The short version is that I’m a writer originally from a small town in northern Appalachia. The longer story is that I earned my master’s from the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2000. After graduating, I worked for Wired magazine and Wired.com. In 2003, I co-authored a book called Dungeons & Dreamers: A story of how computer games created a global culture before accepting a job in 2004 as the producer and senior editor for MIT’s Technology Review Web operation. I left journalism for a job running the Media Informatics program at Northern Kentucky University in 2006. I stayed there through 2009. Currently, I’m an associate professor of journalism at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana where I’m the co-founder + co-director of the university’s Center for Emerging Media Design + Development. Other notable work: I’ve been on the programming board for South by Southwest Interactive sixteen years, and I hosted its Start Up Accelerator program from 2009-2015. I’m also an editor and advisory board member for Carnegie Mellon’s ETC Press. Previously, I was an advisory board member for the F+W’s StoryWorld Conference, the Carmel Arts Council, and the Indiana Writers Center. When it comes to writing: I run The Geeky Press, a writers collective, with two other partners. In 2013, I raised $11,000 on Kickstarter to write So Far Appalachia, a memoir of my family’s life in Appalachia. While struggling to finish that book, I’ve also started work on two other writing project: The Summer of Run and Catch: An Oral History of Fathers, Sons, Mothers, Daughters, and Baseball. Mostly, though, I love telling stories. I write, I create podcasts, I tinker with video, I work in the weird space between digital, print, and the real world. You can find my professional information at LinkedIn or About.me, and you can find all the places I exist as an author.