Beginning my career

I began my web career as a web designer hand-coding HTML before WYSIWYG editors existed. After adding a degree in computer science to my art degree, became a web producer, then a web project manager.

New technology is something that always interests me. In my most recent position I saw that chat and SMS technology would become the next important way to engage customers, I took the initiative to learn how to build chatbots, created a working demo and pitched it to management; I also discovered a competitor was planning to launch a similar technology. This caused the organization to pivot their strategic direction. 

I originally studied art, getting my BFA in 1992. Not long after, I decided to go back to college at night to pursue a degree in computer science, which I received in 2002.

Before the web

I actually did stuff before the web! Since my original degree was in art, I started out as a paste-up artist. My first art-related job in college was doing paste-up for A&P. They had an art department in Paterson, NJ. I got a part-time summer job creating boards for newspaper ads for the entire northeast.

Later on, I would get another part-time job at the local newspaper, while taking art courses.

I made the transition to computers at work in my final year at college. At that time I got a job at a company that did the printing of pharmaceutical labels and inserts.

General minutia

I live in New Jersey with my wife, daughter and two cats. Well, they aren’t technically my cats, since I didn’t want cats, but they adopted me.