Specialties Include:

  • Web copywriting—persuasive online writing, usually for high tech products or services
  • Search engine optimization—natural (organic) search engine optimization for your site
  • Software application design—for web applications, client-server applications, and handhelds

User Interface Design

About Me

Sprezzatura is me, Ellen Ferlazzo, for the most part, although I have a wonderful network of marketing and engineering folks I can bring into a larger project, if necessary. I have been in the software consulting business since 1991 and incorporated as Sprezzatura Systems, Inc. in 1999. My skills include writing, user interface design, project management, marketing communications, and search engine optimization. I have worked in a variety of industries, including web conferencing, virtualization, data communications, PDA (handheld touch screen), convenience store/retail software, transportation and logistics, programmer tools, web development tools, network security management, broadband broadcasting equipment, and Internet service providers. Resume's here if you want it.

Specialties include:

  • Web copywriting—persuasive online writing, usually for high tech products or services
  • Search engine optimization—natural (organic) search engine optimization for your site
  • Software application design—for web applications, client-server applications, and handhelds

People often ask "What is sprezzatura?" I ran into the word years ago and when I incorporated I decided to use it for my company name. It's essentially the art of making the difficult look easy, something I strive for in user interface design and aim for in my web copywriting. Many years ago, I also ran into a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay that I think expresses the challenge of making sense of things:

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower 
Of facts. . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom 
To weave it into fabric;

My role in both writing and user interface design is to arrange and communicate, question and combine such that complex things make sense to others.

Other Stuff

I started a cooking site to learn html and search engine optimization. It began as a sandbox for me to play in, a place I could try out new ideas. It's grown to have a life of its own, with a newsletter of over 3,500 subscribers, a cooking blog, and a discussion board with about 800 members. Recently it's begun earning enough money through advertising that I can't try drastic experiments on it anymore for fear of messing things up.

Since I needed another sandbox, I started a site on Urban Homesteading. And because I can't leave well enough alone, I also have a garden blog and a book blog.