resume.html

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
  <meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy for Linux (vers 11 August 2008), see www.w3.org" />
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii" />

  <title>Troy Topnik - Resume</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/style/resume.css" />
</head>

<body>
  <div id="page-wrap">
  <!-- I've been told this is gauche <img src="images/tt-bw-headshot-sm.jpg" alt="Troy Topnik" id="pic" /> -->
    <div id="contact-info" class="vcard">
      <!-- Microformats! -->

      <h1 class="fn">Troy Topnik</h1>

      <h2>Product Manager & Technical Writer</h2>

      <p><a class="email" href="mailto:troytopnik@gmail.com">troytopnik@gmail.com</a></p>

    </div>

    <div id="objective">
      <p>I am a product manager and technical writer with over 15 years of
      experience in the software industry, working with open source and open
      standard technologies. I look for opportunities to define good software
      with documentation-driven design and work with development
      teams to deliver great software.</p>
    </div>

    <div class="clear"></div>

    <dl>
      <dt>Specialties</dt>

      <dd>
        <ul>
          <li>Product management</li>

          <li>Software documentation</li>

          <li>User advocacy</li>
          
          <li>Developer evangelism</li>
          
          <li>Technical copywriting</li>

          <li>Supporting and troubleshooting complex software systems</li>

        </ul>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dt>Skills</dt>

      <dd>
        <ul>
          <li>Clear and concise writing</li>

          <li>Documentation generation/delivery: HTML, XML (Docbook, DITA), Markdown, Sphinx, ReStructured Text, CSS</li>

          <li>Git, SVN, Mercurial, and Perforce</li>

          <li>Unix/Linux system administration</li>

          <li>Some programming in Python, JavaScript, Perl, and Ruby</li>
          
          <li>Making the best of terrible bug tracking and project management software</li>
        </ul>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dt>Experience</dt>

      <dd>
        <h3>Technical Product Manager, Stackato</h3>

        <blockquote>
          <p><strong><a href="https://activestate.com">ActiveState</a></strong></p>

          <p>Feb. 2015 - Present </p>
        </blockquote>

        <p>As the Technical Product Manager for Stackato, it's my job to refine
        the product roadmap into software development stories and tasks, ensure
        that the overall product roadmap matches the expectations of customers,
        and represent those customers as the product owner in development team
        standups.</p>

        <p></p>

      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dd>
        <h3>Technical Communications</h3>

        <blockquote>
          <p><strong><a href="https://activestate.com">ActiveState</a></strong></p>

          <p>2006 - Present</p>
        </blockquote>

        <p>As ActiveState's sole technical writer, I was responsible for
        customer-facing technical content including product documentation, white
        papers, articles, website copy, and blogs. I also developed and led
        customer training sessions for Stackato, led product demonstrations, and
        when needed, assisted with pre-sales engineering.</p>

        <p>Prior to working on Stackato, I worked closely with the Komodo team
        for several years, contributing to development and providing feedback on
        usability and user experience.</p>
        
        <p>I take an active interest in new authoring technologies and
        documentation frameworks. I mainly work with the <a
        href="https://sphinx-doc.org/">Sphinx</a> documentation framework
        (Python) but keep an eye on <a href="http://dexy.it/">Dexy</a>, <a
        href="https://asciidoctor.org/">Asciidoctor</a>, <a
        href="https://github.com/gollum/gollum">Gollum</a>, and <a
        href="https://daux.io">Daux.io</a>.</p>
        
        
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dd>
        <h3>Technical Support Team Lead - Technical Writer</h3>

        <blockquote>
          <p><strong><a href="https://sophos.com">Sophos</a></strong></p>

          <p>2004 - 2006</p>
        </blockquote>

        <p>I led the Enterprise Support team, supporting the PureMessage
        anti-spam product, then joined the small team of technical writers
        creating and maintaining documentation for PureMessage, Komodo, and
        other ActiveState products.</p>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dd>
        <h3>Technical Support</h3>

        <blockquote>
          <p><strong>ActiveState</strong></p>

          <p>2001 - 2003</p>
        </blockquote>

        <p>I started as the sole Customer Relationship Representative, providing
        technical support for the full range of ActiveState software. I moved on
        to lead the Enterprise Support team (six engineers) who helped system
        administrators install, configure, troubleshoot and customize
        PureMessage on a variety of Linux and Unix systems.</p>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dd>
        <h3>Technical Support and Sales Engineering</h3>

        <blockquote>
          <p><strong>FaxPC / Image Power Inc.</strong></p>

          <p>1999 - 2001</p>
        </blockquote>

        <p>I was hired initially to provide customer support for FaxPC, a
        "unified messaging" service. I was given numerous other responsibilities
        as developers and managers left the company. When FaxPC shut down I
        moved to a sales engineering and support role for the parent company,
        Image Power.</p>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dt>Education</dt>

      <dd>
        <h3>Bachelor of Music</h3>

        <blockquote>
          <p><strong>University of Victoria</strong></p>

          <p>1990 - 1993</p>
        </blockquote>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dt>Portfolio</dt>

      <dd>
        <h3>Blog:</h3>

        <ul>
<<<<<<< HEAD
          <li><strong>O'Reilly Radar</strong>: <a href="https://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/node-javascript-success.html">The secrets of Node's success: Why Node.js has caught on while other server-side JavaScript implementations faltered</a></li>
=======
          <li><a href="http://www.activestate.com/blog/authors/troyt">ActiveBlog: Troy Topnik</a></li>
>>>>>>> 5e157df33d0da93e305bb653c3e309678feea817
        </ul>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dd>

        <h3>Product Documentation:</h3>

        <ul>
<<<<<<< HEAD
          <li><a href="https://www.activestate.com/sites/default/files/pdfwp/whitepaper_stackato_architecture.pdf">Stackato PaaS Architecture</a></li>
          <li><a href="https://www.activestate.com/sites/default/files/pdfwp/whitepaper-python-linguafranca-pdf.pdf">Python: The Programmers Lingua Franca</a></li>

          <li><a href="https://www.activestate.com/sites/default/files/pdfwp/whitepaper-os-independent-interpreters.pdf">OS-Independent Interpreters: Preventing incompatibility with cross-platform Python, Perl and Tcl</a></li>

          <li><a href="https://www.activestate.com/sites/default/files/pdfwp/whitepaper-follow-the-leader-tcl.pdf">Follow the Leader: ActiveTcl on Routers and Network Appliances</a></li>
=======
          <li><a href="http://docs.stackato.com/">Stackato Documentation</a></li>
          <li><a href="http://docs.activestate.com/komodo/6.1/">Komodo User Guide</a></li>
        </ul>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dd>
        <h3>Video:</h3>

        <ul>
          <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVyK4F_LGTM">SYS-CON.tv interview on Stackato: Cloud Expo NY 2015 DevOps Summit</a></li>
>>>>>>> 5e157df33d0da93e305bb653c3e309678feea817
        </ul>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dd>
        <h3>Articles:</h3>
        
        <ul>
<<<<<<< HEAD
          <li><a href="https://docs.stackato.com/">Stackato Documentation</a></li>
          <li><a href="https://docs.activestate.com/komodo/6.1/">Komodo User Guide</a></li>
=======
          <li><strong>O'Reilly Radar</strong>: <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/node-javascript-success.html">The secrets of Node's success: Why Node.js has caught on while other server-side JavaScript implementations faltered</a></li>
>>>>>>> 5e157df33d0da93e305bb653c3e309678feea817
        </ul>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

      <dd>
        <h3>Whitepapers:</h3>

        <ul>
<<<<<<< HEAD
          <li><a href="https://www.activestate.com/blog/authors/troyt">ActiveBlog: Troy Topnik</a></li>
=======
          <li><a href="http://www.activestate.com/sites/default/files/pdfwp/whitepaper_stackato_architecture.pdf">Stackato PaaS Architecture</a></li>
          <li><a href="http://www.activestate.com/sites/default/files/pdfwp/whitepaper-python-linguafranca-pdf.pdf">Python: The Programmers Lingua Franca</a></li>

          <li><a href="http://www.activestate.com/sites/default/files/pdfwp/whitepaper-os-independent-interpreters.pdf">OS-Independent Interpreters: Preventing incompatibility with cross-platform Python, Perl and Tcl</a></li>

          <li><a href="http://www.activestate.com/sites/default/files/pdfwp/whitepaper-follow-the-leader-tcl.pdf">Follow the Leader: ActiveTcl on Routers and Network Appliances</a></li>
>>>>>>> 5e157df33d0da93e305bb653c3e309678feea817
        </ul>
      </dd>
            <dd class="clear"></dd>

    </dl>
  </div>
<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-32234544-1']);
  _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'troytop.net']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();

</script>
</body>
</html>