It took Karl about six months to create the original Site Builder and begin rolling it out to counties.
"I was adding one or two counties per month," Karl told me this morning. "I made sure Site Builder worked for people by following up constantly with them. Any issues or needs were dealt with immediately."
In 2000, Site Builder was far from the full-featured content management system we have now. "I had student assistants that would resize photos and make PDFs for county staff. There were no tools to do this automatically."
The attention to service led to a strong adoption rate for Site Builder. Today, there are over 600 sites using it. As it was growing, Karl also developed the first version of Collaborative Tools, ANR's discussion management tool.
"I had to create accounts for people by hand back then," he recalled. "I would literally call or email someone directly with a password."
Karl feels his real awakening to ANR came with the creation of the Core Issue Grant System, which is no longer in service.
"Each week I would get a call asking for another feature, and each feature showed me more of the layout of the division as a whole," he shared.
Karl continued to develop applications on his own, releasing division critical systems like the Surveys, Datastore, Directory, Portal, FileVault and more. In 2006, Karl was able to hire Bryon Noel and Dave Krause to help with the mission. Since then, the web team has developed more than 50 applications, totaling more than 1.5 million lines of code.
In 2010, Karl became the IT Manager for CSIT. Since then, he has expanded the capabilities of IT with new programs keeping customer service in mind. Karl began distributing equipment to division academics across the state, served on the leadership team for IGIS, established a division-wide IT help desk, spearheaded the scan and store projects for the RECs and administrative units moving into the ANR Building, and provided leadership for the installation of technology in the new building.
On a personal note, Karl has been an amazing mentor, friend and coworker. He maintained a funny, friendly style with everyone and was always ready to collaborate. His enthusiasm for providing IT solutions to the division was infectious, and his desire to make a difference was always front and center in all of his decisions and work.
We'll miss you, Karl.
Web Action Team, Circa 2009