Thomas Howell possesses 22 years of experience in the IT field ranging from network support for Cisco devices to web site architecture and troubleshooting. His goal is to explore information architecture for web applications with a focus on easy-of-support leveraging open source tools such as Drupal, Apache, Nginx, Memcache, Linux, et cetera.

Thomas Howell has experience in information architecture (Northwestern University), sitebuilding (Acquia and Northwestern), break-fix support (Acquia), search configuration and optimization (Northwestern University, Acquia), Linux administration (Conseco, Northwestern University, and Acquia), and troubleshooting/configuring Cisco devices (Transunion). His past experience include creating Shibboleth-enabled, Drupal-based websites to allow for complex authentication and authorization. He has a strong interest in web sites supporting information and research objectives. Of particular interest is the use of smart taxonomies and schemas in conjunction with a robust search options to improve the access and search accuracy for a website while minimizing the increase in long term supportability.