TLDR: For those of you who don't know me, I spent eleven years as a member of the Xojo engineering team from 2011 through 2022. During my time there I worked on many of the parts of the product that make Xojo what it is today. From the IDE and iOS Framework to Xojo Cloud and both of the Web Frameworks.
While that's the longest span, it's also not the whole story of how I got here...
Throughout my career, I have gained experience in various industries, but my passion lies in technology. I was introduced to computer programming at the age of 12 when I took a summer course in BASIC at a local community college. I vividly remember spending hours on end playing with teletype workstations. At 14 during a "bring your kid to work" day, my dad introduced me to the IBM/360 mainframe running JCL and I spent a few days tracking down a bugs that the "grownups" couldn't find. My teenage years were spent with a VIC-20, a Commodore-64 and an Amiga which played a significant role in my love for technology.
After college, I started writing code for a new multimedia development division of a local college marketing firm while teaching an adjunct Advanced Computer Animation class at a local community college. I then moved on to managing an electronic prepress team at a printing company in Florida. It was here that I discovered my passion for automation and teaching computers to perform the repetitive jobs that humans often struggle with.
My frustration with a lack of control over customer treatment led me to start a business intelligence software company named Stretched Out Software (this is why many of my classes start with SOS). While it was not a huge success, I learned some valuable lessons, made some great friends and had a lot of fun. Every day was a challenge which required imagination, innovation and making seemingly impossible things look easy. We did some amazing projects which included helping cranial and maxillofacial surgeons make sure they had the right instruments as well as Multimedia Job Performance Aids for the U.S. Navy and CSX. I loved that work, but ultimately it didn't pay the bills.
Back in the "real world", I went to work full time for one of my company's customers in the mail forwarding industry, continuing development of the software we had developed for them, using RealBasic & RealStudio. Then came Real/Xojo. Eleven years of working with some of the most talented and dedicated people I had ever worked with. Near the end of 2021, I was feeling restless and that it was time to move on to bigger and better things. In February 2022 I moved on to do DevOps at a company that does digital forensics for federal and local governments. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much, but it was a new adventure with another great team.
For more information about the types of projects I've worked on over the years, click here.