darling docs

About me

Hello, lovely to meet you.

My name is Sam, welcome to my portfolio.

Hopefully these pieces highlight my interest in research, health, the environment, and technology. My ambition is to continue pursuing these fields, while developing and applying skills of communication and documentation.

This is me

My education and career paths have taken me in many interesting directions over the years. I began at UBC in pre-veterinary studies, where I enjoyed a balance between science and humanities. Following graduation I took time to work in the pet food industry before returning to do a master’s degree at McGill University. My time at McGill provided many excellent learning opportunities. I collaborated with several research projects across the departments of Political Science, Agriculture, and the School of Human Nutrition. Ultimately, my passion for communication, documentation, and teamwork proved greater than a desire to continue research independently.

After spending some time working on freelance projects, including style guide creation, copyediting, and technical writing, I am now happily a permanent member of the GSoft family as technical content specialist.

In my spare time I enjoy baking fresh bread, doing yoga, running with my dog, and practicing my French and Dutch.

Education

Univeristy of British Columbia (2013)

  • B.Sc. in Animal Physiology, Department of Biology (3.2 GPA)
  • minor in English Literature (3.7 GPA)

McGill University (withdrew 2020)

  • M.Sc. in Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Science (3.7 GPA)

University of Calgary (2021)

  • Professional Writing specializing Business and Technical Writing (4.0 GPA)

Additional courses (2020)

  • Google’s Technical Writing I: The critical basics of technical writing
  • Google’s Tehcnical Writing II: Intermediate topics in technical writing
  • Peter Gruenbaum’s API Technical Writing I: JSON and XML for writers (via Udemy)
  • Peter Gruenbaum’s API Technical Writing II: REST for writers (via Udemy)
  • Udemy’s Full Stack Web Developer Bootcamp
  • Introduction to DITA, at LearningDITA.com

Skills

Software Proficiencies & Familiarities

  • Microsoft suite, Google suite, Libre Office suite, Atlassian suite, GitHub, Zendesk, SSGs (Hugo, Antora, Sphinx), Nextcloud, Joplin, JMP
  • Jira, Figma, SAS, R, MadCap, Zotero

Language Proficiencies & Familiarities

  • Markdown, reStructured Text, AsciiDoc, HTML, XML (DITA); French (B1)
  • CSS, JSON, JSX/MDX, SQL (MySQL), Bootstrap, PHP, JavaScript, R, AMPL; Dutch