Boutique Web Design Firms (2000 - 2010)
The first decade of my professional career was focused on building skills, learning about business, and maturing from a Flash designer to a developer, and laying foundations for User Experience and Customer Experience:
Pixel Praise (2005 - 2010)
Partner, Lead UI Developer & Designer
Pixel Praise quickly rose as one of the premier Joomla (open-source) CMS web development firms. As a partner, I developed the business plan, forecasts, ran sales, and developed sites. I introduced 1-2 week Design Sprints well before such things were commonplace. We pivoted from customer development to online templates, extensions and plugins, including a theme site (JoomlaPraise), a mobile site (TapTheme), site administrator application (AdminPraise), and full-blown project management software suite (ProjectFork).
Capstone Media (2003 - 2005)
Partner, Lead UI Developer
As the entire planet moved to eCommerce and Social Media sites, at Capstone we specialized in online stores and communities for local businesses in Austin, Texas. I cut my programming teeth on open-source platforms such as Interchange (Perl-based e-commerce) and Mambo (PHP-based CMS, later become Joomla).
superMega Media (2000 - 2003)
Partner, Web Designer & Developer
While still in college we began selling custom Flash (yes Flash) website in Lafayette, Louisiana. Remember, this was a time when first you had to convince a company WHY they needed a web presence at all.
Ran an online template club as well as an open source project management software company, and operated a boutique web app design service breaking ground in the SMB industry in Austin, TX.