree, I was finally getting calls. So when Ariba offered me a position, I jumped at the chance to get back into training. 

Life at CIENA was good; lots of money, a challenging job in network equipment, and lots of work!
I was on a small team and assigned a couple of specific pieces of equipment to develop training on. This team was a fairly new team, so besides developing classroom training, I also created all of our processes and guides.
Things went well there until the Dot.COM blackout.

It was called a blackout because unbeknownst to me, long haul voice and data providers had been spending billions of dollars in a global fiber optic infrastructure in anticipation of heavy sales. Well, apparently they overestimated demand, which left them with thousands of miles of unused fiber lines, referred to as "dark lines". The blackout started with the smaller DSL startup companies going under, which left the local CLECs with dark lines. In turn, they cancelled their leases with the bigger companies like Sprint & AT&T, who, in turn cancelled their expansion plans.

This left many small network equipment manufacturers vulnerable, and CIENA decided to take advantage of their lost value and began purchasing many of them. That's when the layoffs started.

I made it through the first round of cuts. I even survived the second and third rounds, which came at the end of each coming month. But one morning, the news announced that CIENA just announce they released 20% of their workforce. I just knew we were done, and sure enough, about 9 am, my entire team received an emergency meeting by the VP at 10 am. Those that weren't let go, received a different email for a meeting request by the CEO. Oh well. I found out later that we were replaced by the lower-paid IDs from one of the startups bought by CIENA.

About a month before retiring from the Air Force, I received an offer letter from On Command. In 1999, technical jobs were pretty plentiful. But of course, that didn't last very long.
So upon retiring, I packed up my little Isuzu Hombre truck with my necessities and headed for Silicon Valley. The Air Force shipped the rest of my belongings for me.

On Command initially hired me as a Senior Instructional Designer to build a new Project Management course. So for the next four months, I kept my nose to the grinder, not just building the course, but learning about the company, adapting to civilian life, Finding my way around Silicon Valley, and adapting to the California lifestyle.
Fortunately, the Air Force taught me to be flexible, and I made it through and completed the course one time.

My next assignment was to build a Learning Management System and one course as a trial. They had more confidence in me than I did, having never attempted anything like this before. I did have my own ecommerce website, where I sold computer hardware, but that was nothing like what I was about to do.

So the next six months were spent studying other company's eLearning. But because I had my online store, I was a reseller for Intel equipment, which gave me access to their product training. So I modeled the design after there's, not knowing anything about proper UI design. I was already an expert in Microsoft Access, so building the backend brains was easy. But building the interactive front end was much more of a challenge. Fortunately for me (and On Command), they happen to have an engineer who was an expert in Visual basic, which is what ASP used. So I worked closely with him learning ASP, and after about six months, I had it up and running with one sample course, and an online exam.

During the next few months, I tested all functions and fixed whatever needed fixing. But during that time, On Command was bought out by Liberty Media. They immediately did a mass layoff and reorganization. I survived, but my Director, the man who hired me, wasn't so lucky. Feeling a sense of loyalty towards him and the company founders, along with the new plan to move the company to Denver, I decided to pursue my interests elsewhere.

Through a coworker, I learned about another job that paid more, and would be a tough challenge. I applied, interviewed and got the job with CIENA Networking.

 I started my career in 1979 immediately after graduating from High School by enlisting in the United States Air Force.

I knew at that time, what my weaknesses and faults were, and I felt the only way to overcome them would be to have someone force me to. The military seemed the only option. And since I loved airplanes, it was the logical choice.

The first 10 years were pretty uneventful. My first assignment after graduating from the Electronic Warfare Training Center in Biloxi, Mississippi was to K.I. Sawyer AFB in Upper Michigan. This is where I grew up, so I had requested it.

After spending five years up there, working on those ugly but graceful B-52s, I was sent to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha Nebraska to work reconnaissance airframes for the next 5 years.

From there, I departed the good ole USA for Okinawa, Japan. During my three years over there, I took up scuba diving, and it almost killed me! 70' down and out of air is no place to be. While there, I continued to attend school, and completed my Associates degree in Electronics.

Thanks to that degree, I was then sent back to Biloxi Mississippi to be an instructor. Little did I know that this one assignment would shape the rest of my life. While there, I attended all kinds of training, including ISD, Test and Measurement, Objective Writing, Technical Writing, and many others. These courses gave me my Associates degree in Instructional Technology and an Occupational Instructor Certification.

The rest of my Air Force career revolved around training, but with primary roles of maintenance management. Read on to learn about the remaining story of my career, starting with the most recent.