Welcome to www.jimkoby.com

Dances with Words

Jim Kobylecky

Freelance Writer

So who am I?

Award-winning Writer, Producer, Explainer, Ex-Poet and Boy Scientist Gone Bad.

What do I do? (includes video tests, slow loading)

Where have I done it? (People & Places)

How did I do it? (Copywriting)

How did I do it? (PR Writing)

How did I do it? (Tech and Instructional Writing)

How did I do it? (Scriptwriter and Producer)

Tales of an Ex-Poet and Boy Scientist Gone Bad

It all started some twenty years ago, when I ran out of money in Eugene, Oregon. I was a respectable ex-Physics jock with two degrees in writing, wandering around the country and publishing in the Little Magazines. Instead of doing the honest thing--getting another manual labor job--I started writing ad copy for an AM rock station. Soon I started freelancing. Back then I'd write a dozen contest clue ads in rhyming couplets and direct the audio production for about sixty bucks (college kids were offering to do it free).

Man Bites Ad (and lives to tell about it)

I loved it. The journey from imagistic poetry to thirty second radio spots was short and exciting. I liked hearing my words blare out of car radios and having ad print runs a thousand times that of a little magazine. Before long I was creating corporate videos and multimedia. One of the early shows that I wrote, produced, and directed--starring a paranoid static charge--won a national award and sold internationally for over fifteen years.

While Searching for Beauty and Truth

Two decades of design teams and group projects underline a basic truth. Artists, engineers, writers and scientists aren't that different. They all face doubts and demons. The beauty of their work is hidden in tangled processes that make the best of them geniuses. The real problem is communicating their ideas to difficult and distracted audiences.

Finds Both

That's what I do. I translate technology back to humanity--for impact and understanding. All technical communication is founded in artistic necessity. Bad manuals, ads, and articles are artistic and human failures. I think I'm still the same poet--it's the media and technology that have changed.

Will your next project dance?

Does your new product or service meet customer's needs? Can it do something better or faster? Is there a story to tell, a song to sing, a step to learn? I can help. The music's already playing.

E-mail: koby@jimkoby.com

Or Call: 503-644-3081 (9-5 Pacific)

Resume page

My thanks to my family for saving that old school picture of me from my playwriting days.

Revised 5/21/03. Minor changes, corrections and additions. I left the video test (.AVI only) intact. (Yes, you still need Microsoft Internet Explorer or a suitable plugin that deals with both .avi files and dynamic locations to view. Sorry.)

That doesn't mean I won't make changes if somebody requests them. What would you like to see? I read and obey.

	How did I do it? (PR Writing)
	How did I do it? (Tech and Instructional Writing)