Steve Whitney, President


For years people have asked Steve what it takes to be a technical writer. His best answer: "If you enjoy your subject matter and have a writer's calling, you'll find it tough to not be a technical writer."

Steve's career started briefly in museum management, but impatient with lines in a field with few job slots, he took advantage of his Naval Aviation experience to land a position writing manuals for the first Department of Defense project run by a software firm -- a Navy antisubmarine project headed by IBM. The technology angle was fascinating, so Steve enrolled in the University of Maryland's Computer Studies program where he eventually earned a Bachelor of Science degree. His fluency in French got him in the door at Alcatel Network Systems, where in 1982 he was initiated into the mysteries of the UNIX operating system, telecommunications, and networked computing. In the late '80s, as the federal government discovered the virtues of non-proprietary "open" systems, Steve moved to the Corporation for Open Systems where he was privileged to work with Herb Klein, one of the founders of MCImail, who insisted on using a mystical layer of reality called the Internet to communicate electronically from an office under a minute away by foot. At COS, Steve discovered and regularly practiced collaborative computing on an international basis and started advising people to get an Internet address to improve their lives. In 1992, Steve founded Crescent Enterprise, the same year that the Internet hit the front cover of Time Magazine for the first time.

Jerry Lazarus, Lead Editor/Production Manager


Jerry founded three successful information and communications businesses in Washington DC and New York City before being seduced by show biz and southern California. He has authored and sold a number of film scripts, several of which have been produced for the silver screen and TV. An astute observer of business developments, Jerry's been won over by the Web and multimedia communication. To his editorial oversight role on Crescent Enterprise projects Jerry brings a remarkable sense of presentation strategy, psychological perception, page composition, and production savvy.