Steve Heiser - EnergyVortex

Stephen graduated from Emerson College in January 1989 with a B.F.A. in Professional Writing. In April of 1989, he started as a staff writer for Technopop Software in San Francisco, California. While at TechnoPop, he wrote for the conceptual design team and for the manual documentation team.

In July of 1990, he went to work for the H.W. Wilson Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stephen was hired as a member of the starting team of 23 writers that created the Wilsons Business Abstracts publication. An all-new publication, he was able to help shape the form and content of this online periodical. He started out writing and fact-checking abstracts, and within a year, was given a chance to try his hand at some editing. Shortly after that, he was only assigned editing work with a small amount of writing added when the writing team needed an extra boost.

In April of 1992, he left H.W. Wilson to take an editorial position at Individual Inc. A hot start-up at the time, Steve was the 29^th person hired and only the second editor hired by the company. Taking on the newly-created role of Industry Editorial Specialist, he helped build the company’s now famous topic library. While at Individual, he was promoted to Editorial Manager, and grew his team to be the largest group in the company’s editorial department. In addition, Steve and the associate editors on his team created, maintained, and processed the largest number of topics in the company’s topic library.

During his years at Individual, Steve handled editorial development and content for a number of industrial areas. These included Electric Utilities, Oil & Gas, Environmental Services, Aerospace, and Defense.

Steve was editing for content, working on project development, doing project research, maintaining communication with client-company MIS managers, while also doing some product troubleshooting, marketing, and sales support. During that time he was also published in After Five Magazine, Hyena Magazine, and a variety of online publications and forums.

In November of 1997, Stephen came to Andover.net as the Director of Editorial for the Andover News Network. Very excited about the future of Andover News, Steve worked with Andover CEO Bruce Twickler and Andover CTO Adam Green to develop a new look, feel, and approach for the popular news service. Changes included internal news delivery, original content development, and regular columns.

In July of 1998, Stephen joined the editorial team at VerticalNet as Managing Editor for PowerOnline. In 1999 VerticalNet acquired ElectricNet from industry Veteran Bob Libbey. During that year Stephen and Bob worked together to completely rebuild and redesign the site to become the most heavily trafficked site of all of the 57 VerticalNet Communities during the summer of 1999. Stephen has been speaking at electric power industry events since 1998 and has been published in many industry trade magazines. Today Stephen is the Editor in Chief for LightSwitch Papers.