I’m an experienced content entrepreneur, writer, and editor. Since 2015 I’ve been running Tweney Media, a content agency for tech companies.
Before that, at VentureBeat, I managed a global news team of more than a dozen staff journalists and many freelancers from 2011-2015. During that period, the editorial staff doubled, while the site’s audience more than quadrupled, from 1.5 million to 6.5 million monthly visitors. I also wrote the site’s “Dylan’s Desk” column, a weekly series on Silicon Valley, the tech industry, and the impact of technology on business strategy.
Previously, I was a senior editor at Wired, leading the publication’s gadget and business blogs from 2007-20011. Prior to that, I worked at three different content startups and wrote widely read columns for national magazines Business 2.0 and InfoWorld.
In most of those jobs, I’ve launched new editorial products to inform and entertain readers on complicated topics of wide-reaching importance: Usually tech and business, but sometimes science and tech, and sometimes just plain cool gadgets.
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At VentureBeat, my job was to lead the news team (currently numbering 16 writers and editors), hire outstanding talent, set ambitious goals for them, and get out of their way. I was also a member of the executive team and provide the news team’s interface with business, technology, research, events, and marketing.
The site’s audience more than tripled after I started, and now reaches more than 6 million people every month, plus another million on Flipboard. Junior writers I’ve hired and trained at VentureBeat have gone on to the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Reuters, Buzzfeed, and NPR.
I write occasionally too.
Before VentureBeat, I spent four years at Wired. I built up the site’s first business blog, Epicenter, more than tripling its traffic to 1 million pageviews/month and winning a business journalism award in the first year. I also ran Gadget Lab, Wired.com’s hardware blog, for three years, increasing its traffic by 10x during a period when Wired.com’s overall traffic grew about 2x, and hiring some of its most successful writers. (Two of those writers, who I hired as junior reporters, are currently writing for the New York Times.)
I was the founding editorial director of PCMagCast, PC Magazine’s award-winning channel for live web seminars and online events. Before that, I was executive editor for Mobile, a monthly technology magazine (also known as Mobile PC), where I was part of the founding editorial staff. And I was one of two cofounders of an early content syndication startup, Utipia, that raised a seed round and then fell victim to the dot-com crash.
My writing has appeared in many publications, including weekly columns I wrote for eCompany Now / Business 2.0 (“The Defogger”) and, before that, for InfoWorld (“Net Prophet”). In both columns I covered the intersection of business and technology. See my blog archive for publication highlights.
My LinkedIn profile provides a pretty complete picture of my work career to date.
Other stuff
I am a graduate of Williams College, where I majored in religion and studied poetry. I have worked as a weed whacker, pizza chef, ESL teacher, and environmental activist, and won the Boston Poetry Slam in 1992.
I publish tinywords, the world’s smallest daily magazine, which is also happens to be the world’s largest-circulation haiku publication in English.
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