About
πŸ‘‹πŸ»

About

Hey, I'm Bryan πŸ‘‹πŸ», here's a bit about me.
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I'm married to an amazing women πŸ™‹β€β™€οΈ. We met in our first college math class, talk about lucky. Together we have two daughters πŸ‘¨β€πŸ‘©β€πŸ‘§β€πŸ‘§, they're pretty cool. We have a dog named Pond 🐢 (as in "Come along Pond") she's a St. Berdoodle and another named Chewy (yes as in Chewbacca), she’s a lot to handle.
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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:
  • β˜• I ❀️ coffee. My favorite way to make it is with my beloved AeroPress.
  • πŸ› οΈ I'm really into woodworking, building furniture, etc. Which is great because...
  • πŸ”¨ My wife and I bought our dream property on a lake πŸŒ… ... which happened to have a house 🏚 on it. We're now remodeling the entire thing ourselves.
  • πŸ” On a lark in 2020 I got chickens πŸ₯šπŸ£πŸ₯πŸ“πŸ₯š. They're awesome. We named them Kung Pao, KFC, Orange, and Ginger. We have a dark sense of humor.
  • ⚽ I volunteer for a non-profit soccer club.
  • πŸ’» 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 πŸ’» 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 a bunch of companies. I'm particularly passionate about startups or companies who operate with a startup mindset. In fact my first job was at a startup πŸš€ where we sold self storage software (it was the 90's) to over 600 customers. I've worked for big tech (as an orange badge at MS) and for the government. I'm currently the CTO of a startup (not listed since this site and my opinions are my own).

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 🎩. One could even say it's an art.
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Copyright Β© 2022, Bryan Smith, All Rights Reserved
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