Hey, I'm Bryan ๐๐ป, here's a bit about me.
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I'm married to an amazing women ๐โโ๏ธ. We met in our first college math class, talk about lucky. Together we have two daughters ๐จโ๐ฉโ๐งโ๐ง, they're pretty cool. We have a dog named Pond ๐ถ (as in "Come along Pond") she's a St. Berdoodle. We also have a cat named Meesh ๐ฑ, she's old and opinionated.
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I find the world fascinating so it shouldn't be a surprise I have a few hobbies.
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I have a few hobbies:
- โ I โค๏ธ coffee. My favorite way to make it is with my beloved AeroPress.
- ๐ ๏ธ I'm really into woodworking, building furniture, etc. Which is great because...
- ๐จ My wife and I bought our dream property on a lake ๐ ... which happened to have a house ๐ on it. We're now remodeling the entire thing ourselves.
- ๐ On a lark in 2020 I got chickens ๐ฅ๐ฃ๐ฅ๐๐ฅ. They're awesome. We named them Kung Pao, KFC, Orange, and Ginger. We have a dark sense of humor.
- โฝ I volunteer for a non-profit soccer club.
- ๐ป And it should be no surprise that I'm also quite passionate about all things software.
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I've been in software ๐ป for over 20 years. I took the unconventional path, landing a job as tech support, teaching myself to code on the job (Visual FoxPro and C), becoming their developer, working for big tech, all before heading to college (Go Eags!).
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Over the years I've worked on many projects for quite a few companies. I'm particularly passionate about startups or companies who operate with a startup mindset. In fact my first job was at a startup ๐ where we sold self storage software (it was the 90's) to over 300 customers. I've worked for big tech (as an orange badge at MS) and for the government. I'm currently working at RiskLens where I lead technology research. My focuses are on automation and applied data science to quantify cyber security risk.
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So what's the deal with "Art of Software"? It takes a lot more than writing code to build customer value. Beyond code, there's product decisions, marketing, sales, support, and so much more. It takes a lot to balance all those hats ๐ฉ. One could even say it's an art.
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Copyright ยฉ 2021, Bryan Smith, All Rights Reserved