Using and Finding Technology

For years through high school I rounded up clients locally and spent my spare time and one summer building websites as a source of income.  Since then I’ve enjoyed the flexibility and learning opportunities this kind of freelance web work has provided and led to…  My interest in computer technologies didn’t end with designing websites though.  In fact, putting HTML on the web served as more of an introduction–I wanted to learn about the whole process that was involved between putting the HTML out there and a user clicking it and seeing it on their screen (of course, this was all the good stuff I ended up re-learning in college).

By the age of 17 or so (which would put us back in ’02) I had an entire server network running in my (parents) house.  They really didn’t serve a purpose (beyond the massive knowledge gained through setting them up) – but they were complete and impressive I think.  Before I got to college I could have sat down and given you a lesson on DNS, email systems and servers, relational databases, Microsoft IIS & the MS Server platform, Active Directory, TCP/IP, all the parts of computers & how to build them, how to physically install networks in a home…the list goes on.  (I also could have shown you each of these things in my basement!)

The reason I tell this little story is because of three really important skills I aquired through the whole process.

• First – I really came to appreciate self-learning.  To this day I still believe the best way to learn about a new technology, platforms, or anything really is to dive in and explore.  It’s obvious that the potential to take advantage of self-learning is endless – and when applied to everyday projects and jobs, I think it really forms strong work habits.
• Second – troubleshooting skills are invaluable!  I think it goes along with self-learning too (it certainly did for me).  I can’t even count the number of times I got into some new software, for example, that flat out wouldn’t work the way I wanted it too.  Specifically, setting up certain servers would pose issues that were either super complex or so simple that either way it took 20 steps to figure it out!  But in the end, this skill led to a confidence that “I can figure anything out” – or knowing I can throw myself into something new and be able to navigate through it successfully.  To be successful with technology it’s important to get this point of “I can do anything” one way or another…
• Third – determination.  This is kind of an extension of the second skill above – and I think it adds to the confidence I was talking about.  For example, there have been several memorable occasions where some web/computer/software related issue popped up and I worked on it for several days straight!  Often the solution was patching up a simple oversight and other times it was the result of day-long series of working at the issue.  Either way, this enhanced my technical confidence and certainly gave me insight into solving future issues.  I think I can honestly say that to date there hasn’t ever been a computer related issue that I haven’t been able to solve.  By solve, though, I mean either fix or figure out what needs to be done in order to fix it (some issues have been caused by flat out broken hardware etc).

A quick (related) aside — When friends or family ask me a computer related question I (honestly) often try to recall when and how I made the jump from looking at a computer with four eyes and confusion to being able to just dive into any new site or software and “Figure it out.”  There’s a gap I think most people have trouble crossing here (and I think a lot of people never cross it).  I guess by gap I mean: some people can just look at a computer and just know what to do versus a larger group of people who will pull out a step-by-step checklist before they get started.  Perhaps this just comes with time and experience through different uses of technology.  Anyway, this thought always interested me – if I could find (and then articulate) the answer I could probably make a lot of money

Back to the Story: College and Entrepreneurship

By the time I started college, the skills I could bring to the table set me up nicely for either Information Technology or Management Information Technology degrees.  I chose MIS – which was my entrance to business school.  I quickly learned, however, that this concentration would only reinforce and build on things I knew and wasn’t going to teach me much new material.  To be honest, the MIS courses bored me.  If you’re a former professor reading this, rest assured I learned plenty, and the courses all had value.  But this was an awakening for me:  Other general business courses really interested me, and through taking the management, finance, accounting, HR, etc. courses I eventually stumbled into the academic world of entrepreneurship.  I say academic world because I realized I already loved this world and just needed to learn all about it more formally.

This is really my other “work” passion.  The first was the technical side of computers and the web, and this second is entrepreneurship.  I love that when you start a business you have to wear every hat – often a couple different hats each day.  I also love that it’s something you need to build and start from the ground up.  Really, it’s a lot like web development or setting up servers: in any case you’re building something new.  Perhaps at a higher level this is really my passion – building new things.

And speaking of building things…I couldn’t let my desires to program new things slip away in college, so there were a few things I worked on while in school.  One of the first was a site called GaragePages.com, which I teamed up with a friend to build and market.  The idea was to: build a website where anyone can post the details of a tag/yard/garage sale online for a few bucks, and then allow the public to search for sales near them free.  The site looked and worked awesome.  We built it with a SQL database and programmed it in classic ASP.  It even included a custom “search nearby zipcodes” function that I built as well as a “did you mean” feature for misspelling town names when searching.  It was really well done, from the technical end.  We just didn’t have a clue how to market it.  We had 3×5 promo cards made up and all that fun stuff, but we eventually moved onto new things and the site never caught on.

Also, for a few years while I was at Northeastern, I did pro-bono work with Movin’ With The Spirit which was started by a Catholic recording artist.  I did a lot of web development for them – including building an online store (which included integrated credit card processing), building some basic content management pages for intra-organization use, integrating a java socket based chat room into an existing site, building an entire online community (I guess it would have been a kind of Catholic social network if it were still around), and even started an internet based radio station.  We did some cool stuff here – and while working with one of my roommates this got me into the world of graphic design.

During the latter half of 2005 and beginning of 2006, I spent the majority of my design time working on what eventually became the Inside Track. This system is a web based content management platform that powers portals, intranets, or other websites while empowering normal users to manage the site as if they we experienced website administrators.  It’s a pretty robust web based system.  It includes a full CMS system, built in advertising management, forums, chat rooms, newsletter/email systems, user account system, online store, and a few other features.

I rolled the platform out for several clients with a lot of success and positive feedback.  But recently, I’ve started to move on to other open platforms (this site, for example, runs on WordPress) given the massive advantages offered by open source software with years of development and history behind them.  Building the Inside Track, however, was a massive learning opportunity and really is what got me into a lot more design and javascript/AJAX.

Professional Experience