I’m an American developer currently living in Amsterdam where I work with New Breeders developing geospatial and social networking technology. I’m also one of the owners and lead developers at Bellwether, a Florida-based firm that specializes in data-rich application development helping political, non-profit, and advocacy organizations. I also do occasional freelance work, and am currently producing the first in what will hopefully be a series of sci-fi mobile games.
I’ve been programming from an early age, beginning on an Amiga at the Summerhill school I attended, eventually entering the field professionally during college doing fledgling CMS web development via painful CGI utilities and misunderstood Javascript.
I spent the better part of the next six years working for companies focusing on document management for the desktop, or “distance learning” on the web. Most of those companies usually supplemented their main product with a catalog of “consultingware”, and throughout that time I got to work in deep trenches learning about software development and the technologies behind it.
For me, this ended up being Microsoft and VB/VBA on one hand, and LAMP on the other, punctuated by the tension of integrating with any given client’s proprietary software or service. Although I was insulated during those years from the responsibilities of having to connect actual client needs to the applications I helped develop, it was a great time to focus on pure programming skill with an emphasis from business on troubleshooting, speed, and calm under pressure, and a growing personal emphasis on the power of readable, maintainable code. I was also exposed to a lot of different ideas about software methodology, both from companies started by programmers themselves, and those that were not, a fact I’ve found to play an important and decisive role in company philosophy.
Passion, I think, leads many developers (who are usually experimental and opinionated by nature) to a similar place where they feel they must create an outlet to test their theories about their craft. This was the case with me, and I formed Bellwether, Inc. along with a few other like-minded technologists. Owning a company is the quickest way to disabuse yourself of ego and confirmation bias, and enter a world where technology is just one abstraction in the larger system of software development.
Having done support and being an opinionated power user myself, I’ve always been interested in usability and improved company transparency, but aspects of development like visual design, branding, marketing, social media and psychology must assume key importance if you hope to deliver something of actual value.
Bellwether found its niche building (usually web-based) Operational Data Store software, figuring out ways to spider and aggregate public records data that would give our clients unique insights into the areas they tracked. The key challenge here was designing effective identity resolution routines, and knowing how to shape the information so that it was meaningful to the consumer. Over the last 4 years I’ve grown quite comfortable with intricate data modeling, a domain which has certainly fed into other areas of my work and changed the way I view modern, content-oriented applications.
In 2006 I started working with Avocare, a software firm building (along with medical robotics) a health information exchange portal. In addition to a suite of online applications, I helped Avocare develop a master data management (MDM) system connecting the technologically disparate, compliance-demanding, and privacy-critical health care industry in Florida.
It was a natural complement to the work I was doing with Bellwether clients, although health care proved to be very much more a Microsoft world than the open web. In addition to riveting analytical challenges, a lot of my satisfaction with Avocare’s products came from moving legacy workflows and fragile internal portals into simpler interfaces and services.
More than anything, my job was one of complexity management. One on hand, the users themselves were physicians whose ability to effectively interpret data could mean life or death. On the other hand, there was a byzantine system of records and data streams across numerous organizations where integrity violations could be easily introduced, and redundancy was rampant because no source could afford to trust the others. A reduction in the complexity on either front was a big win, and our products differentiated themselves on how well they could cope with the information architecture of health care and make that work painless and trustworthy for those who depended on it.
Throughout 2005-2008 I was performing most of my work in a telecommute capacity, for small and large projects alike. More than anything else, working in distributed teams and with remote clients underscores the relevance of communication to a project’s success. I began viewing software development in terms of how it facilitated focus and information sharing among a team (including the client themselves, of course), and became serious about forming organizational habits and project hygiene borrowing much from Agile methodologies, moderated with some common sense. To this day, agile project management remains a continuing interest for me, and I place a lot of value on self-reflection during and after a project in order to refine your adherence to personal and team goals.
Doing the last few years, my interest has returned increasingly to the open web, and I’ve found myself working on a variety of personal projects and prototypes, generally trying to explore the expansive toolset web technology has to offer. I also released an experimental Facebook game into beta, and co-developed and briefly ran a browser-based strategy game, revisiting an early interest in video games; a subject, I happen to believe, of arguable significance to the whole of the web today.
In 2008 I moved to the Netherlands to work for New Breeders, a company developing some really cool technology around geospatial social media. The flagship service we’re currently running is a spot guide for action sports, with an accompanying iPhone app, and a few other exciting projects in the works. Developing thick client browser apps in tandem with the growing world of mobile devices has been a breath of fresh air, and it keeps me as excited as ever about the direction technology is heading.
I’m also presently working at Bellwether developing custom mobile applications, and nearing the release of my first iPhone game, Rogueship.
