If you are interested in my Curriculum Vitae, you can find that here.
I started my career as a print designer. I was able to get some great jobs doing some award-winning design, but after a time, I wanted more flexibility in terms of design -- once it was on paper, that was it.
Our agency acquired a small video production company, and that alone changed my life. Doug Freeman, Jeff Fyda and I spent the better part of two years without sleep learning how to technically achieve whatever we could dream up.
We wouldn't leave the office until around 4AM during the week. We came into the office on the weekends to code, video edit, create 3D animations, learn and relate things we learned. It was an electric time. The skills we picked up on our own those years have become invaluable.
We were churning out more and more impressive interactive work: CDRs for Ford Motors, promotional website/CD packages along with print (I still remembered how to design and prep print files). Our Lingo was tight, our 3D was becoming more and more impressive. We started producing original musical scores with real musicians. We were outgrowing the agency we were working for in Pittsburgh.
An agency in Boston flew me in a few times to interview me for an interactive designer position, and I ended up taking the job. The Pittsburgh market was fun, but very small. I was now working on the 128 Technology Corridor, driving by tech powerhouses on my way to work every day and was inspiring. The bigger and more creative jobs pushed me to keep working on my coding skills as well as my graphic design.
Exposure to these hi-tech companies expanded my overall understanding of the big picture and how I could become a player in it. I was able to interact directly with players at Macromedia and with Jeremy Allaire himself.
I attended advisory board meetings at the mothership (then Macromedia) in San Francisco.
Macromedia fed my lifestyle by providing tools to create applications and experiences both on the web and standalone.
I started writing books about Flash - the first being a co-author on Macromedia Flash Super Samurai [Pearson Education; Bk&CD-Rom edition (November 16, 2001)]. To be honest, it was a kick-ass book back in and its still pretty decent. After that I helped author/tech-edit/contribute on several more books.
I won international interactive awards, I received a lot of contractual freelance work with influential ad agencies located in downtown Boston, I had several articles published in magazines, as well as tutorial files placed on various training CDs. I was recognized by my peers at Flash conferences. I have won the Macromedia Site of the Day twice.
Once for a Flashforward NYC Guide application that ran on Pocket PC, and included XML data store and online connectivity with a database for rating sessions. The other was won for producing a Central Application for Macromedia's MAX Conference. One of the features was blast data and the ability to graphically display room locations on a two-floor map. It had an RSS reader too, among other things.
To make a long story short, I now work at Bose, in the R&D Design Center. I am coding simulations, prototypes, custom components, interfacing with hardware and other software, and generally having a most excellent time.
I am currently playing with AS3, AIR, Flex Builder 3, Spry, Dojo, SVN, Eclipse, MTASC, and all the other fun stuff that goes with it. I still do some AS2 development (components, mvc stuff, experiments, prototypes, UI design, usability study, etc.) I am interfacing with databases, using sockets paired with Python to do some interesting stuff, and a lot more. Good times™.
I have been solely an AS3 developer and designer on the Flash side of things and an Objective-C guy on the iPhone side. I have been doing a lot of iPhone development and I really love it.
I like to code/design/develop while listening to: Led Zeppelin (the very best band there ever was and ever shall be), Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Rush, and general hard rock from the 1980's. I even like B.T., old TCM, The Fixx, Wang Chung, classical, and Andreas Vollenweider.
