Who Am I And Why Am I Here?
I thought perhaps a biographical blog entry might provide some context for GigMasters performers who don't know anything about me. So here goes…
My father was a classically trained violinist – pre-kids he was a member of the Cincinnati Symphony. With mouths to feed, he got into music education eventually settling in as the orchestra director in the Three Village School district on Long Island where he taught at the elementary, junior high, and high school level. Bottom line - the musical influence was there early on.
At age 4, I was enrolled in the local Suzuki school to learn violin. Suzuki is a method of musical study where you learn to play by ear rather than reading music. What I remember most is getting MnM’s at the end of every lesson which is probably what kept me coming back each week. Truthfully it must have been more than the free candy because I stuck with the violin for many years to come.
At the same time I was studying music, I was also developing an interest in computers at a fairly early age. My neighbors had a TRS-80 I remember spending a lot of time on. Eventually I got my own computer – an Atari 800. In 5th grade, my teacher began introducing us to the computer language BASIC. I definitely liked programming right from the start.
In high school it was decision time - where to go to college and what to major in. Music was the obvious choice, but there was always this nagging "Am I SURE I really want to be a professional musician?" Nevertheless, I was accepted in to the School of Music at Indiana University. I majored in Viola which for those who don’t know is a larger version of the violin with a deeper sound.
After just a year of majoring in music, those nagging doubts become more pronounced. One of the biggest factors believe it or not was this feeling of not wanting to practice every day. Every day I'd wake up knowing I'd need to practice 2-3 hours, and then wake up the next day knowing I'd have to do it all over again. It felt like a monkey on my back. I was also concerned that I didn’t have the passion for classical music. And then all it took was my father telling me what his starting salary was in the Cincinnati Symphony and before you know it I was switching majors.
You’re probably thinking I switched my major to computers but for some crazy reason I decided on economics. I guess I wanted a business type degree but with a liberal arts slant. All told, if I had it to over again, I would have majored in computer science. To this day, I remember my mother encouraging me to get into computers – good advice which I eventually listened to. But not right away…
After graduating from IU in 1992, armed with an Economics degree, I got my first job at Scudder Funds based out of Boston and New York. For the first 2 years, I worked on the customer service side ("Thank you for calling Scudder Funds. How may I help you?") From there I moved into Investment operations working as an assistant to a portfolio manager. My job involved a lot of manual work with spreadsheets, and I started playing around with Excel macros to automate some of my daily tasks. I was hooked!
Toward the end of my time at Scudder, I remember going to a Barnes & Noble during lunch and buying a book on HTML. It was early 1996 – I was starting to hear more and more about the World Wide Web and knew I wanted to get on board early. I started reading at my cubicle (while my Excel macros were doing my work for me!). I eventually left Scudder and after a 6 week backpacking stint around Europe, I landed a $10/hr job HTML programming at a tiny company in SoHo called FGP. I remember a lot of late nights with lots of Pringles scrambling to learn what I claimed to know during the interview. I had to create a shopping cart entirely in JavaScript (using Cookies) because it was before I knew anything about server side programming. It wasn’t until someone showed me a PERL script where I could write to a text file on one web page, and then read from that same file on a different page where things really started to click.
After FGP, I moved onto TheSquare.com – a website for students and graduates of Ivy League colleges. It was strange working there for two reason 1) my cousin was the boss and 2) I was the only one working there who didn’t go to an Ivy League school. But nevertheless, I learned a TON of programming including a very cool language called Cold Fusion. The site at the time was hooked into a Microsoft Access database. It was there that I learned SQL, and started to see the possibilities of web database programming. It was also at that time that my friend Kevin and I, along with yet another cousin of mine, started a little side project called GigMasters.
After leaving TheSquare.com, with GigMasters still years from a revenue model, I landed a job as database administrator at SmartMoney.com. To this day, it’s amazing they hired me considering I had just learned SQL a few months prior and knew nothing about the admin side of databases. I’m still very appreciative of Andy Catlin, the database consultant who got me the job, and who taught me a TON about database development.
I had a few more full time jobs after SmartMoney.com – all the while putting in lots and lots and LOTS of hours on GigMasters. I would code before work, scribble out ideas on the train, read books during lunch, and code after work and all weekend. Each year GigMasters would pull in a little more revenue and finally, in about 2005, I was able to go full time on GigMasters. There are no words to describe how great that was.
What I feel most pleased about is that GigMasters merges two of my biggest interests – music and computers. I had finally taken my mother’s advice about getting into computers. And while my father was perhaps a bit disappointed I didn’t become a professional musician (although he would never admit that), I feel like at least I’m involved in something related to music. And most especially, I continue to have such enormous respect and admiration for the performers on GigMasters who ARE making a living out of music – something I never quite had the courage or passion to do.
My father was a classically trained violinist – pre-kids he was a member of the Cincinnati Symphony. With mouths to feed, he got into music education eventually settling in as the orchestra director in the Three Village School district on Long Island where he taught at the elementary, junior high, and high school level. Bottom line - the musical influence was there early on.
At age 4, I was enrolled in the local Suzuki school to learn violin. Suzuki is a method of musical study where you learn to play by ear rather than reading music. What I remember most is getting MnM’s at the end of every lesson which is probably what kept me coming back each week. Truthfully it must have been more than the free candy because I stuck with the violin for many years to come.
At the same time I was studying music, I was also developing an interest in computers at a fairly early age. My neighbors had a TRS-80 I remember spending a lot of time on. Eventually I got my own computer – an Atari 800. In 5th grade, my teacher began introducing us to the computer language BASIC. I definitely liked programming right from the start.
In high school it was decision time - where to go to college and what to major in. Music was the obvious choice, but there was always this nagging "Am I SURE I really want to be a professional musician?" Nevertheless, I was accepted in to the School of Music at Indiana University. I majored in Viola which for those who don’t know is a larger version of the violin with a deeper sound.
After just a year of majoring in music, those nagging doubts become more pronounced. One of the biggest factors believe it or not was this feeling of not wanting to practice every day. Every day I'd wake up knowing I'd need to practice 2-3 hours, and then wake up the next day knowing I'd have to do it all over again. It felt like a monkey on my back. I was also concerned that I didn’t have the passion for classical music. And then all it took was my father telling me what his starting salary was in the Cincinnati Symphony and before you know it I was switching majors.
You’re probably thinking I switched my major to computers but for some crazy reason I decided on economics. I guess I wanted a business type degree but with a liberal arts slant. All told, if I had it to over again, I would have majored in computer science. To this day, I remember my mother encouraging me to get into computers – good advice which I eventually listened to. But not right away…
After graduating from IU in 1992, armed with an Economics degree, I got my first job at Scudder Funds based out of Boston and New York. For the first 2 years, I worked on the customer service side ("Thank you for calling Scudder Funds. How may I help you?") From there I moved into Investment operations working as an assistant to a portfolio manager. My job involved a lot of manual work with spreadsheets, and I started playing around with Excel macros to automate some of my daily tasks. I was hooked!
Toward the end of my time at Scudder, I remember going to a Barnes & Noble during lunch and buying a book on HTML. It was early 1996 – I was starting to hear more and more about the World Wide Web and knew I wanted to get on board early. I started reading at my cubicle (while my Excel macros were doing my work for me!). I eventually left Scudder and after a 6 week backpacking stint around Europe, I landed a $10/hr job HTML programming at a tiny company in SoHo called FGP. I remember a lot of late nights with lots of Pringles scrambling to learn what I claimed to know during the interview. I had to create a shopping cart entirely in JavaScript (using Cookies) because it was before I knew anything about server side programming. It wasn’t until someone showed me a PERL script where I could write to a text file on one web page, and then read from that same file on a different page where things really started to click.
After FGP, I moved onto TheSquare.com – a website for students and graduates of Ivy League colleges. It was strange working there for two reason 1) my cousin was the boss and 2) I was the only one working there who didn’t go to an Ivy League school. But nevertheless, I learned a TON of programming including a very cool language called Cold Fusion. The site at the time was hooked into a Microsoft Access database. It was there that I learned SQL, and started to see the possibilities of web database programming. It was also at that time that my friend Kevin and I, along with yet another cousin of mine, started a little side project called GigMasters.
After leaving TheSquare.com, with GigMasters still years from a revenue model, I landed a job as database administrator at SmartMoney.com. To this day, it’s amazing they hired me considering I had just learned SQL a few months prior and knew nothing about the admin side of databases. I’m still very appreciative of Andy Catlin, the database consultant who got me the job, and who taught me a TON about database development.
I had a few more full time jobs after SmartMoney.com – all the while putting in lots and lots and LOTS of hours on GigMasters. I would code before work, scribble out ideas on the train, read books during lunch, and code after work and all weekend. Each year GigMasters would pull in a little more revenue and finally, in about 2005, I was able to go full time on GigMasters. There are no words to describe how great that was.
What I feel most pleased about is that GigMasters merges two of my biggest interests – music and computers. I had finally taken my mother’s advice about getting into computers. And while my father was perhaps a bit disappointed I didn’t become a professional musician (although he would never admit that), I feel like at least I’m involved in something related to music. And most especially, I continue to have such enormous respect and admiration for the performers on GigMasters who ARE making a living out of music – something I never quite had the courage or passion to do.
Comments
Post a Comment