Doug Tidwell

Storyteller, Author, Technical Marketer, Technology Evangelist, Writer, and Coder

Storytelling

I've created many different kinds of content and given many types of presentations, but everything I do comes down to one principle:

The Story is Key.

As Steve Jobs famously said, "The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller." If I can't tell a compelling story showing how our product makes life better for our customers, they're not going to buy it. A list of product features won't get the job done; we have to have a story built around the customer's pain points.

A couple of examples:

Author of O'Reilly's XSLT

It's the perfect gift for any occasion.

I wrote XSLT, published by O'Reilly and Associates. Along with the text of the book, I created hundreds of sample stylesheets plus XSLT extension functions in Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, and C#. The book has sold 50,000 copies and counting and is also available in German and Russian translations.

Whatever the occasion, the book always makes a thoughtful gift for your friends and loved ones, as this unsolicited testimonial illustrates:

"When I gave [the book] to my girlfriend for her birthday, she just sat there in stunned silence. I can honestly say she hasn't looked at me the same way since. Thanks, XSLT Second Edition!"

–Email from a grateful reader, February 2023

I am also a coauthor of Programming Web Services with SOAP. That book has been translated into German and Italian.

Technical Marketing

The range of customer-facing content I've created includes web pages, white papers, blogs, surveys...and lots of videos. Here are some examples:

There are dozens of videos on my YouTube channel as well.

I've also created lots of internal marketing content such as sales enablement materials, release notes, messaging guidelines, and go-to-market plans.

Technology Evangelism

I am a JavaOne Rock Star and have given more than 500 presentations in more than 150 cities in 46 countries. In my years as a technology evangelist, I have done hands-on workshops, keynote addresses, conference breakout sessions, panel presentations, and guest lectures at universities.

Every presentation I've ever given to a developer audience has included live, running code. Some of that code was mature, tested, production-quality code; some of it was a build that finished 20 minutes before my session started. But all of it ran, perfectly, every single time.*

Here's how I want my audience to feel about the product or technology I'm evangelizing:

This thing is huge. It's going to help us seize opportunities and fight threats. And we've got to start using it before our competition does.


* Of course not. But you've got to work without a net if you want a developer's respect.

Writing

I have written dozens and dozens of articles, tutorials, blogs, cheat sheets, white papers, and other content. Together they've generated millions of page views and have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Vietnamese.

Here are some sample titles:

Coding

Many of the articles, tutorials, and workshops I've done have featured code samples, either demonstrations or exercises. Here are a few things that I've done over the years:

Bio

I bring positivity, creativity, and humor to work every day.

With a Master's in Computer Science and a Bachelor's in English, I have a unique ability to start with difficult technical concepts and end with straightforward explanations that tell our audience how something works and why it deserves to exist. And put those explanations in a story with the right amount of creativity and humor.

If you'd like to know more about me, check out my resume, my video resume, or any of these links:

     

Doug Tidwell
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
+1‑919‑427‑8896
doug@dougtidwell.com
© Copyright 1995, 2023 Doug Tidwell.