the year I got a dog.
the year I asked Alex to marry me.
the first year I went to SXSW.
the first time I visited Europe.
the year I hired my first employee.
the year that the DC startup community blew up.
the year I got involved in community building.
the year I spent way too much time in airports.
the year that I finally dropped everything to pursue a grand vision.
the year that I first raised outside funding.
the year that I built a team.
Thanks to Nick for catching me doing what I do best… checking e-mail.
A big thanks to the organizers and other sponsors of BarcampDC3. It was a great experience for everyone, and it’s hard to believe that this is the the third one, organized by essentially the same group of people.
Startup Metrics for Pirates – Jared dug in depth one of the most important concepts of the “Startup Metrics for Pirates” methodology organized by Dave McClure – converting and retaining users. One especially helpful tool to come up was Google Insights for Search, that I will immediately start using.
HTML/CSS Tips + Tricks – Russell led the most useful session on HTML/CSS tips + tricks – little bits and pieces of advice to really perfect your technique. First thing Monday AM, I was already using some of his lessons, posted online here.
Android Development – THE GREATEST TALK EVER GIVEN BY ANYONE EVER. Gyuri and I led a developer-focused session on beginning Android development. Gyuri gave a basic step by step tutorial on building an Android application, while I dug into the code for MeetroDC, an application for checking DC Metro times (Bonus Round: I open sourced the code)
Twilio Development – Two developers from the DNC gave an overview of how they used Twilio to rapidly spin out telephony-powered applications during election time. This evolved into an open discussion on possible future applications that can be built, given how easy it is now with these APIs available to developers.
Freelancing – Josh and I finished up the day by leading a session on freelancing, both moonlighting and full time. We had a great dialogue amongst experienced freelancers, newbies, and those just interested in learning more. The conversation started out dominated by legalese and fear of being “caught” – but we then focused on some of the true important topics – billing, project management, and communications. I’m thankful for everyone who came out, and especially to those who attended just to put in their 0.02. We could tell by the questions being asked and the wide eyes that this was inspirational and helpful for all involved (it certainly was for me).
As the first BarcampDC was my first foray into any kind of professional community outside my then-employer, it’s a great experience to come back each year, see how the DC community has grown, and see how I’ve progressed in my own journey. If you had told me two years ago, that I would be completely out of the government contracting world, running my own thriving business, working on multiple products, and a regular contributor to these events… I would have laughed and kept walking.
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 underskeevisArts – 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.
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).
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?
I'm a hacker/founder, I'm working on Contactually, an email interface to CRMs. I'm also a freelance developer, working as skeevisArts while working on Structo, a cloud service for web developers.
