Dan Leonard Email & Phone Number

United Kingdom

Working within the digital editorial team on a fast growing newspaper website and related digital properties, reporting to the Digital Editor and the Managing Director of Digital. A great mix of product management, product development, QA, partner management, front end coding and workflow development. I was the Product owner for the build of i100.co.uk using an external development agency, led the front end redesign of independent.co.uk in tandem with a print redesign, completed a tricky Escenic CMS platform upgrade, migrated to Gigya's RASS platform for registration and BLTC and assisted in the rollout of an updated mobile website, iOS and Android applications.During this period Independent digital platforms saw an 85% increase in ABCe audited traffic.

Working in a Digital Editorial team across The Times and Sunday Times newsrooms.

Responsibilities:Daily management of Times Digital publishing tools and platforms from post print to tablet.Contact within editorial for central technology operations team and technical development team.Scoping, building, deployment of additional applications and content served into website and tablet products.Working closely with technology developers on main stack, editorial developers on custom web applications and 3rd party/offshore development teams.Skills:Hands on knowledge of digital publishing cycleEnd to end input in development sprint and bug resolution cross platformsHTML, CSS proficiencyHow to leverage free publishing and development tools How repurpose, edit, manage and deploy Ruby on Rails applicationsCross departmental communicationUnderstanding strategic goals of a subscripton content businessAchievements:Migration to Wordpress VIP platformMigration of video platform to OoyalaProof of concept on Escenic migrationDynamic XML syndication system powering iOS, Android, RIM, Win8 productsSearch migration and taxonomy improvementsSubject matter expert on Newsroom transformation projectMigration of Woodwing Android and in house iOS publishing systems to single tablet system

Daily management of production and development of The Times digital products.Worked on the production cycle, UAT, launch and iterative improvement of iPad application for iPad product launch in the uk.Worked closely with 3rd party, in house developers and stakeholders on of Smartphone application for iOS and Android phones.Digital Editorial representative from The Times on a working party to review and select replacement software for unified publishing strategy.

Editorial contact with the development team, acting as subject matter expert, involved in the defining of stories for development sprints, UAT testing, release cycle, bug logging, ongoing improvements.Migration of video provider from Roo TV to Brightcove.Introduction of Double Click video pre-roll advertising.Migration of Blog network to Pluck.Introduced live web chats using Cover it Live, Scribble.Created in house solution for live Video coverage and journalist comment in line, used for Budget live coverage.Handling technical and production issues for the Editorial Special Projects team, developing sponsored content solutions. Notable examples being a series of Business Leader podcasts, business heatmaps utilising Times copy, market data and video podcasts.Worked with 3rd party on a proof of concept iPhone application including authentication, video, saving, sharing. Involved capturing and detailing requirements, testing, stakeholder management, daily SVN deployments and first experience of iOS dev environment and xcode.Launched the game football iphone application in partnership with STATS, including live reader chats, user commenting and blog content.Developed a system with 3rd party offshore developers to collect, process and display education data results. This became a key publishing tool for The Times print, tablet and web editions. I have managed this tool since inception and produce print and digital pages from it.On the team that migrated the timesonline.co.uk website to thetimes.co.uk, redesigning the website and introducing paid content barrier.

London, United Kingdom

Management of B2C services; e-paper, crosswords, archive, for desktop, PDA and mobile platforms.Ownership of subscription database, customer transactions, chargebacks, reporting.Admin for editorial publishing tools; web publishing, video, puzzles, podcasting, authentication and payment.Introduced buy for a friend subscription purchases to increase customer base and seasonal subscription revenues. Developed and managed in production an in-house podcasting system.Launched a weekly music review podcast with Unique Music and Times editorial, extending editorial offering in iTunes podcast store, including #4 in Top 100 podcast chart.Introduced video streaming to the website with Kit (later Roo) TV. Worked with Multimedia Editor to train journalists to shoot, edit and upload their own audio and video content.Helped to develop, administrated and sold bulk subscriptions using corporate subscription management system with single user access tracking.Worked on migration of e-paper system, migration of main web publishing platform from Vignette to Escenic, migration of payment provider from Datacash to Worldpay.Launched customer facing RSS feeds.Set up and administrated a blog network using Typepad.Evangelist for Twitter, introducing to journalists, autoposting Times content to Twitter, utilising tracking and management tools to increase site traffic.Worked with SEO manager on headline optimisation, link seeding, html page structure.Worked with Commercial SEO manager on optimising whitelabel partner sites for SEO.

Reporting to Head of Product Development, working alongside Product Manager.Idea generation of subscription marketing, traffic generation, product launches.Meeting potential software providers. Evaluating new product opportunities. Helping a team of channel managers with ongoing editorial projects and sponsor backed specials. Majority of the dev work was outsourced.

Looking after customer database, managing access to subscription content, helping customers with access or technical queries. Liason between Editorial, Product and Customer Services. Optimising registration and subscription funnel, reporting, payment handling