Experience

The SharePoint Siege: Turning an Intranet into an Icon

Era: The Web 1.0 to 2.0 Transition
The Project:WisBar.org (State Bar of Wisconsin)
The Tech:SharePoint, XSLT, and sheer stubbornness.

The Bold Interview: Shredding the Status Quo

I didn't get the job at the State Bar of Wisconsin by playing it safe. In my interview, they asked what I thought of their recent redesign. A lot of the people at the table thought it was a masterpiece. I shredded it.

The web was changing. We were moving away from the "micro-font" era of 800x600 resolution and tiny 14-inch monitors. Offices were upgrading to 17 and 21-inch "big glass" displays. We finally had the screen real estate to breathe (1024px and beyond!), and I was hired to drag their late-90s aesthetic into the modern world.

The Plot Twist: "We're Using SharePoint"

We were tasked with finding a CMS that could handle the massive complexity of a legal membership organization. We did our due diligence, made our recommendations, and explicitly listed what not to use.

Naturally, the Director came back with the one system at the bottom of the list: Microsoft SharePoint. At the time, SharePoint was a clunky, grey, corporate intranet tool. It looked like a spreadsheet and felt like a filing cabinet. The vendors told the Director, "Don't worry, you can customize it with XSLT!" Their eyes turned to me. "Dan is quick," they said. "He'll figure it out."

The War Room: 6 Months of XSLT Hell

What followed was a six-month campaign in a literal war room. We weren't just building a website; we were performing a total organ transplant on a Microsoft product.

• The Challenge: We had to force SharePoint to act like a public-facing website, integrating complex membership logins and deep database systems.
• The Method: Using XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) like a digital scalpel. We stripped away every "Microsoft-looking" pixel until the site was unrecognizable from its corporate roots.
• The Result: A high-performance, beautiful, public-facing portal that defied everything SharePoint was "supposed" to be.

The Legacy

If you head over to WisBar.org today, you're still looking at the foundations we laid. It stands as proof that you can take the most rigid, difficult enterprise software on the market and, with enough technical "flex," turn it into something elegant.

National Mock Trial: Rebranding the Nationals

Era: 2014
The Project: National High School Mock Trial Championship
The Role: Lead Designer, Webmaster, and Closing Ceremony MC

The Situation: A "Dead" Design

In 2014, the National High School Mock Trial competition came to Wisconsin. This is a massive operation involving thousands of students, coaches, and attorneys from across the country. The theme for the year? ZOMBIES! The marketing department started churning out materials designed by attorneys, for attorneys. It was stiff, professional, and-frankly-missing the point. This was a competition for high schoolers. They didn't want a legal brief; they wanted an experience.

The Pivot: Reversing the Creative Flow

I took one look at the initial drafts and knew we were missing the mark. In a 30-minute "sprint," I threw out the corporate brochures and mocked up a new vision: a gritty, high-energy comic book aesthetic.

I built a communications microsite that didn't just "inform"-it set the mood. I used Macromedia Fireworks to bridge the gap between web design and brand identity. Within a week, the traditional corporate hierarchy flipped. Instead of the art department sending me assets to put on the web, I was shipping finished art to every department in the building.

The Result: A Committee of One

For the 2014 Nationals, the "Project Look and Feel" committee consisted of exactly one person: me. My comic-style logo didn't just live on the website; it was printed on thousands of t-shirts, bags, and pieces of merchandise that students carried home across the nation.

I took the challenge of "Zombie Mock Trial" and made it iconic. But I wasn't finished.

The Aftermath: From the Server Room to the Event Hosting

Having been an event host previously, I was hired to handle the official afterparty.

I spent months building the digital world these kids lived in, designed the clothes they wore, and then - at the end of the week - I MC'ed the Closing Ceremony and the final tracks of the night.

From beginning to end I was integral with producing the 2014 National High School Mock Trial Championships hosted by the State Bar of Wisconsin.

The Midnight Fix: Rescuing a Global Toy Giant

Era: 2020s
The Project: Tabletop Game Experience
The Challenge: Saving a product launch from a "missing" final chapter.

The Crisis: A Missing Ending

Imagine being one of the largest toy companies on the planet. You've launched a sophisticated, two-part "escape room" style game. Families across the world are buying it, playing through hours of content, and heading to the final URL to solve the mystery.

You realize the final website, the "Grand Finale" required to actually finish the game, does not exist. It was never built.

The corporate machine did what it does best: it asked the internal service providers for a solution. Their answer was "six months and a truckload of cash." But people had the game on their kitchen tables right now. The brand's reputation was hours away from a social media firestorm.

The Intervention: Identifying the "Minimum Viable Heroics"

I caught wind of the panic and asked a simple question: "You need a secure gateway that validates user input and triggers the finale, right?" The requirements were buried under layers of corporate oversight, but the technical reality was simple logic. While the internal teams were drafting project charters, I grabbed the provided style guides and got to work.

The Result: An Exciting Finale

By the end of the business day, the "missing" website was live.

I didn't just build a static landing page. I knew these families had spent hours working toward this moment, so I transformed the ending and included custom special effects and over-the-top flare to make the victory feel earned and satisfying.

Within a week, hundreds of players were successfully completing the game. As far as the public knew, the transition was seamless. The house of Barbie stayed flawless, and the "impossible" six-month project was solved in eight hours.

The Lesson for the Client

In a world of "six-month solutions," you need a consultant who can see the shortest path between a problem and a solution. I specialize in cutting through corporate red tape to deliver high-impact results when the clock is ticking.

The National Recall: Engineering a Solution in the Eye of the Storm

Era: 2019
The Project: Fisher-Price / Rock ‘n Play National Refund Portal
The Tech: SiteSpect (Man-in-the-Middle DOM Manipulation)

The Crisis: A National Safety Emergency

In 2019, one of the most popular baby products in the country, the Rock 'n Play, was recalled. It was a sensitive, high-pressure situation affecting millions of families. Fisher-Price committed to doing the right thing: offering a full replacement program where parents could exchange their product for a selection of other items via a secure voucher system.

The problem? The infrastructure to handle tens of thousands of simultaneous refund claims didn't exist. Once again, the IT department estimated a timeline of six months and a budget in the millions. But the news was breaking now, and the families would not tolerate waiting half a year for a solution. Fisher-Price's entire reputation was on the line today.

The Innovation: The "Man-in-the-Middle" Strategy

I happened to be at the corporate headquarters in LA on a scheduled visit when the recall hit the news. The tension was palpable. The company needed a refund portal yesterday, and their traditional web departments were frozen by red tape.

I looked at the tools we already had in place. Mattel used SiteSpect, an A/B testing and optimization platform. While most people use SiteSpect to change button colors or track clicks, I knew its true power: it acts as a "Man-in-the-Middle" proxy, allowing you to intercept and rewrite traffic before it ever hits the user's browser.

The Execution: 180 Tweaks in 96 Hours

While still participating in my team's scheduled meetings and work-trip activities, I went into "Ninja" mode.

Working in the "shadows" of the existing marketing site, I authored roughly 180 individual injections and tweaks to the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I essentially hijacked the public-facing marketing pages and transformed them into a fully functional, secure refund engine.

• The Challenge: Building a secure, logic-heavy application on top of a site that was never meant to handle it.
• The Speed: I turned the entire project around in about 4 days, all while maintaining my "normal" work trip responsibilities.
• The Result: Tens of thousands of parents successfully processed their refunds. The system held up under massive national traffic, and the company was able to fulfill its promise to the public immediately.

The Lesson: Tools are Only Limited by Your Imagination

Most consultants see a tool like SiteSpect and see "testing." I saw a "surgical laser" that could save a company millions of dollars and a decade of brand reputation. This story proves that when the stakes are at their highest, I don't just look for a new budget, I look for a way to win with the tools already on the table.

The Heart of the Community: Revitalizing the La Valle Library

Era: Current (The "Post-WordPress" Standard)
The Project: La Valle Public Library Website & Compliance
The Role: Information Architect, Content Strategist, and Compliance Lead

The Challenge: Beyond the "Messy" Template

Sometimes, the hardest problems aren't technical, they are organizational. The La Valle Library had a digital presence, but like many community hubs, it was a "messy" collection of ideas. It was trapped in a boring template, lacking a cohesive voice, and struggling with a lack of descriptive content.

My mother reached out for help, and it sparked that "Early Dot Com" energy in me. I knew that in a post-WordPress world, the goal wasn't just to make it "look pretty"; it was to make it functional, accessible, and authoritative.

The Execution: The Three Pillars of a Modern Site

I approached this small-town library with the same intensity I'd bring to a corporate headquarters.

• Information Architecture (IA): I stripped the site down to its bones and rebuilt the navigation. I organized their vast resources into logical L1 and L2 structures, ensuring that a patron looking for a book or a program could find it in two clicks or less.
• Voice and Verbiage: The site was missing "the story." I took their scattered descriptions and reworked them into a single, professional, and inviting voice. I filled in the blanks, adding the descriptions and explanations that turn a list of links into a useful resource.
• ADA & Government Compliance: This was the main goal. Libraries aren't just websites; they are government-funded entities. I implemented light styling to give the site flavor while ensuring it met strict ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) standards to remain accessible to everyone in the community.

The Long-Term Commitment

I didn't just "drop a site and leave." I've signed on for a year to mentor the library staff on content management and to monitor the rapidly changing laws regarding non-profits and government-funded entities.

The Lesson for the Client: Whether you are a global brand or a local library, your website is your digital front door. I provide the architecture to keep it organized, the voice to keep it engaging, and the compliance expertise to keep it legal.