News & Blog

Today we’re putting a spotlight on one of your beloved staff members, Bobby Ciullo! Bobby works as a Web Applications Developer in our Digital Strategies, Impact, & Visibility division. We sat down with Bobby to learn more about him and his daily responsibilities.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how long you’ve been with us at the UCF Libraries

I received my Undergraduate degree in Digital Media: Interactive System from UCF in 2008 and my Masters in Game Production/Design from UCF’s Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA) in 2009. I started working for the library as the Web Developer’s assistant in 2007 and stayed on for a year before leaving to attend grad school in 2008. After completing grad school and working in the games industry for a year, my game studio was shut down in late 2010. I was rehired back at the library as the web developer’s assistant in March 2011. Soon after I was hired for a full-time web developer assistant, the library’s web developer left. I took over his responsibilities and eventually moved to a full web developer.

What do your daily responsibilities look like?

Each day I first see if there have been any major developments that need my immediate attention. I also check the website work request board to resolve any tickets that may have been submitted. Then I’ll begin work on any long-term projects that need to be completed. One such project that I’m wrapping up is finishing the new library 4th floor maps that we use on the website as well as the digital signs and printed brochures. The next main project will be to work with our Digital Scholarship department to create new web pages for our new Digital Exploration Center on the 4th floor that will be opening this Spring Semester.

Other areas I manage include the libraries digital signage systems. I will occasionally walk the library to make sure all of the signs are working properly and fix any errors that may have occurred. I maintain the “Occuspace” occupancy sensors. There are times where I have to trouble shoot the data we receive from the website and make adjustments to our API call or other times I have to walk to a sensor within the library and manually reset it.

I also manage our large format, 42” poster printer. I receive poster printing requests from library marketing for posters for use in the library as well as requests from librarians for conference posters. At times, I will also make adjustments in Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign to the posters to fix any errors that may be present or to enhance the visual style or presentation of the poster.


What kinds of technical skills or knowledge are essential for your position, and how did you acquire them?

I learned basic web coding in html, css, and javascript along with image manipulation in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator while I was an undergrad at UCF for my Digital Media major. The rest of my skills are a result of learning on the job and adapting to new challenges or projects that the library underwent. An example is building a WordPress theme from scratch along with creating various custom shortcodes and functionalities that we use on the site. A more recent skill that I’ve picked up is creating automated workflows with Microsoft’s Power Automate platform. I’ve used it to create automated forms that route information to people in emails or creates tasks in Teams on our Planner boards. I’ve even built out a lite ticketing system for Libtech to process returning items and track whether they are good to be put back in circulation or to track any maintenance that might be undergoing.

How do you stay organized and manage your time effectively when handling multiple tasks or projects in the library?

The best thing to do is work backwards from the problem and figure out which task needs to take priority. If there are 2 or 3 projects, figure out which one needs to be done first and execute it while still keeping the other tasks in mind. Its also good to schedule time on your calendar to work on projects so you can give yourself dedicated time to work without distractions or other meetings.

I heard you have a masters in Game Design, or something similar, from UCF FIEA. How was that experience and how has that assisted you in the work you do now?

My degree from FIEA was for the Production/Design track. There I learned about project management and managing a team as well as learning how to brainstorm ideas and create designs and documentation for those designs. It helped me learn how to work with people within multiple disciplines and how to best get everyone to give their input and work together towards the end goal.

One last skill I learned was improv. We took a class in our first semester on the basic principles of improv comedy and how it could be applied to creative brainstorming sessions in general. When first starting out on a project, it can be important to “Yes and…” the ideas presented and further build up an idea before coming in later to make modifications to scope and functionality.


What has been your proudest accomplishment here? Can you tell us how that came to be?

Winning employee of the year. That year, I worked with a librarian, Lily Dubach, to create our Textbook Affordability pages and our eTextbook portal. The project took a lot of planning and hard work to create and in the end we were both very happy with the results. The students liked being able to look up free textbooks for their classes and the professors enjoyed having a place to direct their students to find their textbooks. Afterwards, Lily nominated me for employee of the year and the EotY committee chose me to receive the award.

Tell us a little about you outside of the Library. What sort of interests and hobbies do you have?

I really enjoy cooking. Two dishes that I’m known for making are pizza and ramen. I’ve taken deep dives into both dishes and became a bit obsessed with both of them at different times.

I own an Ooni wood pellet fired pizza oven that I use to make 10-12 inch pizzas. The oven can get up to 900 degrees and can cook pizzas in about 90-120 seconds. My favorite pizzas to make are a spicy soppressata, sausage, ricotta, black olive and fresh basil pizza, a buffalo chicken pizza, and a white pie.

For ramen, I like making a Spicy Miso Tori Paitan Ramen (Cloudy and thick chicken stock ramen) with thin sliced pork chashu, shiitake mushrooms, green onions, and fried garlic.

Comments are closed.