Paul Irish

• I help web developers make the web even better.

• Joined the jQuery Team, in Developer Relations; with the goal of not only outwardly sharing best practices, but also acting as a conduit reflecting the voice of the community back to the core team.
• Founder and cohost of a weekly video podcast, yayQuery, that shares jQuery and front-end development news, techniques and best practices with a good dose of whimsy.
• Administered the jQuery IRC community for over two years, providing extensive 1:1 support, appropriately "staffing" the channel with skilled people, and updating official documentation to provide more clarity to both new and experienced developers.
• Created a video series explaining features of the latest release as well as managing and updating all official documentation
• Evangelizing best practices for performance through blog posts, yayQuery and talks at The jQuery Conference and The jQuery Summit.
• Maintain many community connections to other projects such as: Drupal, MediaWiki, BuddyPress, Mootools

• Develop HTML5 Boilerplate, a set of web development templates with the web's best practices baked in. People seem to like it.
• Develop Modernizr, a feature detection JavaScript library for HTML5 and CSS3 features. Featured extensively in Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5 and Filament Group's Designing with Progressive Enhancement.
• Extensively written, talked and engaged with the community regarding the CSS3 feature @font-face. Spoke at JSConf, The jQuery Conference, Drupal Boston, and Refresh Boston. Worked with Steve Souders briefly on performance-related issues.
• Launched the Type Rendering Project, a collective of folks passionate about making @font-face succeed.
• Featured frequently on Ajaxian.com. Spoke on HTML5 and progressive enhancement at Standards.Next

Brought the influence of Web 2.0 into the agency's work and approach, accelerated the adoption of ajax interaction design patterns within the agency, led the front-end development team to a spotlight role within the organization, and successfully evangelized a blog and wiki as core business tools.

Lead a team of ten front-end developers, building proficiency of development and debugging techniques, managing a team of up to 6 simultaneous front-end developers on a project, enforcing coding standards and keeping the group engaged and passionate.

Spearheaded the adoption of jQuery, HTML5 and CSS3 techniques internally, as well as creating and successfully deploying a client-facing performance policy, educating them on the performance tradeoffs of older browser support.

Developed excellent working relationships with our clients and established myself as a trusted advisor with thoughtful leadership as well as a coveted designer and developer.

Major Projects

• Putnam Investments, Reebok.com, Adidas.com, BoostMobile.com
• HumanaOne B2C Webapp, Experience Design Lead and Interaction Engineer - Spec'd the functional and interactive elements, working with stakeholders to ensure product accommodates business goals, and developing the front-end experience within the Microsoft AJAX framework.
• Reebok Run Easy, User Experience Lead - Designed IA, interaction design, and wireframes of a Google Maps/Flickr/iTunes/Jumpcut mashup and social running website. Designed and facilitated usability testing with working prototype, developed the presentation layer (XHTML, CSS, and Javascript), coded the first-of-its-kind website-as-map navigation UI, and project-managed the implementation of a video mashup application.
• Monster.com, User Experience Specialist - Developed wireframes, planned and facilitated usability testing, created the interaction design and wrote web gracefully-degradable standards-based code for the homepage build kit utilizing best-practices CSS and Javascript. Also managed offsite development team on subsequent work and worked with client on debugging installation into their CMS.

Directed the user experience improvement campaign that led to a 20% rise in conversion, 23% rise in average order value and 72% rise in attributable revenue.

• Transformed user requirements (from usability sessions and feedback) into wireframes, interaction designs, technical specs and, finally, coordinated Art and IT deliverables.
• Led a 4-person team to iteratively improve the onsite user experience. Created a project management system, facilitated biweekly meetings, and developed a release plan to assure QA and stakeholder signoff.
• Analyzed the key metrics (e.g. conversion, visit volume, bounce rate) and identified opportunities based on the empirical data—in part, determining our development strategy.
• Designed and coded a web-based front-end to design bar mitzvah invitations from a new concept album. Developed UI to drag-and-drop paper layers, load templates, and view a proof instantly.

• Founded and developed Aurgasm into a highly-influential and trafficked music blog.
• Lead a 4-writer team to deliver eclectic music curiously different, yet simply enjoyable to audiences of music mavens, critics, journalists, and bloggers.
• Won accolades such as Top 100 blog from PC Magazine—and beloved by fans including Ze Frank and David Byrne.

• Assisted students with improving the quality of their essays, research papers, projects and pre-writing, focusing on issues such as global organization, thought clarity, and rhetorical structure.
• Helped fourteen four-person project teams develop their documents in preparation for an educational experience abroad. Papers were revised to correct issues of flow, audience, and relevance.