About Bud Parr

Earl “Bud” Parr III is a Web Developer, Writer and On-line Publisher with a particular expertise in Weblogs and Content Consulting. He is actively involved in the advancement of “social software” both in terms of promoting writing on the Web and empowering individuals and organizations to create community with technology.

Before devoting his time to helping organizations with their Web communication strategies, he developed asset allocation products for Prudential International Investment’s non-U.S. clientele. As part of his wide-ranging duties at Prudential, he wrote for a publication distributed world-wide to financial professionals and sophisticated investors, he developed investment models and reporting methodology, consulted on emerging markets for a team of highly regarded investment managers and managed a complex systems project that included building a web-based interface for allocating funds in several currencies for hundreds of client accounts.

He began his career at Lehman Brothers, the investment bank, more than 20 years ago and in the span of his Wall Street career, which also included Merrill Lynch Asset Management, he advised clients in the U.S, Latin America and Europe on products and markets.

He holds an M.A. in International Economics from New York University and a B.S. in Economics and International Business from NYU’s Stern School of Business. He is a member of the Information Architecture Institute.

Since 1998 Bud has been actively writing for a variety of organizations with both on-line and off-line content. He edits the literary Weblog, Chekhov’s Mistress, which some people like, and he is currently the editor for the blogs at Words Without Borders, The Online Magazine of International Literature. He is on the advisory board for the Americas Series at Texas Tech University Press, which publishes contemporary fiction and nonfiction in translation.

Earl “Bud” Parr: Resume

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Profile

An expert in utilizing technology, blogs and other social media, I created the Web development firm (Sonnet Media) and online advertising/marketing firm (Brainiads℠) by building a reputation and entire client base from online presence. Clients include HarperCollins and Harper Perennial, Penguin, Coffee House Press, Unbridled Books, Columbia University Press, and Library of America as well as numerous other companies and individuals.

Current

Sonnet Media LLC/Brainiads Inc.℠

Brooklyn, NY 2002 - Present
President

Sonnet Media LLC develops Websites and blogs for authors (e.g. Min Jin Lee, estate of Zora Neale Hurston), filmmakers (e.g. Skylight Pictures), publishers (e.g. Harper Perennial) and other organizations (e.g. Stanton Crenshaw Communications), with a particular in expertise Online outreach, community building and social media. As head of this organization, I hired, managed and collaborated with a diverse team of designers, programmers and project managers. Revenue has grown every year.


Brainiads℠ Inc. is an online advertising network with 80 publisher sites and a variety of clientele, primarily in the publishing industry. As head of the organization (with three others reporting), created technological infrastructure, marketing plan, budgeting, and initiated all sales meetings with publishing and advertising industry executives.

Through aggressive budgeting and sales, Brainiads has been profitable from its first day.

Highlights

• Conceived, designed and developed MetaxuCafe.com, a social network for literary bloggers with over 1,400 members.
• Interviewed for Digital Arts Magazine about innovations in online advertising, .Net Magazine on Typography constraints on the Web, and a Boston University class on “Arts Criticism: From the Old Media to the New.”
• Interviewed on Open Source Radio (aired on Boston Public Radio) about Don Quixote and the Website I developed (400 Windmills) to discuss the book with participants from 3 countries, in 7 cities.
• Collaborated with Pen America for online coverage of Pen World Voices Festival (the team I created published over 20 articles on the festival in both 2006 and 2007, posted at numerous Websites as well as aggregated at MetaxuCafe).
• Moderated Panel at BookExpo “Blogs: Is their Growing Influence a Tastemakers Dilemma?” highlighted in the New York Times, GalleyCat, and New Yorker Magazine.
• Hosted numerous live events, including book launch party for a Coffee House Press title, and summer MetaxuCafe event at a NYC art gallery to bridge online experience with live social interaction.
• Invited to become a charter member of the Litblog Co-op, an online organization of leading literary blogs to promote lesser known current fiction.
• Interviewed as expert for course at Boston University on online arts criticism.
• Fluent in HTML/XHTML, CSS, RSS, Publishing systems such as TypePad/MovableType, Wordpress, Expression Engine, and proficient with Javaxcript, PHP, AJAX, and Flash.
• Personal literary blog: Chekhov’s Mistress, http://chekhovsmistress.com.
• Sonnet Media LLC: http://sonnetmedia.net

Prior Experience

Prudential International Investments

Newark, NJ 1999 - 2002
Vice President Product Development

Manage systems and analytical development of global investment products for non-U.S. investors.

Highlights

• Conducted educational seminars to groups of professionals in Europe and Latin America.
• Created and edited a marketing/investment publication. Wrote a monthly column for a publication distributed worldwide.
• Oversaw user-experience development for in-house mutual fund trading system.
• Managed project flow between systems, operations, field users and management for major product initiative.
• Planned and adapted existing web-based client profiling system for use in off-shore markets.
• Developed business specifications encompassing legal, systems, operations and investment policy.
• Instituted framework for performance attribution and presented results to senior management.
• Hired, trained and supervised analysts and interns.

Merrill Lynch

New York, NY 1993 - 1998
Analyst, Asset Allocation Product Development, 1997 - 1998

Key role on a two person team developing global asset allocation investment vehicles for non-US clients.

Highlights

• Created analytics for managing broad asset class, multi-currency investment models.
• Delivered presentations on investment methodology to financial advisors in Europe and Latin America.
• Edited a monthly financial newsletter.
• Developed methodology to analyze fund strategies and performance expectations on a quantitative and qualitative basis.
• Implemented fund manager due diligence process. Interviewed fund managers and
• investment company principals to assess strategies.
• Hired and supervised a team of analysts.

Asst. Vice President, Fixed Income Sales 1993 - 1997

Managed bank, insurance company and other institutional relationships, advising clients on portfolio strategies, economic and market environment, and security selection

Shearson Lehman Brothers

New York, NY 1989 - 1993
Fixed Income Sales

Developed institutional relationships, advising clients on portfolio strategies, economic environment, and security selection.

Education

New York University, New York, NY — M.A. economics
New York University, New York, NY — B.A. economics, international business

Contact

Feel free to start a chat or call me during business hours on Skype (my Skype name is budparr). Or use the form below:

Say, Why the Long Typeface?

Yippee! If you're sick of Arial and Times New Roman too, then you'll be happy to know that soon - and that soon is now to some extent - the world of typefaces on the Web will finally open up. Despite being technologically capable of displaying any font in browsers, issues of standards and licensing have kept us limited to whatever fonts are already on everyone's operating system.  MIT Technology Review has a good overview piece (may be behind a subscription wall) on the current status of Web fonts, if you don't know the issues , and in that piece they highlight one company working toward a solution today, Small Batch:

...a startup called Small Batch is poised to launch an alternative with a service called Typekit. Small Batch (and also the startup Kernest) is offering to be a middleman: it would look after security issues for type designers and browser- compatibility issues for Web designers, who--instead of linking to fonts directly--would use JavaScript to link to Typekit. The company would create a new business model, transforming fonts from goods into a service. Rather than buying a font once and being able to use it indefinitely, Web designers (or their clients) would pay a recurring fee to buy access to one or more fonts in a library. (Typekit does offer some free fonts, too.) Users would lose access to the fonts when they stopped paying, but no fonts are really forever, anyway: formats change and type designers make improvements. In the service model, those improvements would be made along the way. Not only would fonts be kept up to date, but they'd be kept compatible with evolving platforms in an ever-­changing browser market. "Until there's one format, one browser, and one operating system, there's a lot we can do to help," says Bryan Mason, one of Small Batch's founders.

I'm very excited to be an early user of TypeKit. It's super easy to use: about one minute to implementation, and has a fairly wide variety of fonts. They will have to have lots more fonts to be viable and although the pricing is reasonable, it will be interesting to see how 'fonts as a service' shakes out. It's one more thing, in addition to hosting, domains, and software licenses, that a developer becomes responsible for managing, but well worth it in my view.

There are technical limitations at the moment: You can detect a delay before type gets switched to the delivered font (the company says it's working on this), and I suspect that since the fonts are delivered via Small Batch's servers - one more bandwidth eater clogging the Web - I'm not sure if they'll be cached (the way Web browsers store information to make sites faster). Also, because these services work on a subscription basis, we have to be aware that our typefaces have a temporary nature. The entire Web is changing and sites have to keep up, so I'm not overly concerned about expiring fonts, but I know that the feeling of temporariness may keep implementation lower than it might otherwise. None of these concerns can allay my excitement at this step forward for the Web.

posted Nov-06-2009

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