Here’s my nutshell bio.
Today:

Seeker of daily adventures, blogger, fearless learner, fledgling videographer, Compulsive Overeating Diary and Daily Adventure Tales podcaster, value saver and spender who retired at a fairly young age.

Mandatory Professional third person blurb:

Laurie Weaver retired young from a corporate job in technology and dove headfirst into learning what retirement had to offer. In addition to her career-long passion for learning and technology, Ms. Weaver is a formally trained educator. She’s created and presented many diverse educational seminars ranging from software usage and teaching techniques, to programming concepts for the non-programmer to how to discover your retirement identity. She’s known for her sense of humor and for making even the driest topic sizzle. Now she’s out to bring that fun and joie de vivre to retirees and other adventure seekers.

 

Former clients include: The Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada; Buena Vista Television; UCLA extension; Catapult Software training; The Business Forms Management Association; and The PDF Central Conference.

Favorite accomplishment:

ToonaCat (pronounced Tuna Cat) was based on a character I created as a 4th grade school teacher.

ToonaCat’s Kids’ Club was an award-winning non-profit site I created and maintained from 1997-2000 to encourage creativity by kids.

Kids from all around the world submitted work for publication. Writing, Stories, Book Reviews, Art, Page’s made by kids and more. ToonaCat was a cat who hung out on the internet and encouraged kids to create. Kids really loved talking to ToonaCat, and I maintained no ads, no automation, and no time for myself to ensure that there was no spamming, no harsh words, or anything that would cause a kid harm online. Even back then, I was very concerned with kids being online unsupervised.

Here’s a specific example from the archived site that demonstrates the fun and international success of ToonaCat. One of the monthly features was “Ask ToonaCat”. This month’s question was “Are you a star?”
Feel free to explore and sample some more of the various content at ToonaCat’s Kids’ Club (archived)

ToonaCat’s Kids’ Club was featured as a Windows Magazine “Site of the Day” within two months of its creation as an AOL personal website. The resulting influx of visitors motivated me to get ToonaCat.com, one of the very first personal domains at that time, and it grew from there.

I’d like to revisit ToonaCat as a viable platform again, because I still think there is a need for kids to get encouragement to be creative and safe online.

 
Many thanks for stopping by,
Laurie Weaver

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