About
— By Jon Swerens, founder of skillsFortWayne
Why skillsFortWayne? Although the information on how to create a Web presence can be found in a multitude of books, many people are more comfortable learning by doing. That’s how skillsFortWayne wants to operate, by not only helping people learn, but by guiding them in completing an online project.
The inspiration for skillsFortWayne came from some similar classes being hosted in New York City.
I hope to make the skillsFortWayne classes quick-paced and enjoyable for those people who think they cannot understand this stuff.
Here is a biography of myself posted for a presentation I’m giving for the TQM Network:
More than anything, Jon Swerens enjoys helping people tell their stories. He’s been a text and visuals editor for 20 years, in print, on the radio and on the Web. He’s also the unofficial technical resource that coworkers talk to before bothering IT. His biggest success with technical corporate training was in teaching the entire newsroom how to use its complex publishing system — after writing all of the training materials. He also likes to help math-challenged journalists with percentages and probability.
He grew up near a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia, and earned his bachelors’ degree in journalism from West Virginia University in 1988 — the year before the university ditched the electric typewriters and bought Macintosh computers. He lived in West Virginia, Washington state and New York state before moving to Fort Wayne 11 years ago. He’s a judge for the speech category of the Sterling Sentinel awards, a graduate of the YLNI Leadership Institute and chairman of the board of the Summit City Fencing Club.
“Jon was one of the most creative people I worked with in the newsroom. Whether we were kicking around story angles or innovative ways to present the information, Jon could be depended on to come up with workable suggestions that made our product stronger. And not only does he approach problems from unique angles, he is also a productive employee and a strategic, analytical thinker.” — Vicki Adang, former presentation editor at The News-Sentinel, currently a copy editor at John Wiley & Sons in Indianapolis
If you have questions or ideas for other classes, please let me know by dropping a note to me via the contact page.
