Training

Ronald L. Acker

Broad-based Communication Skills

Two of the most important tools for leadership are effective communication and cooperative team building. For many years I have worked hard to develop professional competencies in written and graphical communication and to use these acquired skills in concert with others. There is nothing more satisfying or rewarding than producing good work with multiple talent.

Written Skills

As the technical editor for Volume 9 of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Manual, I was charged with overseeing the publication of over 3,000 pages of national security-related information governing the entry of foreign nationals into the United States. My primary responsibility was ensuring that abstruse legal and regulatory language was recast into plain English that consular officers worldwide could absorb and understand quickly. The work required meticulous attention to detail, comprehensive understanding of statutory and regulatory authorities, and a capability of rending difficult concepts simply and precisely.

Graphical Skills

Similarly, following my retirement from the State Department and establishing Gallery Sydney-East, I intensively re-trained, developing a professional-level graphical communications skill set. After rigorous application, I now possess a professional-level ability in web design, print publishing, video and sound editing, and database development. The following list provides a partial listing of my competencies.

Image Application Competency Level
Photoshop Photoshop CC 2019 Professional-level competency. Photoshop is the leading digital image editing application for the Internet, print, and other new media disciplines.
InDesign InDesign CC 2019 Professional-level competency. Adobe InDesign is the premiere desktop publishing program. Used for design and layout purposes. InDesign is n print-based application for making creative layouts, from posters to newspapers.
Dreamweaver Dreamweaver CC 2019 Professional-level competency. Dreamweaver is a website-creation tool.
Bridge Bridge CC 2019 Professional-level competency. The Adobe Bridge application is a powerful media manager that provides centralized access to creative assets.
Illustrator Illustrator CC 2019 Professional-level competency. Illustrator is a vector-graphics drawing application.
Flash Flash CC Professional-level competency. Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an object-oriented language called ActionScript.
Fireworks Fireworks CC Professional-level competency. Adobe Fireworks (formerly Macromedia Fireworks) is a bitmap and vector graphics editor used in conjunction with web development.
Acrobat Acrobat CC 2019 Professional-level competency. Adobe Acrobat is an application used to produce universally-accessible (portable document) files.
Office Microsoft Office 365 Professional-level competency in Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, Publisher, and One Note.
FileMaker FileMaker Professional Current Version Professional-level competency. FileMaker is a relational database application.

Please review this website's "Publications" page for examples of how I have used the written and graphical communication skills described above.