I'm from Maine, but I've lived in Massachussettes, North Carolina, US Airways, Jet Blue, and New York. When I'm not on Lynda.com learning about a new platform, I may be on CodeAcademy practicing my skills learning how to complete some interesting puzzles. When building new things; my favorite portion is the whole process. Brainstorming ideas, scoping it down, designing a business plan, designing the interface, and then developing. I've participated in all of the phases of the SDLC and have created applications for Android, Java, iOS, and Windows Phone. Outside of spending time on these items; I do enjoy crawling New York City with my girlfriend, long walks on the Long Beach Boardwalk, working on a movie script (and learning how to use Final Draft trial by fire), watching movies, opera, live music, and really anything outdoorsy. I tried to get into photography, but just didn't have the interest after a few months. When I was in high school I dreamed of becoming a successful DJ in Germany (I took 7 years of German, can write and speak some ;) ), but since I didn't go that path the desire shifted to making tracks in Ableton Live with my AKAI midi keyboard and soon enough Push. I just love the arts. I webmastered for the Maine Alliance for Arts Education back in high school and the experience was life changing.While I may be applying for new roles, my desire will always be building relationships around technology and jotting down meaningful ideas for apps or inventions. It's just in my blood.
When I bought my first book on Agile Project Management with Scrum, it just clicked. Most of the time, when I delivered workshops while at Microsoft, SCRUM and AGILE would be brought up. I just didn't know enough about project management frameworks and after completing the free training it clicked. Story telling helps inspire others to add value and sets the stage for what needs to be completed. Gathering business requirements and developing project plans are just a matter of style, but all have the same requirement of a clear and concise communication. That process allows for a better chance of success and for expectations to be met and understood.
Especially disruptive innovation. It comes down to not just thinking out of the box, but acting on this thinking to achieve meaningful value. Disruptive technology makes us think differently abou how we solve difficult problems. Sometimes the problems are ones that we may have never known that we had.
During my time at Microsoft I worked with a fellow colleague on a social media initiative for our consulting practice within Microsoft. Social media is the next big productvity accelerator and revenue generator that corporations will start to leverage internally. Even between multiplactors and other stakeholders, the opportunity to leverage this internal mechanism just hasn't reached it's full potential. I saw this and aimed to leverage it for our organization with support from management.
Every idea that springs up for a new venture or product always goes through the same process. I work on the idea until it's fleshed out in detail, then I start creating the user interface in Balsamiq Mockups or Photoshop until I get it right. When I complete the first iteration I then show it to my family and friends to get feedback on the idea. If it picks up any traction with them, them I improvement upon it and take it into a startup mentality. I start to develop the innards and look for people to bring onboard to help flesh out a prototype and then look to begin pitching. This process works real well for just about any project whether it's an idea that becomes a startup, something else, a fun moment in history, a million dollars, or just a simple tweak to a document before it goes to publication.
Challenges drive me and often times I work on a project until it's just where I want it to be before sharing it with others. I need to make sure that I feel good about it before I begin to invest the time of others into its review.
During the development of a solution for an interesting problem, I often find other directions to take the idea to make it even more meaningful. Often times there's value that can be transferred to another task I may be working on.
Sometimes the problems we think of are just relative to ourselves and may not benefit as many people as we think it may. Getting feedback from others is critical in maturing an idea into fruition and helps me benchmark my progress.
We can all come up with unique ideas, but will they make a difference to others or just ourselves?
Someone once said that just showing up accounts for half of all success (or something like that). It's critical to prepare and plan for what you hope to accomplish in order to benchmark yourself and alter direction to meet a goal
Hard work will always pay off. I personally learn the most through direct and complete failure. That's what got me interested in computing in the first place. To break things and test their purpose drove me towards want to just wark harder to learn more.
It's the breakfest of champions. It's also very difficult at first, but over time I learned that helpful criticism is just as good a failure for self improvement.
Why stop at just feedback? Everything we do acts as a building block for the next big project that we work on. There's no end to passion or drive. There's just continued opportunity.
Both past and present; these have been various projects that were taken to the next level and either retired or still in process. I designed all of the brands, the logos, slogans, launches, and ideas and took them as far as I could run with them. This is just small list of the bigger projects that became something greater and does not encompass various short lived businesses. Tanzle was a logo I designed when I was working at Diversified Data Technology LLC for an initiative to get college students interested in their personal brands. To be fair, these are just my personal favorites!
Thanks for visting. More to come!
