New to Propel - so parking "me" copy in a blog post

I'm interested in supporting any efforts towards fostering entrepreneurship in the region, thus I've joined this Propel ning community (and will be working to get a sense of what transpires here :)

Very broadly, I'm into technology that can be built in high level programming languages that helps people collaborate, communicate, explain, or learn.

I invent, design, or pull together whatever is needed to execute projects. I'm working independently right now (Q2 2009) rebuilding MediaLandscape (a set of presentation publishing tools, works with content such as the output of Sonic Foundry Mediasite recorders).

I'm also building imby.info which will be a new local professional networking "utility". I'm working with Philip Crawford on that, with what little time and productivity we can muster muddling about in Rails (cuz one must stay abreast of current webdev framework fads)

I think we all face some tougher transitions than we expect along with interesting opportunities to redefine many business landscapes. We may be at a juncture where we can do things that don't compete with what has come before, but instead render it irrelevant or replace it outright. That sounds like fun to me :)

So, I want to connect with others and do my part to try to make the local professional community as robust and resilient as possible - getting help I need and helping others out here and there on their projects.

Areas where I may have something to offer others include tools, input or custom project work on:
- open online collaborative environments
- online presentation or video software needs (web, iPhone, other devices) for content intended to be shared (I'm generally not much good as a DRM and encryption guy, except to tell you why it probably won't work out for you in the long run :)
- software application design for education, collaboration, or media consumption tools
- construction of teams or building organizational competence to achieve the above sorts of goals
- willingness to discuss experiences from 15 years of Internet and Web development projects for very diverse clients


Areas where I or those I work with tend to have needs include:
- Small project web designers who can do decent design and write excellent well structured copy
- Programmers with language competence in Objective C, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, ActionScript 2&3 (Flex or GUI) JavaScript
- Programmers with framework competence in XCode, Drupal, Rails
- Interface folks comfortable with AJAX and other asynchronous approaches to the page, both raw or via a framework rendering it on the server
- Web service and web API folks
- People who have a preference for tools that don't create walls


I've rather more IDs than I really attend to meaningfully, so if you've landed here and are trying to get my attention for something specific, probably best to contact me via the goog:

http://www.google.com/profiles/preston.h.austin - My vCard, resume, feeds, etc are listed there and will be periodically updated.

Thanks,
Preston