About

My name is Paul May. I'm a web consultant from Dublin and I work for the super-cool web agency Front in Belfast. You might want to contact me, or get me on twitter.

What makes you happy?

A great many things make me happy; triathlon, my friends, cooking, photography, current affairs, travel, good old fashioned FM radio and newer fangled podcasts. Most importantly I strive to succeed for my family and my fiancée Cliona; a damn good scientist, a singer of some acclaim and lovely to boot.

What exactly do you do for a living?

I help companies and organisations use the web effectively to delight their customers. I've been fortunate enough to work with clients like BBC, Independent News & Media, Carte Blanche Greetings, Abbey Theatre, Dublin City University and others.

It's my job to start with a blank piece of paper, thrash out all the ideas that could be pursued, then shape a project around the subset of ideas that will delight users, and meet the client's objectives. In some places this is called a user experience strategist/consultant - but these terms are not widely used in Ireland, so I tend not to bandy them about.

Techniques

In my work I apply techniques like collaborative workshops, structured stakeholder interviews, elevator pitches, conceptual modeling, objective frameworks, content strategy and good old fashioned grit - all these things help ensure we don't end up building something that serves no purpose, the wrong purpose, or just plain sucks. Lots and lots of Post-it notes are usually involved.

Talks & Training

From time to time I speak at events or conferences to road-test my ideas, which I enjoy more than is right or proper. I've given guest master classes at University of Ulster on two occasions, which were a lot of fun.

From time to time I give training and workshops on writing for the web and content strategy.

Those Wild College Years

I studied Multimedia at DCU between 2000 and 2004 and had a total blast. The course was a 4 year whirlwind of media theory, semiotics, sound design, digital video production, 3D modeling, robotics, and writing for the web.

I am most proud of the work I did alongside Kevin Cannon on physical, vision-based human computer interaction and Eyeship, a robotic aerial camera platform cooked up with Tim Twomey.

Previous Lives

Between 2005 and 2007 I worked for the consulting firm Accenture who have their business very much together, and aren't short of incredibly smart and hardworking people. These folks taught me a great deal.

In 2004 I had the huge privilege of being elected president of DCU Students' Union. As part of my role I sat on the University's Govering Authority, and had a chance to do some real good for the institution and its students. This job was a tough slog, and nearly kicked my ass - but I loved it.

In 2003 I helped Aphra Kerr and John Lynch create the site GameDevelopers.ie which has gone on to be a central resource for Irish computer game developers. Aphra is a clever person. John is still the hardest working man I know.

When I was a mere slip of a lad I had the immense good fortune to work for the web agency Fever Information Design/Fever Interactive. This was, as memory serves me, between 1999 and 2002. We were young and foolish then, but did some pretty cool work.

Once upon a time I was responsible for a reasonably popular fan website for the band Ben Folds Five. This site existed at various URLs between 1996 and 2000 and is now very much defunct (much like the band). This was a million years ago.