My Philosophy
I adhere strongly to Robert Heinlein’s philosophy as stated:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
–Robert A. Heinlein
I have done most of these things. I am working toward the rest, plus a fine collection of my own unique ventures. I will save “dying gallantly” to the last, as I’m not sure how to surpass that.
Finally, it is all tied together by the joy I find in teaching and sharing what I have learned and experienced.
Life was not meant to one sided or boring. We have a rich panoply of emotions so that we may experience them, and in so doing, to understand, support, and guide others we encounter on our path.
The act of doing should always be balanced with quiet contemplation, introspection, and the comfort of a good book – of those I have an abundance.
My Life’s Work
The normal resume or CV puts the most recent experience at the top, and the oldest further down.
My professional life is a journey, and this is the story about that journey. It only makes sense if you follow it from the beginning.
Delaware Community College – 1978
My first programming job was as an Application Programmer. Working for the Lab Manager, Vic Tenaglia, I developed a database of all laboratory equipment and set up the maintenance history and scheduling system.
This was also where I reconnected with an old mentor, Randy Turner, who had taught me HAM radio. As it turned out, he was taking management classes at DCC. At the time he was DP Manager, Air Products, Corp. and he suggested a series of classes for me to take, starting with Basic Assembly Language for IBM 360/370 series mainframes. Following this he suggested Job Control Language for the IBM. Since JCL was only available to students of advanced COBOL and I had never had any COBOL classes, he advised me to get the IBM Self-Study Course in COBOL which I taught myself over the Christmas break so I could register for JCL.
I also acquired a collection of JCL manuals from the IBM Document Center in downtown Philadelphia so I could prepare myself in advance of class.
Three problems emerged. First, the course was taught by the Head of the Department, and was supposedly only available to students on his recommendation. Apparently Registration never checked things like that, and were happy to take my money and sign me up.
Second, I spent a lot of time in the computer lab and other students got to know me and would ask questions when they were stuck. About a month into the semester I received a note from the Learning Center requesting me to stop by. It turned out that numerous students had requested my assistance as a tutor, and they wondered if I would be willing to work for them on a regular basis. I agreed, and began tutoring in FORTRAN, COBOL, and Assembly Language. Many of my students were in same Advanced COBOL class.
Third, I did not realize that the college did’t actually own the mainframe, they were on a time-share with a larger university. Unaware of this, I was exercising all the amazing JCL options that were in the Senior Computer Operator’s Manual I acquired from IBM. As I learned shortly, this nearly exhausted the entire college computer budget for the year. I faced an expulsion hearing before the Board of Regents.
It was decided that because I had not technically done anything wrong, that I could not be expelled, but all of my remaining assignments were to handed to the Head of the Department for clearance before they could be run. He informed me that because of my undisciplined ways that I would never be a successful programmer.
Pierce Data Systems (PDS) 1979-1980
I saw an ad run by Pierce Data Systems for a Mainframe Systems Programmer with 3-5 years experience. At 21 and on summer break, I thought to myself “I took a semester in assembly language programming, that’s pretty close.” I walked in with my stack of listings to show what I could do.
It worked.
In that day of mainframes there was no simple way of knowing how much empty space was on any storage device. On my first day on the job my boss turned to my and told me to write a channel program utility to list the empty space on all the DASDs (Direct-Access Storage Devices). That’s when I discovered the mysterious and undocumented EXCP command on my 360/370 Assembly Language Quick Reference meant EXecute Channel Program. Two days later I found the reference manual for channel programming, and by the end of the week I had my utility.
The primary clients for PDS were Micromedex Corp. and Dr. Barry Rumack at the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center. At PDI I was part of the 3 man team that created and developed the databases that were used to publish DrugDex and PoisonDex. DrugDex was a bibliographic database of every medical journal article that discusses interactions between drugs. It was cross-referenced and indexed by each of the drugs in the interaction. PoisonDex was a database of every household chemical on the market, cross referenced by poisoning symptoms, with recommendations for treatment. Later Micromedex extended their product line to include the DeHahn Series of Drugs in Prospect, Drugs in Research, and Drugs in Development where the database included chemical and technical data on each drug.
StorageTek – 1980-1981
When I first joined, the company was Storage Technology Corp (STC)., but changed names to StorageTek (STK) halfway through my tenure. They were attempting to launch a mainframe to compete with IBM. I was part of the operating systems development team that including Mogens Pedersen, Robert J. Racer, and David Serls, where I programmed the the Initial Program Loader (IPL), scheduler/dispatcher module, and a collection of system utilities.
The project also included the Virtual Storage System (VSS) which drew on my experience with Pierce Data Systems. The VSS project attempted to optimize utilization of storage. The VSS system monitored data. Active files were migrate to closer and faster storage, less requested data moved to slower or offline storage. The content of DASDs was dynamically reorganized to achieve maximum density.
After $22 million and several insurmountable problems, the project was cancelled.
Information Handling Services – 1981-1982
I was hired away from StorageTek to head a new project at IHS. They re-published Mil-Specs, Fed-Specs, and a broad collection of vendor catalogs indexed and cross-referenced by industry standard and Mil/Fed Specification so that any government or military contractor could review, bid and perform on a contract, finding vendor parts matching both the contract requirements and the applicable specifications. At that time, the entire product line was published on microfilm and microfiche. This new project was an exploratory demonstration to put the products on the newly invented Video Disc technology.
Since market penetration of video discs was very low, and cost of development was high, that project was put on hold until the technology matured.
For my next task I shipped out to Stanford University to work on a project with Prof. Donald Knuth and senior graduate student David Fuchs to port a copy of the TEX typesetting language to our IBM mainframe and connect that to a digital phototypesetter. This was used to format the output of the huge databases for the product directories.
While at Stanford, David showed me a computer network that he called ARPANET, and it had 18 computers connected across the country. In retrospect, that was the beginning of the internet, but at the time I didn’t appreciate its significance.
In addition I worked on loan with the sister company BRS/Search in Latham, NY where I worked programming the MEDLARS database.
BRI Systems – 1982-1983
At this point the computer industry took an interesting turn. A former colleague from Pierce Data Systems called me up an invited me to dinner at his house. There he showed me this big metal and plastic box, almost the size of an end-table that he said was something called a “personal computer”. In the space of an evening, using this personal computer, we successfully prototypes something I had been working on for months on the mainframe. I quit IHS, and Gerry and I started a company selling and programming PCs.
Our first system used the Altos computer and the Oasis multi-user operating system. There were very few applications at that time. We partnered with Uveon Computer Systems who had creates the Optimum Database, which itself was a spin-off of the database and query language from the PICK Operating System. To that we programmed Opticalc – a database driven spreadsheet with enormous capacity – a maximum spreadsheet size of A-ZZZ columns, and up to 999 rows. Cells of different sheet could be linked together through formulas, and both source and results could be read from and written to the database. We launched in 1983, the same year that Lotus 1-2-3 came out with VisiCalc.
We never got the market penetration we wanted. The combination of the closing of Uveon and the launch of Microsoft Excel spelled the end of our spreadsheet.
Gambit Group 1983-1986
Gerry and I formed Gambit from the ashes of BRI, and began to sell Molecular Computer Company’s multi-user computer. In its day this way an extremely innovative machine, having one 16-bit 8086 CPU and a dedicated 240MB hard drive, and an integrated rack that could hold up to 64 individual 8086 processors. We would install a Televideo terminal and keyboard on the desk of each user in an office, and connect it with an RS-232 cable to one of the cards in the rack. The database and applications lived on the shared drive. I installed and configured the hardware, did the custom programming, and trained the customer and their employees on how to use it all.
My primary job was to automate and develop the databases for our corporate clients, and train their employees how to enter and retrieve information through on-screen displays and reports.
3M/OZ Music
One of my biggest clients was 3M/OZ Music in Denver, CO. OZ pioneered the concept of foreground music (original artist rather than Muzak), and whose processes and technology was leased by 3M. We automated their operation with a Molecular computer, and I created a custom database to capture the data about their 10,000+ vinyl record collection, including name, recording label, and issue date of the album; song title, length, key, beats per minute, type of ending, recording artist(s), and genre of each song. The songs on each recorded program, along with number of each program distributed was tracked for royalty purposes. The database was also used to generate the printed program catalog. OZ Music was later acquired by 3M Sound Division.
By project completion the entire operation was automated, including the music programming database, order fulfillment, accounting, royalty tracking, client/vendor relations, reporting and internal project management – all tied through the central database.
Looking to make inroads into the video business that same way we did in music, we began to carry the Mindset computer, which had built in genlock, but lack of marketing and strong competition from Amiga meant it never caught on as a video editing tool.
Seniors! Inc
Another client was Seniors! Inc. This was an organization devoted to providing support and services to seniors. Elderly individuals would register with them, or would be registered by a care giver, clergy, neighbor or other concerned person. Needs were clustered into four basic categories – personal, household, financial, and legal, with each category containing numerous subcategories to specify the exact requirements.
The supplier side of the database consisted of volunteers, relief agencies, pro bono professionals, and various types of donors. The database was designed to do best-fit matching of the needs of the senior citizen and the available resources, along with all the necessary reporting.
St Thomas Episcopal Church
St Thomas Episcopal Church, under the guidance of Father Hammond, wanted a system for organizing and managing the church membership. Our custom database solution fully tracked membership by family, by individual family members, by important anniversary dates, and by specific parishioner needs such as visitations and prayer requests.
In 1983 this became one of the first-ever church membership database systems.
Genesis Graphics Group – 1986-1988
In those early days of personal computers, too many critical pieces needed to be developed. As a result, joint ventures and mergers were a common way to combine resources with other entrepreneurs to build a brand. That is what happened with Gambit Group in the mid-1980s. Genesis Computers, based in Golden, Colorado manufactured PC clones, and was looking to partner with a software company to grow market share, so they approached me. I, in turn, found Unidot. They were an electronics engineering company that had created a digital phototypesetter for Siemens that could connect to PCs through an RS-232 port. Because they had the North American distribution rights to the Laserset Phototypesetter, a 3-way venture was formed which we called Genesis Graphics Group. We packaged our software on the Genesis PC, acquired distribution rights to TyXset, which was a PC-based version of the same TEX publishing software I had worked with at IHS, and with the phototypesetter, we had a full in-house desktop publishing solution.
We operated Ad-Venture Design, a graphics and typesetting service bureau, as a profit-generating business unit to demonstrate our systems. As part of our community outreach, we relocated Ad-Venture Design into the Peña Plaza in Denver, where we provided complementary design and graphics services for the clients of the Minority Business Development Center (MBDC) which was run by Sarah Fuentes. We continued to operate Ad-Venture Design as an independent operation until 1991.
We debuted our publishing system at the National Composition Association Convention in McCormick Place in 1985. At the same convention a different 3-way joint venture also debuted – this one between Apple Computer, Aldus Corporation, and Allied Linotype.
Our response at the convention was very favorable, and we had a great profit margin. But the Laserset was manufactured by Siemens in Germany and Imported into the US. When Reagan deflated the dollar later that year, it effectively doubled our import cost and placed our cost of goods higher than Allied Linotype’s retail price, thus pricing us out of the market. The assets were sold off, and the venture was closed.
Serendal Research Institute – 1988-92
During the course of Genesis Graphics Group, I amassed a great deal of research on the state of the digital publishing industry, the companies and products, the evolution of the marketplace, and the changes to job titles and responsibilities as a result. After closing Genesis, I formed Serendal Research Institute with a partner and began producing and publishing industry intelligence reports. At that time we were approached by Management Development Foundation, a company based in Colorado Springs who specialized in corporate and executive technology training.
We produced a broad series of courses and seminars related to the use of computers in publishing and media, promoted by MDF which we taught throughout the U.S. and Canada. We were later recruited and promoted by Popular Kommunications AG in Scandinavia and UK. This business continued until 1992 when we sold it.
Over the next four years we taught our courses to clients who were mostly among the Fortune 1000 companies, including the various printer-products engineering departments of IBM, HP, and NCR. In all, our teaching took us to nearly 180 cities each year.
In addition, we amassed the largest single database of desktop publishing related hardware, software and services in the industry, which we published as the DTP Source and sold through our affiliates including Popular Kommunications in Europe.
Serendal was acquired by another company in 1992.
Pleiades Publishing Services, Ltd. Co. – 1992-present
My next project was the formation of Pleiades Publishing Services with my business partner. After the initial enthusiasm over in-house and desktop publishing subsided, many companies realized their corporate communications now looked un-professional, because their staff had the tools to do publishing, but not the design knowledge to make it look good. Pleiades was a design agency that helped both with staff training and the actual design and production of more critical pieces.
Initial clients included US WEST, Bureau of Land Management, US Geological Survey (USGS), NCR, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Coor Brewing Company and a host of small and medium sized businesses, with work dedicated to print publication design with a specialty in the visual information design of highly technical data. This included a mathematical and technical book published by CRC Press.
Starting in 1994 our clients expressed interest in the internet. Our first major online project was for BLM where we converted the printed publications we designed and illustrated into a 2,500 page website between 1994 to 1996.
At Coors Brewing Company I worked under contract with Vice President of New Product Development Ed LeMieux. There I produced both technical and competitive research reports with visual information design for graphical presentations. In addition I worked with the IT department at Coors to produce an intranet specifically for the New Products Division.
In 1995 they opened Coors Field in Denver, and New Products Division showcased the Sandlot microbrewery at the stadium. To commemorate the opening, Coors produced 1,995 custom signature baseballs. Ed gifted me with baseball Serial Number 1.
In 1996 we began a multi-year contract with Refinery Terminal Fire Company in Corpus Christi, TX. There I helped construct the datacenter operations. In that same year RTFC launched their Training Academy which provided classroom and live-fire training for firefighters in refineries and chemical plants from around the world. I built the Firefighter Training Database to maintain training logs, certifications, and instructor reviews for every trainee at the Academy.
At RTFC Headquarters I built the database and publishing system to enter the technical data of the different response hazards at the refineries and chemical plants that RTFC protected, and developed the visual information design for the RTFC Emergency Response Pre-plans that were printed from the database.
I also designed and developed the joint website for RTFC and the Fire Training Academy.
Over the next several years, interest in web design replaced print design as the dominant client request.
My first e-commerce site was for a funded startup during the .com era in 1999. Internet commerce was still quite new, so when Digital Camera Company requested an e-commerce site for a full line of digital cameras and camcorders, with multiple images of each camera, product reviews, side-by-side comparisons and a help facility for decision making, there was no software on the market that would fill their need. This project involved almost a year of custom coding to create. Unfortunately the venture lost its funding before the site ever launched.
One of my largest projects at the time was with Kare Products, an ergonomic furniture company in Bolder, Colorado. Kare Products had a Macintosh network with FileMaker Pro Server hosting their product database internally. From 2000-2004 I modified and programmed the database to assemble product names, descriptions, detailed specifications, images, related products and cross-sell information, and to serve the constructed catalog pages to our remote e-commerce web server running a Lasso interface. The system also included an integrated Ergo-Fit system which allowed the user to set a variety of parameters to help identify specific products and options to fit their needs.
Throughout this project I worked with their design agency to convert the design Photoshop PSDs into website templates and implement the dynamic page generation from the Filemaker database.
In June of 2004 I accepted an extended contact for series of special projects from one of our oldest and best clients. I was tasked with designing, and installing the Information Infrastructure – network, servers, storage, personal computers, communications, and cyber-security – for Industrial Emergency Services to improve operations and communication between their Corpus Christi Headquarters and their Baton Rouge field office. The next year this expanded to their facilities on the refinery island of Equatorial Guinea.
Operating in the dual role of Chief Information Officer and Chief Security Officer, I designed and developed the specialized software and databases to manage, disseminate and protect all the proprietary information about the petro-chemicals at the facilities they protected. This period was only three years following 9/11, so security requirements were significant.
Printed materials, HR documents, hazardous material processes, and other information was converted to be accessible online for both officers and firefighters. In addition, under the direction of the Chief and Training Officer we published the IES firefighter recruit training standards.
During that same deployment, I was dispatched to Louisiana for Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana Power & Light announced to the refineries and chemical plants that they were taking their power plants offline, consequently, all the plants would have to shut down as well.
All the critical information our firefighters relied on, including the contents of every tank, storage vessel, and processing unit, the Materials Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for those contents, the required Personal Protective Equipment and firefighting pre-plans, accidental spill or release dispersion modeling software, and the related evacuation plans were in each of the data centers of the plants and refineries that were turning off their power.
In less that 24 hours we set up an emergency data center, transferred all the necessary data, and I installed, configured and operated the HGSYSTEM and HYSPLIT chemical dispersion modeling software for area evacuations in the event of tank ruptures and spills during the storm and for the rescue deployments following.
In 2007 my long-term contract with IES ended, and I was considering what I wanted to do, and the direction I wanted to take my company. I had relocated my business from Denver to Austin, since by this time nearly all my clients were in Texas.
I gave serious consideration to dropping website design and development. Handcoded HTML was a nightmare, and the automated tools of the day, such as Adobe’s Golive, lacked database connectivity to make them useful for larger sites. A new acquaintance, Chris Sherrod, suggested I try something called “WordPress”. I was dubious.
I had tried lots of software tools. It seems if you are in the computer industry you have to learn two or three new programs or techniques every year. Most don’t live up to the hype, often adding more work than they solve. WordPress was different.
Admittedly I screwed up my first site. Because I didn’t understand how themes and plugins worked, and documentation was very scant, I got my site to do exactly what I wanted by re-writing WordPress core. The next revision of WordPress obliterated my code. I sought help, and found it in the form of the Austin WordPress Meetup and its organizer, Pat Ramsey.
Over the next couple of years I built my skills in WordPress. When Pat mentioned he needed help with the Meetup in 2010, my partner Sandi and I became co-organizers. In January of 2012 Pat stepped down to focus on his business. Sandi and I have now grown the Austin WordPress Meetup to the forth largest WordPress Meetup in the world, and the single most active – with a meeting every week, including on focussed on WooCommerce.
A New Focus in Training
In 2010, members of the Austin WordPress Meetup who wanted to learn faster than the monthly Meetup forum permitted, requested that my partner and I teach topic-specific, WordPress classes. Initially we conducted those on evenings and weekends under the banner of “Hands On WordPress” but at the request of the WordPress Foundation, we changed to “Hands On WP” to avoid any possible trade name conflict.
These courses continued ad hoc for five years, but demand grew to the point that in 2015 we made the decision to form Hands On WP as a full business unit of Pleiades and to take our courses online.
While training had always been a aspect of my work at every juncture, the weekly experience of teaching WordPress became a favorite activity. I truly enjoyed explaining each of the concepts of web design and development – breaking them down to component parts, developing real-life analogies to illustrate and clarify them, then reconstructing the conceptual models to build a full and complete understanding for each student.
The rapid growth and changing nature of web design/development posed, and continues to create, interesting challenges for both the new practitioner entering the market and the seasoned professional trying to understand the ever-changing definitions of our industry.
These changes in the web technology require me to teach how job responsibilities can simultaneously fragment into separate and unique disciplines, while still requiring an all-encompassing knowledge of the whole industry.
While my teaching remains primarily at the WordPress Meetup, Wordcamps, and my HandsOnWP.com online and classroom venues, I also expanded my role as a WordPress Evangelist, including guest lecturer at St. Edwards University Interactive Design program and as a volunteer WordPress Developer for the OpenAIR, Knowbility Hackathon, focusing on WordPress Accessibility.
Because each Meetup and class involves discussing either the needs of the attendees or their clients, I have frequent and diverse experiences in client interviewing and needs assessment that directly translates into making me a better developer for my customers.
These training courses continue to be an ongoing part of our business, changing as the industry matures and develops. I consider the training that I do each week to be integral to finding clients, finding talent I can hire, and honing my own skills.
The Business Model
The Austin area is a prime market for tech start-ups and small to mid-size businesses. Here I found a profitable niche in small, fast turn-around websites for these businesses.
In addition, I provide a “white label” service for a number of local designers, many of whom are former students, who perform all the client-facing activities, and contract with me to convert their designs into WordPress websites for their customers.
The primary part of my business remains website development. This has shifted in focus, though. The ongoing improvement of the WordPress interface, professional grade plugins and themes, and a rapidly growing body of design talent has made public-facing marketing and promotional website work very competitive.
In late 2015 I saw a nearly empty niche that was perfect for my skill set.
Enterprise-Level Business Operations Management for Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses
Large enterprises have long had complex, all-encompassing internal systems to manage every part of the organization. Price and software requirements generally put SAP level of automation outside the reach of small and mid-sized businesses.
By combining WordPress with custom database development, growing businesses can now afford CRM, ERP, HR, Project Management, Document Management, In-house training, and customized automation of industry- and company-specific processes.
In combination with my partner, Sandi Batik, who is a SBA award-winning Small Business Development Center M/WBE Advocate and a Deming Certified Process Analyst, we have focused primarily on business automation developed around WordPress.
With the addition of web-accessible critical business information, there is also a heightened need for systems and data security, which is why I am now pursuing my SSCP and CISSP certifications.