Entrepreneurship -  at least for tech-minded folk – is more often than not omitted from curriculum in college. As I was finishing up my degree at the University of Maryland, it was assumed that everyone there would go to work for one or another government contractor or large enterprise, who would dominate job fairs with huge flashy booths and t-shirts. That’s all the teachers talked about. That’s all the career center offered. That’s all your friends knew. The cream of the crop would go to Microsoft or Google.

But what about startups? What about starting your own company, or joining someone else’s nascent startup? Right out of college is the best time to be doing it – low cost of living, no strings, etc. It wasn’t until I graduated and went to work as a consultant did I realize that there was more out there than a 9-5 and a paycheck. Most of the people I graduated with still are in shock that I left that world, and since then, have been CTO of two companies, as well as building my own business. I’ve been doing my best since then to try and find college students.

That’s why I’m especially thrilled that friend and fellow alum Jared Goralnick is organizing Bootstrap Maryland, a one day event targeted towards budding entrepeneurs. It’s great to see such a powerful lineup of locals making it happen, and, best of all… right on campus. Thanks Jared. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.

Even though 2008 was such a momentous year for me, I never had much of a chance to sit back and review it… 2009 has been just as important. Rather than write some deep insight on how it’s changed me and such, I’m just going to list it out. Here’s what’s happened in 2008 and the first quarter of ‘09:

• Started 2008 continuing to work for the government consulting firm I had been since graduation. Had a few side projects, as well as my own startup idea, Localnik.
• Left consulting firm, to become Chief Technology Officer of a startup creative agency. Did some amazing projects. Challenged myself and pushed myself harder than I ever had before.
• Left creative agency to focus full-time on web development, finally under skeevisArts – a label I had been using for ten years. Finally could do it full time! But…
• …soon after was offered to become CTO of a venture-backed startup whose founders I had come to know and trust. skeevisArts was (and still is) going well, but this was an opportunity I could not pass up, so I took it on in addition to my freelance work. Was sole developer of the product initially, but am now growing the team rapidly.
• Celebrated three years with Alex, my girlfriend.
• Sadly, my father, after going through 2 surgeries in ‘08 and 3 more in ‘09 – passed away.

I yearn for moments of clarity. Those rare times where you put the rest of the world on pause, take a step back, and think about what you’re doing, what actually matters, and where you should go from here. Those times are rare, almost non-existent for me. With the phone ringing, the inbox never empty, and a million things to do, I’ve never given myself a chance to take a step back.

In the past few days/weeks/months, my family has been hit with some pretty big events, and put us in situations we’d never wish on anyone. Dealing with it has been hard, but it’s given me a chance to really evaluate myself, and what’s important to me. What am I doing? What should I be doing? In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? That conflict you’ve had with another professional doesn’t matter. Making that extra buck doesn’t matter. The newest social media shiny object? What good is that going to do anyone? It’s caused me, in turn, to make some big changes in my own life, as I move towards focusing on what really matters.

Family.
Friends.
Making your difference in the world.
And having an amazing journey doing it.

How to keep myself on track… that’s the challenge.

When I was in college, I ate a ton of chinese food (didn’t help my health, but I lost it all after graduation).

I collected all the fortunes I and my friends received, and years later, put it altogether.

Like so many things from my college experience, I never realized how amazing this was until years later.

Rather than taking a “usual” internship at a government agency or consulting company for the summer, I instead chose to stay on campus for the summer, and in addition to a lot of relaxing, worked at two amazing labs at UMD. One was the Center for Satellite and Hybrid Communication Networks, where I got to play around with awesome gadgets like motion tracking cameras and sensor networks. The other position, which I kept throughout the following school year, was as a researcher in the Human Computer Interaction Lab. I was tasked with working on an Java interface (using Swing) for the MALACH project, which, in a nutshell, was to allow people to browse and view a massive amount of transcripts of recordings of Holocaust victims. The recordings originated from the Shoah foundation, whose mission is to record and store all memories of survivors of the Holocaust (side note: my grandmother volunteered as one of the interviewers). So I spent the summer working under Ryen White, who now works at Microsoft Research.

As we were presented with developing an entirely new interface, we had a number of challenges. We came up with some pretty cool solutions. One thing I came up with was an interface element nicknamed PygmyBrowse. PygmyBrowse is a rather simple and easy method of bi-directional navigation of infinitely complex trees in a compact environment. I thought nothing of it at the time, but the professors around me disagreed, and suggested I pursue it further. After spending a good chunk of the semester holding user trials (in between running one of the largest student groups on campus, being actively involved in my computer, and oh yeah… double major), we ended up with an academic paper, with yours truly as the primary author. Which ended up getting accepted to a major human-computer interaction conference. Whiiich I didn’t attend, because there was one or another extra-curricular event going on (kicking myself 3 years later).

Now when you do a google search for PygmyBrowse (a lame moniker I concocted with a couple friends), it’s actually been implemented.

If I dig up the Java source code for it, I’ll release it.

You can download the PDF of my paper here, or view it on Scribd.

JESS3 has been working on a not-so-secret project for C-SPAN in the past few weeks.

TechCrunch, the best tech blog out there, just reported on it. C-SPAN is still ironing out some last issues, but IT’S ALIVE!

Read it.

A very big moment!

Much more to come about it later.

There have been many studies and articles about the changes in the human mind due to the Internet. The Atlantic has a particularly powerful one. Even as I was reading it, I constantly found myself switching around to email, twitter, facebook, google reader, etc.

I’ve been noticing for a while that, since graduating from college where I had to memorize programming languages, I learn less and less. Why should I bother to memorize the ins and outs of every system when instead I can just do a quick google search and find what I need?

As a web designer/developer, am I contributing to this? Is this a good thing or bad thing? And how can we combat it, or accept it?

A little over two years ago, in the summer between graduating and starting a “real job” I spent a good amount of time at the gym, brushing up on my various web skills, and building cool apps. I didn’t necessarily want to get rich off them, they were more exercises in taking my ideas and actually doing something with them, rather than letting them linger in the netherworld of unrealized dreams.

One of the ideas I had come up with was a tool called YesterdayI. YesterdayI was based on a simple purpose: just write a short passage about what you did the day before. Meant as a lifestreaming tool, you would end up forming a series of small blog posts, a daily journal of sorts. Microblogging.

I built it, but, as is so common in the world of small web applications, I did a half-assed job at launching it (I’m a rockstar designer/developer, not a marketing guru), no-one used it, and by then I was already on to the next cool idea. So here it stands, frozen in time, lingering on some web-host I have set to auto-renew.

Then Twitter came, followed in suit by a dozen copycats, and made microblogging a household term. Now of course, Twitter serves an entirely different purpose, and has a whole host of features I never had thought of. But it’s always interesting to see how I was on a similar track.

I’m not complaining that someone stole my idea. I may have missed the boat on this one, but at the same time, I am well aware that ideas alone don’t matter. It’s about execution, marketing, positioning, and being in the right place at the right time.

It would be interesting to rebuild this, and see where it could go from there…

Also interesting to see how much my skills have changed since then. From the elementary javascript to table-heavy design (not to mention a generally ugly design), it’s always great to take a look back at past work and critique it, just like an author may look back at an old text or an artist look at one of their earlier works.

My first job out of college was working for a major consulting company. As is common in large companies, corporate principles and values are conveyed through long-thought out materials… standardized presentations, decks, and emails.

One of the values that was always conveyed to me was creating and maintaining a standard work-life balance. At that point in time, I couldn’t understand what that meant. Don’t you just come in the morning, do your work, and after eight hours, go home? As I was working in the government-consulting sector, with strict laws limiting the amount of hours I could legally work in a week, that wasn’t an issue. I was forced to maintain a work-life balance. My work-life balance heavily favored life – with a clear barrier delineating work time and personal time, and a set quota on the former.

As I moved on to my new role as a core member of a startup creative agency, the world flipped for me. I find myself at the extreme opposite of the spectrum, where work becomes such a dominating factor that it has all but eliminated the aspects of life one takes for granted. Eighteen or twenty hour work days. Six or seven day work weeks. Fighting for that little bit of time to go out and even grab groceries. It’s all self-inflicted, of course. I chose this path.

When you are working for yourself, or in any kind of environment with no set roles and an endless flow of both possibilities and deadlines, the work never stops. You can’t see a project and assume one of your other fifteen thousand co-workers will take care of it when you are the only one out of the three of you who can handle it. There are no timesheets, no rules.

Enhancing productivity becomes even more important.

Isolating problems.

And sometimes, leaving things on the table and getting a good night’s sleep!

Long time no posting. I’ve been rockin’ hard at JESS3. It’s been trying times, but I’m learning a lot and we’re making great things. Unfortunately that means no blog-reading, no blogging, and a host of other things sacrificed. Opportunity costs of getting things done. I love a good challenge.

It’s been exactly two years since I graduated from the University of Maryland. The picture above is from the one yesterday, where the ladyfriend just graduated.

What have I accomplished?

• I’m doing what I enjoy.
• I have a C-level position at a design firm
• I’ve lost a ton of weight, and gotten my body in to shape.
• I’m meeting awesome people, making great connections.
• While I don’t want to plan anything, I would say I’m on the right track.

What will next year bring?