I hail fromPetaluma, CA. Send me anemail.
Hello random visitor. My name is Dave Snider. I've been working with computers in some form or another since the early 90s when I hacked away on an oldIBM PS1 and a pre-wwwProdigy account. Since then I've mostly fiddled around on the Internet building websites for myself, CNET, or CBS. Lately I've been working with a small team atGuidebook to build a super fun content management system. I also runWebhook which happens to power this very site.
I spent my younger years in the Maryland suburbs near Washington, DC. In my twenties I moved west to San Francisco and now live just north in Petaluma, CA. My wife Nicole and I believe it's the perfect town to raise our litter of dogs and small humans. When I'm not working or hanging with the family I'm usually messing around in my woodshop or with the newest video game.
On all of the projects below I operated as a mix of Product Lead, Product Designer and Front-end Engineer. Mostly I specialize in tool UI and content design. That's a fancy way of saying I'm pretty good with designs that deal with lots of forms or text. Most of the sites I built over the years dealt with large communities that needed passive and active moderation systems to filter through thousands of submissions a day.
On projects that I founded, I also did all the usual business stuff around P&L sheets, payroll and all the various paperwork that works behind the scenes to keep things moving.
Occassionally I show up on camera or on a podcast as a vague expert in nerdy things.
Download my resumeProduct
Guidebook provides a simple interface for publishing your own event and location guides. If you walked a showroom floor in the past year you were likely using an app we helped build. I work with a fantastic, small team building the CMS backend that powers everything.
Founder / Designer.
Webhook is the easiest way to build a custom CMS (content management system). It also happens to power this very website. Powered by Node.js, Firebase and Grunt Webhook is an MIT open-source project. I built it with Mike Horn and Ian Kelly and launched it in July 2014 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. We've been rapidly improving it ever since.
Founder / Designer.
At the end of 2007Gamespot fired my friend Jeff Gerstmann and the Internet went kind of nuts. In 2008 I helped Jeff build a new siteGiantbomb.com with a looser take on the gaming scene and a bigger focus on community. By 2011 Time magazine called it one of the50 best websites on the Internet we were processing hundreds of thousands of community contributions a month. Things came full circle in 2012 when CBS, Gamespot's new owner, acquired the site along with Comicvine.
Founder / Designer.
Comic Vine is the world's largest comic book website. It exists as a giant relational wiki of comic book issues and the characters, concepts and crazyness that they contain. Launched in 2006 with my friends Ethan Lance and Tony Guerrero the site went from a crappy office in Berkley to becoming an industry standard for comic news and info. Acquired, along with Giant Bomb in 2012 by CBS.
Designer.
In 2010 I designed the original version ofTested.com for Will Smith and Norm Chan. In 2012 the site was acquired and brought in Jamie and Adam from the Mythbusters to join the team. Every once in awhile I show up for podcasts and other events to help out the Tested team.
Product Lead / Designer.
I remember sitting in a small meeting room with our engineering team after we were told the launch of TV.com would be moved up two weeks to coincide with a big corporate CNET event. "We'll never work on a two-letter domain ever again. Let's make it good". TV.com launched in 2005 and that year was named one of Time magazine's50 best websites of the year. It started my love of relational wiki sites focused on community.
Designer
In 2014 I designed a new site forSupergiant Games, makers of the games Bastion and Transistor.
In 2013 I built a sphinx theme forRead the Docs that is currently used by a few thousand open source projects.
I also worked on and helped launchMP3.com for CNET around 2004.
In 2002 I built a small DVD, CD and video game collection manager called Guzzlefish that no longer exists (here's a NY Times article about it), but was pretty popular at the time and eventually acquired by CNET.
