Who is jellobrain?

Ana tried her best to become an artist or a writer or something exciting like that, but at some point had to accept her true talents as being a bit more linear. Php, MYSQL, R, PowerBI, Databases, Data, etc just seemed easier to learn at some point than, for example, how to paint a really good painting.

So she traded her paints over and over again in exchange for various computers and is enjoying expressing both her linear and her creative natures simultaneously through website development and cultural programming.

Ana has been building websites with drupal since drupal4.7 (2004). Her strategic sensibilities have been honed with a mostly non-profit clientele, and so her ability to help design with drupal in a way that is lightweight, user-friendly and maximally conservative of resources comes from a real sense of just wanting to make things work better.

Ana Willem is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (Industrial Design) where she specialized in sustainable systems design. She brings with her 20 years of experience with technology and information systems design and development, and 25 years of design experience.

Ana is an information technologist and project manager who specializes in creating websites, databases and integrated software flows for small businesses and non-profits.  Among other organizations, Ana has worked with the Environmental Defense Fund, CivicActions, TechSoup Global, Bioneers, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Southern Center for Human Rights, the United States Social Forum, the Metro Atlanta Taskforce for the Homeless, and Alternate ROOTS to name a few.

While the different projects she undertakes are diverse, there is an underlying thread that ties them together. They each involve, in their own way, an understanding and reading of systems, and a subsequent deconstruction, diagnostics, and reformulation to better serve their purpose.

jellobrain is about making your work easier and more effective.

People are meant to be creative. Computers were invented to do the boring work. Are the systems you are using simplifying your work, or complicating it?

A broad knowledge of organizational infrastructures and technologies.

• Information Systems Mapping: information technologies, procedures and flows within a variety of different organizations, and technological systems integration.
• Databases: custom database design, development, implementation + reporting to form-fit the specific needs of an organization.
• Websites: broad and specific experience with different content management systems, Web 2.0, and website architecture and development strategies.
• Design: fresh and generative branding strategies, publications + website design.

Ability to understand organizational systems, and isolate their constituent parts..

• Although an organizations networks, databases, and employee moral seem separate from one another - viewed through the analytic lens of systems and sub-systems, patterns within an organization can be isolated that effect the entire apparatus of an organization.
• With access to the underlying patterns, a penetrating analysis and development of systems can produce results that fundamentally shift an organizations ability to effectively and efficiently perform.

Prioritizing positive, creative and generative thought.

• Positive change can require a neutral outlook. This does not mean that issues should be glossed over, but that the process of approaching issues is best served by understanding the system rather than attacking individual pieces of the system.
• When issues are approached from the view-point of systems rather than individuals, the collective will of an organization mobilizes together towards improving the way an organization functions.
• As a result, the insights of the collective can uniquely inform the development process in a way that satisfies the true needs of the whole.