Rusty Foster

Peaks Island, Maine
rusty@kuro5hin.org
(207) 838-3727
References available upon request

I am a programmer, writer, and entrepreneur who has spent more than fifteen years creating media, tools, and companies that help people work together and better understand the world.

Scripto, LLC

Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder, January 2014–Present

In 2011, TV host Stephen Colbert and Colbert Report writer Rob Dubbin began an in-house project to develop TV writing and production software to support The Colbert Report’s time-sensitive news-driven workflow. Three years later, in 2014, they hired me as the first Scripto employee, to shepherd a functional but rough prototype into a full-fledged software product and business. In that capacity, I extensively managed both people and technology.

People:

• Helped found Scripto LLC, hired a CTO, developers, and a CEO, and assisted with budgeting and business planning.
• Assisted with sales and product demos.
• Onboarded and trained writing and production staff at client shows including The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and more.
• Coordinated hardware, software and networking deployment with I.T. staff at CBS and Comedy Central, among others.
• Acted as the primary point of contact for all support and customer service issues, implemented and staffed live chat support, coordinated and performed all client software and hardware upgrades and client communication about upgrades.

Technology:

• Developed operations procedures from scratch, specced and purchased server hardware and cloud computing resources, created continuous integration and deployment tools and workflows using GitHub, Docker, CircleCI, and custom code.
• Developed backup and hot-failover protocols and procedures for clients with no downtime tolerance in their daily production schedule.
• Planned, coded, tested, and deployed bug fixes and new features to the software.
• Worked hands-on solving problems with technologies such as Ubuntu and Debian Linux, Linode and AWS cloud computing services, Node (0.10x and 6.x) and NPM, operational transform, LevelDB, PostgresDB, MySQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, and more.

Today in Tabs

Creator and writer, September 2013–February 2016

In 2013, I started a daily newsletter called Today in Tabs, which chronicled the day’s media, technology, and culture news. I, and Tabs, were the subject of profiles at The Observer, Nieman Journalism Lab, and The Kernel, among others. Today in Tabs is archived in large part at Fast Company and Newsweek.

• Organically grew the readership from zero to over 15,000 daily subscribers.
• Struck and managed paid web syndication agreements with first Newsweek, then Fast Company magazine.
• Researched, wrote, edited and published 700-1200 words per day, which typically included 30+ links and several images and embedded tweets, four days a week, ten months a year.
• Developed a production workflow and hand-coded software that allowed me to quickly and efficiently write and generate two different fully-formatted HTML versions of the newsletter each day, one for email and the other for web syndication. My turnaround time was typically three hours from beginning to write until final publication.
• Established a paid internship program, including soliciting internship sponsors, managing billing and writing ad campaigns, selecting, mentoring, and compensating interns, and helping guide and edit the interns daily contribution to the newsletter.
• Recruited, edited, and paid numerous guest contributors.

Plus Three, LLP

Senior Developer, May 2006–December 2014

• Developed custom social media and event management platforms for political and nonprofit clients.
• Developed blogging and online community tools for political candidates such as John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Sen. Mark Warner, and Gov. Jon Corzine, among others.
• Developed community and advocacy tools for nonprofit groups including NAACP, the Sierra Club, and People for the American Way.

Armstrong-Zuniga

CTO, February 2004–May 2006

This small Democratic campaign technology consultancy grew in part out of the Howard Dean 2004 campaign. As CTO I consulted on online strategy and developed blogging and community tools for several campaigns and organizations. I also helped found Sportsblogs, Inc, now known as Vox Media, and helped grow the DailyKos blog into a major progressive community.

Kuro5hin.org

December 1999-April 2016

Kuro5hin was one of the first large online communities. It was the flagship site for the open source Scoop community platform, which I initially wrote and continued to maintain for nearly fifteen years. Kuro5hin is sadly no longer with us, but it was an early step on the road that led to the hyper-connected world we live in now.