Russ Beebe
20-year veteran of Silicon Valley as content developer. Principal at California Wine Hikes guided wine country hiking and wine-tasting tours since 2005.
| Headline: | Service Provider |
| Work status: | Living The Dream |
| Website: | http://www.californiawinehikes.com/ |
| Industries: | Food and Drink, Information Technology, Lifestyle, Media, Travel |
| Skills: | Business, Copy Writing, Editing, Management, Writing |
| Location: | Sunnyvale, California, USA |
| Interested in: | Brainstorming, Consulting opportunities, Finding business partners, Finding hot stories, Getting press, Giving back, Helping friends, Meeting new people, Mentoring, Offering Expertise, Professional opportunities, Promoting my startups, Raising money, Receiving feedback, Trading services |
| Tags: | adventure, california, country, education, fun, guide, guided, hike, hikes, hiking, memorable, nature, outdoors, tasting, tour, tours, trails, trips, vacation, vacations, walks, Wine, winery |
FEATURED STARTUP
California Wine Hikes
California Wine Hikes
California Wine Hikes is a travel startup changing the world by adding outdoor naturalist-led adventure to the tried-and-true wine tour.
- Startup type: Sole Proprietor
- Status: Active
- Stage: Beta
WORK EXPERIENCE
| Employer: | California Wine Hikes, Sunnyvale, California |
| Position: | Principal |
| Time period: | December 2004 - Present |
| Description: | Architect and sole manager of the californiawinehikes.com ecommerce website tailored to consumers in the active travel market and founded on over 20 years' experience developing content, enhancing usability, and organizing and conducting guided hikes, bicycle races/events and fine wine tastings.
• Researched, organized, developed, implemented and currently maintain design, content development, database management, brand marketing and integration of RSS and social networking (Web 2.0) tools. • Assiduous focus applied to search engine optimization and online marketing; familiarity with Google AdWords; regular customer communication vehicles included article publishing, press releases, blog postings and customer follow-through. |
| Employer: | Robert Half Technology, San Jose, California |
| Position: | Contract Technical Writer |
| Time period: | December 2004 - November 2008 |
| Description: | Documentation developer, database content developer and user advocate on contract to VMware Inc.
• Collaborated with VMware's IT team to develop and maintain a knowledge base of solutions to technical issues experienced by internal users. Charged with improving the usability aspects of intranet pages owned by the team. Result: reduced user downtime, lighter workload for the Help Desk team, an improved overall user experience, and metrics significantly above the industry average: 92% vs. 76%. • Developed policy and procedural documentation for VMware's Technical Operations group, much of it company-wide in scope. Significantly improved departmental wiki pages' navigation, presentation and clarity of messaging. Collaborated with Project Management Organization to establish a document repository and workflow system for more effective document organization and management. |
| Employer: | ZiLOG, Inc., San Jose, California |
| Position: | Technical Publications Manager, Technical Writer II |
| Time period: | December 1996 - November 2005 |
| Description: | Eight years producing accurate, deadline-oriented silicon and software documentation targeted to mechanical engineers and application developers, including three years managing offshore writers.
• Negotiated documentation plans and review schedules with key engineers, project managers, and marketing personnel representing the silicon, tools, applications, and software groups toward building comprehensive, concise, consistent, and clear specifications, user instructions, and collateral to meet product release schedules. • Active manager, trainer, and mentor of offshore technical writers; wrote job descriptions to identify and attract appropriate talent; researched and applied innovative interview tests and questions. • Designed, developed, and mapped internal procedures, wrote SOPs and department policies and edited a number of SOPs created by other groups. • Designed and maintained innovative, useful documentation templates for external doc types produced by the Technical Publications Team. • Contributed articles to company intranet communications and managed a newsletter targeting ZiLOG’s Systems Development Group. • Spearheaded and managed the Technical Publications intranet page. • Safety Captain and regular contributor to ZiLOG Safety Committee: chaired meetings, developed procedures, wrote SOPs; researched, designed, and garnered local Fire Department approval to conspicuously post company evacuation maps. • As a result of knowledge gained from ZiLOG Book Club reading and discussion, became a contributor to usability, value delivery, branding, marketing, and corporate communications discussions, both formal and informal. • Communicate diplomatically and positively with others, even in difficult situations, wherein establishing constructive dialog is crucial. • Participating member, ZiLOG Fun Committee in charge of rewarding employee efforts in fun ways. |
| Employer: | Local firms |
| Position: | Contract Writer, Editor, Publications Specialist |
| Time period: | December 1987 - November 1997 |
| Description: | Produced technical content, artwork, and copy for a number of local firms, whose missions included advertising and market research, software development, career assistance and outplacement, cross-cultural education, and scientific equipment manufacturing. Firms included IBM, Addison-Wesley, Syntex, Coherent, Stanford University, Right Management Consulting, and Aquent.
Highlights: • Streamlined production tasks for a grant-financed university research group; produced artwork and content for two curriculum projects. • Created database of manuals, both departmental and limited-access public, to facilitate quick information searches by online technical support personnel. |
INFORMATION
| Hobbies: | • Author, Winehiker Witiculture blog since December 2005
• Backpacker's Group moderator and regular event organizer, Bay Area Linkup since November 2003 |
Russ' Startups (1)
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California Wine Hikes
California Wine Hikes is a travel startup changing the world by adding outdoor naturalist-led adventure to the tried-and-true wine tour.
Russ is Following (6)
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WineLog.net
WineLog is a new take on mixing social networking and user generated content to help users keep track and rate the wines theyve tried while getting recommendations from others. In specific, WineLog pr...
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LocalWineEvents
LocalWineEvents.com is a calendar and listings site for local wine tastings and other related events. The sites listings cover a wide variety of geographical areas including all 50 US states, Canada ...
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Russ' Contacts (6)
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George Ramos
I have been involved in local search and data bases since 1999. I believe local search listings should be free.
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Chris Parkerson
Computer Systems Engineering graduate from Boston University, with over 9 years of expertise in product marketing and management. Currently working as Group Solution Marketing Manager at Mcafee, Inc. and pursuing MBA at Berkeley.