I’ve spent a quarter-century moving between two worlds that rarely talk to each other: the people who build technical things, and the people who love them.
I started with a decade in enterprise systems engineering — UNIX server operations at SGI and Excite@Home, supporting customers like DreamWorks, NASA and Fidelity, running infrastructure that three million broadband subscribers depended on. That work taught me how engineers think, how they talk to each other, and why what they say almost never survives contact with a consumer audience. It also taught me the everlasting foundation of continuous process improvement.
Then I left for motorcycles.
For fifteen years since, I’ve worked the other side: product development at a helmet manufacturer, Editor-in-Chief of a national enthusiast magazine; agency editorial for motorsports and automotive brands like Mercedes-Benz and ZF; and technical communications for a premium lubricants brand. I’m currently Editor-in-Chief of Classic BMW Motorräder, the quarterly of the Vintage BMW Motorcycle Owners. Alongside all of it, I spent fifteen years as a certified MSF RiderCoach and instructor with the California Motorcyclist Safety Program, teaching more than six thousand people to ride motorcycles.
That last part matters more than you might think. Standing in a parking lot explaining countersteering to a nervous forty-five-year-old is the same problem as explaining a lubricant’s film strength to a skeptical rider, or a chassis revision to a magazine reader who has owned six generations of the same model. You have to be right, and you have to be believed. Being right is the easy half.
How I work
I’m most useful where the product is genuinely technical and the audience can tell when you’re faking it. Enthusiast markets punish vagueness faster than any other — the comments section is a real-time accuracy audit, and once a brand loses that argument it doesn’t earn it back cheaply.
So I start with the engineering, not the adjectives. What is actually different about this product? Can we prove it? What does the person buying it already know, and what do they think they know that’s wrong? The messaging comes out of those answers. It doesn’t get applied on top of them.
Where I’ve done it
Direct experience: Vintage BMW Motorcycle Owners (Classic BMW Motorräder) · AMSOIL · OSK / Omnicom · Lumina Media (Motorcycle Consumer News) · Scorpion Sports / EXO · Silicon Graphics / SGI · Excite@Home · Sony Computer Entertainment / Playstation
Brands and organizations served through those roles and consulting engagements: Mercedes-Benz · BMW · ZF · Hymer · Harman Kardon · Honda · Kawasaki · Suzuki · BRP / Can-Am · Harley-Davidson · Polaris / Indian · Aprilia · Ducati · KTM · Triumph · ADVrider · Americade · Overland Expo · Motorcycle Safety Foundation · DreamWorks · Comedy Central · NASA · Fidelity · Microsoft
Credentials
- B.S., Business Administration — Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University
- Certified MSF / California Motorcyclist Safety Program RiderCoach, 2003–2018 — 6,000+ students
- Twice invited guest speaker and panelist at Americade, the largest single-site multi-brand motorcycle expo and rally in the U.S.
- Toastmasters International — Competent Communicator / Competent Leader
- Fourth generation, lifelong motorcyclist across ADV, touring, sport and off-road
A Global Citizen, based in metro Milwaukee.