Zuma Beach Entertainment

I completed my MBA studies at San Francisco State University in May of 2008. My hopes at the time were to find employment in the Bay Area in the finance industry either as an entry level financial analyst, a quantitative analyst, or a software engineer. As it turned out, the financial sector was already more than a year in recession due to the bursting of the real-estate credit bubble so my efforts in finding a decently paying job were unsuccessful. In February of 2009 I moved back to Los Angeles and began looking for work in the Internet service industry there. About a month later I found work at Zuma Beach Entertainment (ExchangeMall.com at the time).

At Zuma Beach Entertainment my initial role was to develop web sites and web applications. This role was later expanded to include server administration, project management, and some journalism and marketing. I started my work at the company by configuring a web server and then redesigning and upgrading most of the company's web sites. These sites included: First National Information Network, Sales Ride, Investor Concepts, ExchangeMall, Fast Info 1, Angel Babies, and Zuma Beach Entertainment. The old sites were converted into ASP.NET applications where appropriate, or redeveloped in the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) environment. There were also a couple sites which I developed for outside clients as well. These were: Burbank Aquatics, Dorothy of Oz, and The B Side.

In addition to developing web sites I developed a couple of web applications also, such as the Direct Promoter and FNIN Marbles. Direct Promoter is an email broadcasting system as well as a sales lead processing application, while FNIN Marbles is an application that tracks and reports the activity results of brokered lists. I also helped my subordinate develop the Angel Babies Flash Virtual World, the Graden Pong game in it, as well as created the entire 3D environment for it.

The marketing activities which I helped with were copywriting web site, landing page, media kit, and advertisement content, landing page design and development, the design and sending of marketing emails, and the creation of flash banner ads.

As far as the management of the business is concerned I recruited the editor of Investor Concepts and a couple of interns, and I was responsible for directing a handful of peoples activities on the Investor Concepts and Angel Babies Virtual World project. The people whom I had working for me were the editor of the Investor Concepts financial journal, the Interactive Media and Graphics Designer, a part-time marketing intern, a summer-time financial journalist intern, and two other company employees that were assigned part-time to help with the data entry and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on the Investor Concepts site.