So do I spend most of my days heads down in my work? If I’m honest the answer is probably yes, but I always try and strive to maintain a healthy work and life balance!

Onto my story. Growing up as a Pastors Kid (PK), moving around was one of those facts of life that you get use to. I spent my early childhood in Connecticut and during middle school moved to Syracuse, NY to finish out my high school years.

After high school and a brief stint at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH, I moved back to Chicago where I jumped right into the work force. In 20/20 hindsight I wouldn’t recommend this approach for anyone who thinks that there is a better alternative than spending the time after high school by doing directly into college. Work was slow starting, but once I found my passions and the area’s that I excel in, I quickly started to move up the corporate ladders. Most of my experience has been in management, team building, technical support, project management, and account/client management. You could say that I’m a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to the business world.

You would think that with this experience, I would complete my undergraduate degree in Computer Science or Business Administration/Management; however, I decided that my true skills lie in understanding people and social interactions that lead me to complete my undergraduate degree in Sociology and Political Science at Lewis University.

Of the many things that I have learned over the years, two things stand out that have had some of the most profound impact:

1. David Allen – Getting Things Done (GTD)
2. Strength Finder

GTD is one of those core principles that have helped me keep myself out of trouble on countless occasions. We all fall into the trap of information overload, and ways that we can cope and deal with that vary as widely as you can imagine. GTD helps to take a tactical approach with this information overload and allows you to organize your thoughts into meaningful buckets that will then enable you to actually sort through the work, and in the process help to get all those bits and pieces that rattle around in your brain out of your head allowing you to be able to more freely think and not allow your thoughts to side track you as you work through your other day to day dealings.

Strength Finder is another great strategy in helping someone in management understand the people that they work with and to let them understand what their own strengths are, and throughout your interactions, play on your strengths instead of focus on the weaknesses. Too often I have found in business, we focus on the negative or the weaknesses instead of capitalizing on the strengths. It’s sort of the glass is half full perspective on things and on people. I have found that by taking this approach we can look to get more done by using the strengths that each person brings to the table instead of breaking people down into the sum of their weaknesses.

Business aside, we can all be thankful for the time we have that doesn’t revolve around the office and work. Sometimes that is harder to achieve than others–as most who have a crackberry can attest to, the attachments we have to the office can at times seem almost an unbreakable bond–we do have to find the time to separate ourselves from our work and to take advantage of the things around us. I’m currently happily married to my wife and we have our pride and joy with Momoshiro (Momo) the dog (obviously you can tell we have no kids at the minute!). With the availability of the Kindle I have found myself completely addicted to books again. One of my favorite series is The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher which is a must read for anyone who is interested in that type of Science Fiction writing.

We’ve done a lot in our lives to become healthier. Check out the Organic Kochs Lifestyle (OKL) for more details!

As a result I’ve had to redo my wardrobe, but I do have to admit, I am completely attracted to the Express Fitted 1MX shirts! Between the colors and the feel, makes you feel like a million bucks!

What you’ll find this blog aims to do is to express my ideas and technology to help progress our use of FOSS (Free Open Source Software) as I see huge value in that both in business as well as using those technologies elsewhere.

Most days you can find me on Twitter, and from time to time I will try and post new ideas or respond back to posts that are made. There is also a wiki that allows me to capture more technical information, so please feel free to join me there if you are interested in any of the technical works that I put together.

One question I get often is people ask me what’s up with my domain name? That’s a really good question! Back in the early 2000’s, I wanted a domain name, but didn’t know what to get. I’ve always been fascinated by the duality that existed between evolutionism and creationism, so I came up with evolution creations as a way to represent that duality. Sometimes we need to think in terms of an evolving method or a process, but other times we need things in a more abstract or concrete way, this is where the origins of evolution creations came to be. I’ve thought over time of changing this to be more of a family name, and to that, we have another domain that represents that, but I’ve stuck with evolution creations as it just has felt right even after all this time has pasted.

Please feel free to contact me using my contact me page or by commenting on my blog!