Joe Mabel's Home Page

In December 2006 I completed a contract at Active Voice LLC (AVLLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC ) writing functional and technical specifications for their next several product releases. This was my fourth time working for Active Voice. I was there for 4-1/2 years in the early 1990s, eventually becoming their Senior Software Architect. From November 2001 to May 2002, on a contract basis, I represented AVLLC executive management at Unidec/RDC in Bucharest, Romania; Unidec provides software development and other related services to AVLLC. Later in 2002 I worked for them in Seattle on basis similar to my recent contract, continuing to smooth their transition to international development as acting program manager for unified messaging (voice, text, etc.); I also helped with planning new products.

Other than that, in recent years, I've been working mostly in internationalization and localization of software. Most notably, I internationalized the code base of Tableau Software's flagship product and, on contract at Microsoft, wrote conceptual-level documents about internationalization and localization. There are also some internationalization/localization aspects to my Active Voice work: internationalizing a telephone-based user interface is something of a specialty unto itself.

From June 2003 through March 2004, I worked as acting Director of Development at Lux . It was a great place to work, but it seems that right now the market for that sort of service company in Seattle doesn't justify having a Director of Development. Pity, that.

From September 1997 to January 2001, I served as Manager and later Director of (Software) Development at Saltmine . With the dot-com layoffs, Saltmine's Seattle-based software management was reduced from a dozen people to five, and a few months later to three. Since then I've been successfully going the contract/consulting route. I left Saltmine on good terms: after leaving my permanent position there, I did two UK-based projects for them on a contract basis.

• Ten tips on building international software and web sites.
• A "think piece" on XML.

Here's an article from 2002, discussing the use and abuse of brain teasers as job interview questions.

• The Interview Brainteaser and Its Discontents.

From November 2003 to December 2006, I was one of the mainstays of the Wikipedia, which I still think is just about the coolest thing on the web. As of the end of 2006, however, I am reducing my role there, at least for a while. I'll still be writing and translating some articles, but I intend to try to stay away from administrative and other comparable roles for at least half a year.