Professionally: Retired from IT department.
Personally: I love creating (computers, arduino, wood…) and am currently remodeling a space ( > 2000 square feet) for garage and shop to put all my equipment.
Professional: I am a woodworker and freelance designer with an interest in product design. I recently graduated with a BFA in Interior Architecture and I collaborate with my peers on some projects. I am also getting ready to set up my Etsy store for invitations, coasters, and tags that I have designed for weddings.
Personal: I am a wife of a banker with the cutest dog. We love to cook, play board games, and travel. We are currently remodeling our house and I am in the process of designing and making the furniture for the house. When I have time, I attend workshops to learn new skills like pottery, screen printing, welding, etc.
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Professionally, I’ve been in IT at Conde Nast in NYC for 25 years this month - it’s been my ONLY job. Started two weeks out of Carnegie Mellon, when Conde Nast bought their first Mac in hopes of starting Allure Magazine using desktop publishing rather than paste-up, but didn’t know how to use it. Since then it’s evolved to all sorts of stuff, including workflow management systems, digital asset management systems, iPad apps - you name it.
Personally, I have always lived in Brooklyn, enjoy woodworking projects large and small (just built my first boat!), and skiing with my kids. Love working with Adobe Illustrator, and am a bit of a font geek.
Started out as the immigrant son of a late blooming ex-cabbie and self-taught all around handyman workaholic. I followed suit (except for the cab driving part), fixing our modest house with rental unit and building a business in real estate. In college, switched specialties until the Arts called (Visual, Performing, Cinema). It was a difficult move going against family pressures, but the calling was irresistible. I’m new to laser cutting and 3D printing, love designing and making things and can see the possibility it holds for my new studio’s practical and artistic endeavors.
Personally, I spend much time between NY and Houston and plan to renovate my old family Victorian home in Brooklyn.
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Professionally: I have been working in the TV industry for over 7 years. I have done mostly everything in the production process: storyboarding, producing, editing, motion graphics, logo design, audio mixing/recording, print ad design, some web mastering. Currently I make motion graphics for local commercials and station IDs and stuff like that.
Personally: I fiddle with my 3D printer. Printing out gifts, board game tokens or just experimenting. I tinker in my basement trying to fix broken things or trying to make things do stuff they weren’t designed for (often breaking them in the process). I cook a lot, I like woodworking (but don’t really have the space for it), I am a collector of random hobbies, and I just generally like creating things.
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Professionally I am a landscape architect in Seattle. I work on a lot of public projects and specialize in green stormwater infrastructure (like the Ballard roadside raingardens) and streetscapes. I also specialize in hand drawn and computer rendered illustrative graphics to help the public visualize upcoming projects.
Personally I love to make things, of course. I have done some stained glass, refinished and upholstered furniture, and done some painting. These days I do a lot of small craft projects with my daughters. We are currently working on snowflake paper chains for Christmas decorations, and last year we did ornaments with personalized glitter paint for each of their friends.
Lately I have been spending a lot of time dreaming about my Glowforge. It is going to open up a new realm of possibilities for our gifts and craft projects. I am also looking forward to using it as a tool for developing architectural models. I made a lot of models in grad school, and they are a great tool for really understanding a design. But almost no one does them professionally because they are too time consuming and expensive. I am expecting my Glowforge to change that.
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Professionally: I make iOS Apps. I’ve worked on nearly 40 for either personal, start-ups, or Fortune 100 companies. My company is called Zwiffer Inc.
Personally: I’m recently married, and have quite a few hobbies. I slalom waterski, compete in FPV Drone racing, solve the Rubik’s Cube, play the saxophone, and perform magic.
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Professionally, I’m an Enterprise Architect with a large stock exchange - my day job includes proof-of-concept testing, systems design, and performance testing types of work, but honestly by day job is rarely the same thing from day to day.
For fun, I collect and restore pinball machines and classic arcade cabinets, dabble in retrocomputing and build small tinkerable electronic things like Arduino whatzits and Raspberry API thingamajigs. I currently run The World’s Smallest Mainframe, an Intel Edison System-on-a-chip running an IBM VM/370 mainframe emulator.
I also have an interest in time and timing and both build clocks and timepieces as a hobby, and also manage timekeeping at work, where we keep thousands of systems’ clocks in sync within a handful of microseconds.
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Love this thread – so many people with interesting things going on. I don’t know if I’m on the wrong coast or what, but it’s very cool to see such a large group of similarly minded people working on stuff that’s awesome.
Anyway…
Professionally: I’m the director of the ‘Innovations’ division at Binghamton University where we develop all kinds of cool software things (open source frameworks, widely deployed web apps, etc) as well as oversee the Binghamton University campus makerspace (Emerging Tech. Studio). It’s a pretty fun gig, and allows for a lot of opportunity to design / build things and be around students who like to design / build things.
Personally, things aren’t all that different. I have a 3D printer at home and various quadcopters for FPV racing, aerial photography, and flying around the house. I decided that quad copters are the ‘killer app’ for 3D printers, as stuff is always crashing and/or needs to be upgraded. I also do a lot of projects around Raspberry Pis and similar embedded devices (World Sunlight Map, Mesh Network Surveillance System, MIDI Controlled Christmas Lights, and a bunch of random other things)
I also enjoy Wake Boarding, Ping Pong, Rockets (Go SpaceX!), and am expecting my first child in the next couple weeks!
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Wow! All of these backgrounds have been a wonderful read!
Professionally: I am a full-time mom, part-time piano teacher, and part-time graphic designer. I have 12 of the cutest piano students around and manage an etsy store (lollieland.etsy.com) where I design Christmas cards and create custom Silhouettes for family gifts. I also help my husband with his web design clients.
Personally: My most recent hobby has been silversmithing. My grandfather in 89 years old and creates the most beautiful jewelry. No one in my family has learned the craft and for the last few years we’ve been getting together in his workshop. It has been the best experience! I’ve made a number of rings, pendants, and chains. I am just learning how to cut and grind turquoise to the right shape for a specific ring I want. I love all of the custom jewelry my grandma had and hope to make such gifts for my mom, sisters, and daughter.
I also love photography, spinning, and pajama days!
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Professionally - cofounder of a converged infrastructure startup that was bought by a megacorp (EMC) - now doing the same thing as before but with free soda. Write code mostly in node.js against mongodb these days. In the past have built a wide range of software - from large services serving billions down to microcontrollers serving a single sensor.
Personally - husband and dad to 2 kids and 2 dogs, photography geek, and mentor to a FIRST Robotics Competition team @Newport High (130 kids working on robotics, yay!). Live in Bellevue, WA.
Professionally: I’m a software developer, primarily for web applications on LAMP but do range far afield at times. Also technology consultant (various levels of tech support/sysadmin work - I do have a client with index cards to walk them through saving a document). And just to make sure that I don’t get bored I do some property management.
Personally: Hiking, sailing, skiing, and pretty much anything outdoors. Plus some gaming and Making in the evenings. On the maker front I work with a lot of wood, but also fiberglass/epoxy (boat stuff), and getting into electronics; working on an arduino controlled crowd lighting setup for our living room at the moment.
We are a full service marketing & branding company. We manage the top down brand appearance for local and regional clients. In many cases, this management includes the need to develop one off or low volume signage, promotional materials, marketing materials, and other such resources to be used by our clients for event/product promotion.
Our leadership team all have backgrounds in the traditional arts including printmaking and glass blowing, and enjoy the hands on approach to much of our work.
I was a member on a FIRST robotics team back in high school- definitely a cool way to give back Dave. If I’m not wrong you should be getting the info soon on how the game will be played this season? We made it to nationals in Houston and won a divisional as well, good luck!
Professionally: I am a laser engineering technician with second largest tier one supplier in the world. I get to work with 3-4kW lasers on a daily basis. I have only worked with fiber lasers at this time, but can’t wait to get my hands on a Glowforge.
Personally: I work a lot, automotive manufacturing is not what I would describe as an ideal career- long days and lots of weekend work. I like to work on cars and I am currently building my own shop/maker space. I take time to drop in on local startup scene in my hometown to see what is new and popular.
Hi Tony
Professionally: I am a safety engineer in a shipyard. Please, it’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Before that I was a full time student working on an electrical engineering degree. Before that, I spent 24 years in the Air Force working in electronics. Before that, I was a scenic carpenter building/designing sets and lighting for stage productions.
Personally: I do a lot of bike riding especially after work. Build paper models, currently I am working on Howel’s Moving Castle and R2D2. I do lots of model building, I have lots of plans for my GF. I do electronics as a hobby as well. Finally I think I am getting a 3D printer for Christmas.
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Professionally: I have over 20 years of IT experience, both technical and management. I have done just about everything from programmer (we did not call ourselves “developers” then), to networking and systems design, deployment, and support. My latest position was IT Manager for 3 Amazon Fulfillment Centers - VERY interesting job! I had to leave there due to family issues and to have a Hip replacement. I am looking for something a little less stressful than running three million+ sq. ft. facilities. So you could say I am “semi-retired”, at least for right now.
Personally: My wife works in the pharmaceutical industry and is currently working out of state. I have a 20-something son that is studying “manufacturing processes” - likes welding and laser cutting thus far. I am a licensed Ham radio operator and like to experiment with Arduino and Raspberry PI. I have a small CNC machine and a 3D printer is am working on assembling.
Hey Peeps
Professionally: I’m a lead animator at a commercial house. I get to animate all day and create some cool characters. Well, maybe not always, but I take part in making some innovative spots. I graduated from SVA almost 20 years ago and I’ve been animating ever since.
Personally: I’m the husband that sometimes acts like a kid. My wife always says that she has 3 children apposed to just our twin boys. Since I’m behind a computer all day I like to spend my weekends fixing my house (replacing siding/fixing the roof, some electrical work, ect…) anything to save a couple of bucks… I also worked with arduino and 3d printers. I own 2 replicators and built a OX CNC from scratch. A week in the summer, I built an arcade machine that has a bunch of retro games… My kids now are the most popular kids in the neighborhood.
jlo
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I think that is every wife’s complaint (or as I call it, complement)
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Master of none?
In my experience, a man who is good at one thing is usually good at many.
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