About

Photo of Liza Daly

I'm a software engineer with many years of experience building web applications, most recently in the fields of progressive political technology and digital publishing. I live in Somerville, Massachusetts, USA.

Work

From 2017 onward, my work has focused on roles in the Democratic political tech ecosystem. As both a practitioner and leader, I have built multiple front-end applications and data pipeline tooling and supported those during successive campaign seasons. This is the work I am most proud of.

In 2023 I was Technologist in Residence at the Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab. Recently I have worked with the Institutional Data Initiative at Harvard Law School Library to liberate digitized archives using open source tooling.

From 2012-2016 I was Vice President of Engineering and CTO at Safari (now O'Reilly Learning).

In 2008, I founded Threepress Consulting, which provided software and training to publishers negotiating the transition to ebooks. Threepress and my team were acquired by Safari in 2012.

Prior to that I built web applications for organizations such as Oxford University Press, the Ford Foundation, and the beloved public radio show Car Talk.

Independent and non-profit clients

My consulting projects tend to support non-profits and open source initiatives. I've worked with clients including MIT Press, University of California at Davis, Creative Commons, and University of Pennsylvania.

Community

I served as vice-president and board member of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation from 2018 to 2024. IFTF supports many popular interactive fiction programs, including Twine and the annual Interactive Fiction Competition.

I was co-chair of the Digital Publishing Interest Group at the World Wide Web Consortium in 2014, and served on the board of the International Digital Publishing Forum from 2010 to 2012.

Native plant horticulture

I am an active volunteer in many local gardening and native plant initiatives, including Somerville Community Growing Center, Grow Native Massachusetts, the Native Plant Trust, and the Somerville Garden Club. Ask me about goldenrods!

Open source

Windrift is my framework for writing and publishing interactive hypertext stories. I also developed Manicule, a web application for exploring rare manuscripts in digital facsimile, for the University of Pennsylvania.

All of my personal projects are open source; details can be found on the procedural art and interactive fiction pages.

Education and teaching

I have a Bachelor's and Master of Arts in Psychology from Boston University, with concentrations in computer science and biology. I was guest faculty for Digital Narratives at The Banff Centre in 2016.

Publications

Contact

The best way to reach me is by email.