Resume of Marshall Mayer

Objective: Contribute my technological and organizational skills to any enterprise that advances the social, political, and economic well-being of all people—and whose success is predicated on its creativity, integrity, and generosity.

Portrait by Phel Steinmetz, 1979.Current Passions:

  • Since 2008, when I retired, I have been traveling (COVID-19 contingent), to photograph for and publish on a website for social comment photography, take-note.com. I am also involved in efforts to mitigate the effects of generative artificial intelligence on photography, editing the bibliography for Writing With Light as well as exploring how to get smartphone users to adopt open source, standards-based content authentication solutions in their photography to counteract the existential threat of generative AI to lens-based photography.

Work Experience:

  • Founder of LiveModern, Inc., Helena, MT, January 2003—November 2008. LiveModern was a social networking enterprise making modernist housing products and services more accessible by efficiently connecting consumers with producers via the internet. As the primary marketing and sales representative for Michelle Kaufmann Designs from 2003 through 2008, LiveModern established MKD as the market leader in modern, green, prefab housing in North America (see this snapshot from 2004 of our website). Declaring my personal victory over paid work, I've been happily "retired" since the beginning of the financial crash. After 19 years online, the livemodern.com website dark in 2020.

  • Founder and CEO, TechRocks, Helena, MT, January 1999—December 2002. Responsible for the overall management of a leading national technology assistance organization formed by the merger of Desktop Assistance and the Rockefeller Technology Project, a sponsored project of the Rockefeller Family Fund. Responsibilities include program development, fundraising, and team leader of the software development and support strategies for ebase, free "open source" community relationship management software for social change organizations.

    Major TechRocks accomplishments include established ebase (988k PDF) as number three in national market share; helped a national advocacy nonprofit build communications capacity (149k PDF) for its chapters; directed organization during the first mass-scale public interest campaign on the internet; "wrote the book" (the first one) on internet advocacy and mobilizing; established TechAtlas (with NPower), an online technology assessment and planning tool for nonprofits; nominated for an Ashoka Fellowship; incubated the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative; helped found the national professional association (116k PDF) for nonprofit technology assistance providers; facilitated the national nonprofit technology assistance community's process to grant hardware and software to local and national conservation nonprofits by Apple, and negotiated the acquisition of TechRocks' principle assets by Groundspring.org.

  • Founder and Executive Director, Desktop Assistance, Helena, MT, January 1990—December 1998. Served as founding director of a nonprofit organization, one of the first half-dozen of its kind in the country, that provided consulting, training, and technical assistance services on computers and internet communications to social change nonprofits in the Northern Rockies. Responsibilities include providing all services to clients as well as leading all facets of fundraising, organizational development, and management.

    Major Desktop Assistance accomplishments include invented some of the first internet outreach and advocacy tactics (222k PDF), including the "Step 1-2-3" process now used so successfully by MoveOn.org; co-founded the Conservation Technology Support Program, at the time the largest national integrated technology granting program in the country; provided the first public access to internet email in Montana through the WestNet BBS; and invented tools and techniques of "list enhancements" (197k PDF) for advocacy nonprofits.

  • Computer Consultant, Desktop Type and Q Communications Group, Helena, MT, March 1986—January 2010. Helped start the first typesetting and graphic design business in Montana using exclusively Apple Macintosh equipment for typesetting and graphic design. Activities included evaluating computerized desktop publishing systems, getting equipment and staff up to speed, desktop publishing for clients, and consulting on business development activities. Desktop Type being a union shop, I also served as Secretary-Treasurer of the International Typographical Union local in Helena (ITU was the oldest union in the US at the time, before it was merged into the Communication Workers of America).

  • Organizational Consultant, Northern Rockies Action Group, Helena, MT, June 1986—July 1989. Responsible for NRAG's Workshop and Events Program, development and implementation of new special projects including grant writing, organizing all facets of NRAG's Board of Directors meetings, and consulting with social change client groups on fundraising, membership and leadership development, publications, campaign management, and computer skills.

    Major accomplishments include securing $50,000 and $100,000 Apple equipment grants, $150,000 special project grant from Pew Charitable Trusts, and $100,000 regional grant from Hands Across America; co-chairing state-wide Constitutional Defense Campaign Against C-18; and lead consultant for NRAG's Computer Services Assistance Program. I got my first internet account in 1986 (on AppleLink, the Apple Inc. internal network which eventually became America Online, AOL).

  • Director of Marcher Education, PRO-Peace, The Great Peace March, Los Angeles, CA, January—March 1986. Responsible for developing and implementing educational programs on peace issues for marchers on the Great Peace March. Involved in preparing workshops, organizing marcher discussion groups, creating a mobile library, and administering the College on Foot Program for academic credit.

  • National Campus Coordinator, PRO-Peace, The Great Peace March, Los Angeles, CA, August 1985—January 1986. Responsible for mobilizing student and faculty support for the Great Peace March. Involved organizing a national campus recruitment campaign, creating the College on Foot Program and national Academic Advisory Board, and organizing PRO-Peace chapters on campuses. Also responsible for fundraising, project development, publishing newsletters, media and publicity, and developing educational programs and materials.

  • Organizer, Los Angeles Local of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Los Angeles, CA, January 1984—August 1985. Responsible for all phases of organizational development for what was then the largest DSA local chapter in the country. Served on the national organization's elected board, the National Executive Committee, 1985-1991. Edited the DSA Local Organizing Manual as Chair of the NEC's Local Development Committee. At the DSA National Convention in 2017 (I remain a Lifetime Member), Joe Schwartz, also a co-founding member and national board member of DSA, introduced me to the delegates as, "The best organizer DSA ever had."

  • Computer Consultant, National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, Los Angeles, CA, 1981—1985. Responsible for designing and supervising transferal as well as maintenance of 15,000 name national fundraising list and general office work to a computerized office system on a Commodore 8096 CP/M.

  • Other previous Lives: finish carpenter, chef, "French service" waiter, professional photographer, college professor of photography.

Education:

  • University of California, San Diego, Master of Fine Arts in photography and performance art, 1981

  • University of Colorado, Boulder, graduate studies in photography, 1976

  • University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, undergraduate studies in photography, 1975

  • The Colorado College, Colorado Springs, B. A. in psychology and art, 1974

Personal:

I reside in Helena, MT. With the same life partner since 1976, one child (happily on his own and living in Colorado with his life partner and our grandson). I enjoy photography, hiking, travel, reading, cooking, craft beer, politics, and being Gramps, but not necessarily in that order.

I've always considered myself among the luckiest to have ever lived. I just want everyone to share in that privilege, no matter the circumstances of their birth or life.

Questions?

Contact me.

Portrait of Marshall Mayer by Phel Steinmetz, 1979.