About

Hello, I’m Bekee.

I’ve been building on the web since the markup was a list of three nested tables and the spacer.gif was load-bearing. I do this on purpose; it has not gotten old.

I started fussing with computers around the age of thirteen, on Prodigy and Madison BBSes, carried a Mac Classic to a high school BASIC class, and built PCs while taking general credits at MATC. I did tech support for AOL when everyone had dial-up and only one phone line. I graduated in 2001 with a Commercial Art associate degree (now called Graphic Design), started working at a local doll company, and quietly migrated from design toward HTML and CSS. I worked there during the Golden Age of tables-for-layout, spacer GIFs, and IE5. What a time to be alive.

Eventually, I started a side quest, Gibsonworks, LLC. Along the way I learned WordPress, ExpressionEngine, Magento, Joomla, and a few other content management systems whose names I have politely forgotten. I picked up PHP, jQuery, Twig, and SCSS. I have a full-time day job in web development; Gibsonworks is the side practice.

The thread under all of it: I’ve been the family tech person since I was thirteen, back when my mom needed a hand with the home computer. I didn’t realize that was the job until much later. It still is the job. I can fix your problem with technology, so you don’t have to worry about it.

What Gibsonworks does, in plainer language.

WordPress development for small businesses and nonprofits in Madison. Custom themes, sensible plugins, content models the editor can actually use. Site rebuilds, migrations, support, the occasional surgical bug fix. I keep most projects small, on purpose. That’s what fits my time and the budgets of the people I usually work for.

I do not subcontract. If you came to me with something larger than I can take on alone, I’ll tell you and probably introduce you to someone who can.

A lot of my nonprofit work comes through DANEnet, a Madison organization that provides technology support to nonprofits. I’m their contracted WordPress developer for many of their clients, and that’s where most of the nonprofit experience on the portfolio page lives. If you’re a nonprofit, DANEnet is a fine path; reaching out to me directly works too.

Accessibility isn’t a phase.

I have written about and spoken about ADA Title II, and I take it seriously in my work. Accessibility is not a checkbox at the end of a project; it’s part of the brief, part of the build, and part of the parts no one tests for. The orange goes where it passes contrast. The focus ring is the kind you can actually see. No accessibility widget bolted on at the end.

The rest.

When I’m not in front of a computer, I’m in the backyard with May Belle and Tater Tot, cooking, or making tiny creatures out of polymer clay. I can count to ten in six languages. I know enough Braille to proofread signs in public spaces and the American Sign Language alphabet, plus a few choice words. My head line is longer than my heart line. I don’t hate much, but I hate when I get the hiccups. I have a penchant for gadgets, and if something is available in the color orange, I’ll probably buy it.

Other projects I’m building.

I make polymer-clay creatures and curios as Itty Bitty Nifty Gifties; I built FamilyRally for families coordinating medical-recovery updates; I run powntheday.com as an ambient daily ritual; and I keep a labeled drawer of small domain projects under Rabbit Hole Ventures. None of these are looking for investors. They are looking for the right small audience.

If you’d rather see something more conventional, here is my most recent resume (PDF, opens in a new tab). The voice over there is more formal than this one.