Profiles

B.A., History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1990

• College Honors
• Highest Honors in Major
• Phi Beta Kappa

Academic Experience: 

Academy of Art University, 2001-2016

• Adjunct Instructor, Web Design + New Media Department, Graduate Division

University of California, Berkeley, 1992-1994

• Graduate Student Instructor, Department of Environmental Design

University of California, Santa Cruz, 1990

• Teaching Assistant, Art History Department

 

My life experience – as an instructor of Web, mobile and gaming technology and as an entrepreneur and coder who has started two interactive development firms – has provided me with the range of skills I need to meet the demands of teaching game development, mobile application development and web development. Before joining the faculty at Santa Rosa Junior College, I taught Web design and coding, mobile and game development in a graduate design school from 2001 to 2016.

I was most recently Managing Principal and Senior Engineer at Braindunk. There, I brought two decades of interactive development experience to Braindunk’s unique team of new media creators, social scientists, artists, writers, and makers. With Braindunk, I worked to fulfill my lifelong dream of working on social and environmental justice, while crafting “interactive environments” that empower, engage and energize people, encouraging creative expression and learning. Braindunk’s initiatives include innovative educational services for teaching kids to code, and development of mobile collaboration tools for creating stories about the natural world around us.

I have written books for Adobe Press and Pearson Education, presented at numerous conferences including MacWorld, and have recently wrapped up work on a new site for the Kitsap Regional Library in Washington.

I was a Founder and Managing Principal of Mediatrope Interactive Studio, from 1996 until 2013. In 1996, Mediatrope launched the world’s first online presentation of art museum collections for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), including the DeYoung and Legion of Honor museums. The following year (1997), Mediatrope empowered FAMSF to become the first art museum website to offer crowd-sourced descriptions of their collections objects. By 2004, Mediatrope was well on its way to becoming a specialist in online museum collections, and launched the largest-yet collections site for the MFA Boston, comprising 350,000 objects and including the ability for website visitors to create their own galleries of objects online. Mediatrope was the publisher of the Sitebots content management system and the MuseumCentric e- commerce platform.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-wilde-284108

Work and Consulting Experience: 

Recent Work

I founded an interactive development studio in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mediatrope, in 1996. During my eighteen years at Mediatrope, my work focused on CMS-driven e-commerce, interactive, mobile and game projects for museums and cultural institutions. At Mediatrope and my later endeavor, Braindunk, I led the development of Web, game, mobile and interactive projects as Director of Technology for many prominent organizations, including the following recent projects:

• Smithsonian Institution History Explorer
  http://historyexplorer.si.edu
• Napa Valley Film Festival
  http://www.napavalleyfilmfest.org
  (a Communication Arts website of the week)
• My Jordan River mobile app
  Environmental Protection Agency & State of Utah
  http://www.myjordanriver.org
• International Museum of Women
  http://mama.imow.org
• Art in Public Places: County of Miami-Dade
  http://www.miamidadepublicart.org
• Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
  http://www.mocacleveland.org
• Kitsap Regional Library
  http://www.krl.org

 

Professional Areas of Interest: 

Game Development

• JavaScript Game Frameworks
• Unity Game Development Environment
• Unreal Engine Game Development Environment
• Swift iOS Game Development

Mobile Application Development

• iOS + Android Native Application Development
• Web-based Mobile App Frameworks (ex: PhoneGap)

Web Development

• Content Management Systems
• Frameworks
• Client- and Server-side Technologies
• Design Thinking
• Human Centered Design
• User Experience

Professional Involvement and Community Service: 

• Adobe Solutions Network
• Apple Developer Connection
• Association of Computing Machinery
• Drupal Association
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Free Software Foundation
• Higher Education Video Game Alliance
• Phi Beta Kappa

Presentations and Publications: 

Publications

I have authored the following presentations and books:

• "Open Source Collaboration: New Models for Technology Development in the Museum Community"
  Museums and the Web Conference, 2010
  http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw2010/papers/wilde/wilde.html
• Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide
  Peachpit Press / Pearson, multiple editions
  Contributed chapter to reference and how-to book for Mac OS X, the Apple Macintosh operating system. Materials included in online companion website, including scripts.
• Adobe Illustrator Scripting
  Adobe Press, 2003
  Wrote, researched and developed scripts for 600-page reference and how-to book for scripting the Adobe Illustrator graphics software application on Mac and Windows platforms. Additional materials included in online companion website, including 200+ scripts.
• AppleScript for Applications: Visual QuickStart Guide
  Peachpit Press / Pearson, 2002
  Wrote, researched and developed scripts for 450-page reference and how-to book for AppleScript, a system-level Apple Macintosh scripting environment. Additional materials included in online companion website, including 200+ scripts. The book has been very well received by both AppleScripters and the Macintosh community at large. Special book feature published in MacWorld magazine, February 2003.
• Adobe Illustrator® 9.0 Scripting Guide
  Adobe Systems, Inc., 2000
  Wrote and researched 434-page reference for scripting in Adobe Illustrator, a cross-platform reference and language guide that covers automation of Illustrator in both AppleScript and Visual Basic. Additional scope included quality engineering and testing on development versions of application software. Over 200 scripts were developed for inclusion on the shipping Illustrator 9.0 CD-ROM. The guide was shipped in-box with the software product.
• AppleScript for the Internet: Visual QuickStart Guide
  Peachpit Press / Pearson, 1999
  Wrote, researched and developed scripts for 350 page reference and how-to book for AppleScript 1.3.4, a system-level Apple Macintosh scripting environment. Additional materials included in online companion website, including 100+ scripts and an additional 6 chapters of material.

Honors and Awards: 

Awards

• Communication Arts Website of the Week (2014)
• Webby Award (multiple)
• Gold MUSE Award, American Alliance of Museums (multiple)
• Summit Award (multiple)
• Shockwave Game of the Week
• HOW Magazine Interactive Award
• Gold Pollie Award (multiple)
• Step Inside Design Award
• Museums + Web Best Research Site

Portfolio Site

Personal Site:  http://ethan.com