Guest Bloggers: Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart!

We're happy to introduce our new guest bloggers to Boing Boing: Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart! They've been described as a "geek couple tag team" by our friend Gareth Branwyn. Shawn is the managing editor for both MAKE and CRAFT magazines, while Bruce blogs occasionally for GeekDad, is the editor of the Coverleaf blog and the Bright Hub Mac Channel, and does editing and consulting work for several internet companies. They work in unison on raising two boys, two cats and four chickens under some redwood trees in Northern California.

The two met in the college dorms and quickly bonded over marijuana and mathematical analysis. In 1993, Bruce introduced the internet to Shawn over beers in a bowling alley in Marin County. A year later she was working on O’Reilly’s Global Network Navigator, the first commercial website and web portal. Shawn has worked on several other O’Reilly projects, including a weekly online magazine called Web Review and the websites perl.com and xml.com. She’s written for several magazines and newspapers, including the SF Bay Guardian, the Industry Standard, the Marin Independent Journal, and a Vanity Fair equivalent in Singapore. She’s written about everything from yacht racing to T-shirt quilts and communication satellite linking and load balancing. She's also covered three Olympics on the web. From 1991 to 1993, two very fun years, she wrote theater and concert reviews in the Bay Area.

In 1995, Bruce left his job as Director of Telecommunications at the University of San Francisco to write online. His first article was about the hidden Netscape Easter eggs his then 1-year-old son found when slamming on the keyboard. Later, Bruce also found gainful employment at O’Reilly Media, where he served as the editorial director for the O’Reilly Network.

The couple lived in New Zealand during part of 1999 and 2000 and wrote a series of articles for Ziff Davis about living in the first country to hit the new millennium. (There was a very major party.) They’ve been collaborating on articles since the mid-1990s and hope to still be co-authoring stories in the mid-2050s.

Welcome, Shawn and Bruce!

• [barnacle]

  Shawn, Bruce and Fam.

  Great news about BoingBoing and y’all.

  Hope all is well on your end. We’d gladly trade the palm trees of South Florida for the redwoods of N. California any day, but if you end up in the south-eastern tip of the country, drop me a line.

  Go Team Alinghi in AC – 2010!

  Happy New year and non-denominational mid-winter festive season.

  Cheers,
  JB

• [mendoblather]

  Geez… you two sure do get around. Nice to be able to read the both of you here.

  -chuck w

• [ShawnBruce]

  Thanks for the warm welcome(s)! And I’m married to a MacDude myself, so it’s nice to know there’s another Shawn out there in the same boat! ;-)
  –Shawn

• [android]

  hello,
  “articles … yacht racing”

  cool! where/when?

  welcome!

• [MomTheBlog]

  welcome Shawn & Bruce … you have a great looking family there :o) looking forward to your guest posts.

• [MacDude]

  Welcome!

  I’m married to a woman named Shawn, so it’s always nice to meet [sic] another.

• [Anonymous]

  Kudos to you for Free-Range kids! I was a latch-key kid at age 5…I came home from first grade and played outside for two hours until my parents got home. At age 9 I walked a mile to school through the worst neighborhoods in Memphis, TN since we lived in city housing while my dad was in school. There were gangs, knives and traffic….and I managed to get myself and my younger brother to school and back for four years without a problem. I’m more the adventurer for it – having traveled around the country, lived in a van with my dog for a year (as a photographer) and take on all kinds of challenges. I’m 53 now, and glad I had the experience. I ca understand the conductor’s concern and hope it wasn’t too much of a nightmare – As a former police officer I know its better to be over cautious than not. Pain in the ass – but… now everyone knows right?