In the early 90s I hitchhiked around the US, learning about the country, and I spent several summers and autumns picking apples at Moose Hill Orchards. An interest in writing lead me into working at small publications, which exposed me to Macs, which exposed me to AppleScript, which exposed me to computer programming. In the mid to late 90s, as the web became popular, I took up web development, mostly using the PHP language. Over the next decade I worked at places like Category4 and Bluewall. From 2001 to 2007 I developed my own PHP based framework but then, dazzled by the impressive development of the open source frameworks, I switched over to using Symfony for most of my work. For 3 years I wrote a weblog at TeamLaLaLa. While I did some client work, I was mostly drawn to working with small startups - to me the most exciting thing is not code by itself, but code that solves someone's real life problems. Only in a startup is one confronted, everyday, with the immediate question of "Does this really help someone?"

With Darren Hoyt, I launched WP Questions, a site where people with an urgent need for help (regarding WordPress) post questions with a monetary prize, and other people answer those questions in the hopes of winning the prize. This was the first of several sites launched under the umbrella of our Codewi.se site. We hope to soon roll out our software for others to use, as a hosted service.

Over the next 5 years I plan to build out software that helps people better help other people. In the short term, my focus is on question-and-answer software. In the long term, my focus will include absorbing the behavioral changes allowed by the dramatic improvements occurring in computer hardware and communication networks.