About Me
Nathan D. McWilliams
At the most generic level, you can describe me as both a college grad student and web developer. I was born in Seattle, Washington, and am currently living in Pittsbugh while attending school.
I'm focused on making my way through my second semester in the MISM program at Carnegie Mellon University.
While this intense program has grabbed nearly every waking moment of my time, I have also managed to develop websites both personally and professionally on the side. These days there's a strong push for website usability, standards compliance and accessibility. I'm a strong supporter of these efforts to make the web a better place and I promote these best practices as much as possible. Particularly, I feel that usability is a much too-often ignored aspect of web development. I believe we can go a long way in following the sound advice of Steve Krug. For a list of some web development projects I have worked on, take a look at my portfolio.
Besides web development, My other areas of strong interest are in the unique fields of process management and systems design. There is much improvement to be made in how both large and small systems are designed and brought through the development process. One of the most increasingly critical determinants of a successful project is the ability to take an initial idea and transform it into clearly defined steps and procedures that can be followed by a wide array of culturally diverse people. Another challenge is being able to correctly determine the quality of software implementations (both in the design stage and after implementation). It is one of my career goals to improve the way businesses and corporations approach the software design process and to ultimately help propel software design methods into the next level.
That aside, the program that I am currently in (MISM)
is often cited as creating individuals who exist at the intersection of both business and technology. What this means is that a full mixture of both business and technology classes are taken. This provides an overall perspective of how technology can be used to improve business processes and strategy, as well as a working knowledge of using that technology first-hand. In other words, I am able to meet and solve some of the most crucial challenges today's firms are facing because of my wholistic perspective across business and technology. For more information on my background, take a look at my resume.
If there's anything more you want to know, feel free to send me a message. For more about me on a more personal note, check out creative.