Robert T. Hill, Portfolio

Robert T. Hill

70 La Salle St. #14C, NYC, NY 10027

(917) 605-1050 voice, robert@roberthill.org
Download local copy ...

Note: Links to proprietary documents have been disabled to protect client confidentiality.  Additional writing samples are available upon request.

New York State Immigrant Action Fund Home Page

New York State Immigrant Action Fund inaugural website. This project (work in progress) was part of my CUNY Summer 2010 Internship. NYSIAF.org is a newly founded 501(c)(4) corporation. I launched their web presence, including the following elements:

  • Registered several domain names and configured the hosting service to redirect to the main URL.
  • Installed WordPress and configured basic outlines of the site.
  • Created logos, original artwork, and layout/design of the site.
  • Transfer of content, integration with Facebook, etc.

Jonathan Tasini's campaign website. While I did not install or configure Jonathan's official Drupal campaign website, I do have a hand in every aspect of maintaining it. Since January 2010, my day-to-day tasks include:

  • Uploading Press Releases, Blog Posts, and Multimedia.
  • Shooting and editing video, posting it to the campaign's YouTube channel, and embedding it in <iframe> elements within the site.
  • Maintaining the campaign's Flickr site and its embed in the main website.
  • Creating and managing online petitions, including automated counters embedded within the site.
  • Harvesting, grooming, and uploading email addresses into the NGP Campaign Online tool.
Jonathan Tasini for Congress
Sample Report from JIRA/Confluence

As the Resident Wiki Expert at Merrill Lynch, I spent much time integrating the JIRA bug report and feature request tracking system with the Confluence wiki. A major focus of this effort involved writing and embedding code in the wiki pages that would pull data from the JIRA database and display it in real-time reports.

Click HERE to view a sample report.

This sample was one of several hundred pages of automated reporting that I developed.

This project was in addition to producing various technical and user documents for the bank's back-end processing systems.

The Visual Computing Lab at CCNY was pioneering a Senior Capstone Course sequence with a course entitled Vision, Video, and Virtual Reality. I was enrolled in this course, and after a year of study we created a Virtual Manhattan Model. The research product that resulted from this course was accepted as an entry in the CCNY Einsteins In The City Original Research Conference in April 2005. 
Virtual Manhattan Model
PSFO Intranet site

PeopleSoft was creating an entirely new product line for the staffing industry. They needed thorough user documentation that was both web-based and context sensitive.  Because they already had a manual of style and existing design templates to be used with all PeopleSoft documentation, the job was a matter of applying existing examples to the new product.

This small intranet site was deployed over the LAN for the benefit of development team members. It provided developers and trainers with access to the documentation as soon as it was available, and it provided management with a tool to measure progress. 

The documentation part of this project lasted six months and ended exactly on schedule.

A sample output document from this project can be downloaded at right, "Sample PSFO Online Help File.doc."
Sample Document

LivePerson needed a way to demonstrate its product to prospective customers. The previous demo system was creating an unacceptable drag on the production system's performance, and the sales staff needed something that would work without regard to network connectivity, for instance at trade shows. In addition: 

  • The demo had to be fast to download and view, universally available to all browsers, and able to be viewed online or put on a cd-rom. 
  • It had to demonstrate the LivePerson service from the perspective of customers, clients, and administrators.
  • It had to simulate interactivity without allowing for any possibility of the demo moving into unexpected variations.
  • And, it had to be freely navigable to any page at any time, yet also have a series of Next buttons that allowed the client to simply click through the demo in a predetermined sequence.
LivePerson demo

I satisfied all of these requirements and more by creating a set of web pages that uses pictures of the interface linked with HTML hotspots.  The interface is also marked up with arrows, text, and circles to help lead clients through the demo, and there is a navigation cartouche that allows for easy navigation forward, back, and to the demo home page. 

LPSN demo navigation cartouche.

Being nothing more than simple HTML and .gif files, this demo is very fast to download and view. And, it is reliably viewed in most any browser setup.

All graphics were captured from actual screen shots and manipulated in Photoshop, creating layers of screen elements that were recombined into the final screens and exported as .gif files.

Bayer Intranet Site

Bayer Diagnostics had launched the ADVIA120 Hematology Analyzer and was engaged in the development of post-release software updates. Because Bayer is an international pharmaceutical and medical device corporation, all their documentation has to meet ISO 9000 standards. These standards include methods for document distribution.

The intranet site I built for them allowed all development and QA people access to the historic archive of pre-release documents as well as an interface to view post-release documents as they became available.

Of course, I wrote many of the documents on this intranet site in partnership with my team members.

In 1997, Dow Jones Markets was developing a prototype Fixed Income Transaction service that used a Java application with multi-cast data feeds. The intranet site I built for the FIT Development Team served several purposes:

  • It provided a slideshow of the latest screen shots for demo purposes.
  • It provided a set of links to various demo releases.
  • It provided an online portal to the full documentation set that included functional requirements, software requirements, testing documents, and server administration and cookbook documents.
  • It provided troubleshooting and support to help other Dow Jones people configure their computers for access to the demos.
  • It provided management with a means of presenting the team's ongoing efforts for high level review to assure continued funding for the project.
Dow Jones Intranet Site

Of course, I wrote most of the documents in this documentation set in collaboration with my team members. As the project was pared back, I was retained as the last remaining technical writer and so took over responsibility for all documents related to this project.