Unsatisfied with the status quo, I believe that technology and design paired together are magical tools we can leverage to create extraordinary possibilities.
Back in 2012, when I decided to run the first design conference in my hometown of St. John’s, Newfoundland — a remote island in the middle of the cold Atlantic Ocean — I never took no for an answer because I believed it could deliver so much value to the local design community, individual designers, and product makers. When doors were closed at every turn, I took things into my own hands and took out a $50k personal line of credit to bootstrap the conference. With so much on the line like speaking fees and costs associated with travel, advertising, venues, and catering, I got to work. At 26 years old, taking that risk should have deterred me, but deep down I knew the conference could be life changing for the designers and product makers in our hometown — so I pushed on. I’m so happy to say that the conference was an incredible success. The conference sold out and gained amazing sponsors (like Shopify, Microsoft, Mailchimp, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, and Treehouse), and brought industry-leading speakers Jeffrey Zeldman, Aarron Walter, Ethan Marcotte, Lea Verou, Jeremy Keith, and Josh Clark. But the best part of it all was that the design community got so much value from the conference and went on to positively impact the careers of many local designers and product makers.
I’m often asked why I put so much on the line to run the conference, and the answer is quite simple, really: it’s my passion. I love design and technology for what it can do to liberate ideas and empower the individual. I was introduced to design when I got my first MacBook many years ago for Christmas. I remember playing with the word processor ‘Pages’ and the many templates it came with like those for creating posters. I loved the feeling of taking ideas and putting them into a real, tangible medium that I could share with others to deliver value. It evolved from there; I quickly learned Photoshop and other design programs and started doing some freelance design work. I was making a little money designing posters, and I enjoyed it, but my problem was that I knew design could have a bigger impact in my life, so I needed to reach for higher goals. So, once again, I got back on my MacBook and opened iWeb, the app it had for making websites. I remember staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning trying to write HTML and CSS snippets into iWeb to create what I thought at the time was amazing web design work. Looking back, these amazing designs were most likely just rainbow coloured words scrolling across the screen, but that was fine because it was a stepping stone.
That’s all it took to get me hooked. I don’t think I slept for a year. I was always on my MacBook and on the web learning as much as I could. I was doing as much freelance work as possible, while completing a double major in philosophy and political science. I took full course loads in the summer, so I could graduate a year and half sooner. Shortly after graduation, I was hired by that same university to work in their distance education department to design and develop online courses.
Since then, I have worked for clients all over the world from New York City to Australia, for companies like Trello, Atlassian, Shopify, Vox Media, and for institutions like Caltech. I’ve built apps to assist cancer patients and have used Twitter to alert Newfoundland drivers of dangerous moose sightings on highways. This is why I love design and technology; it can enable us to better humanity, and I wanted to share my passion with those around me. That’s why I risked so much to run my own conference.
The conference was also such an amazing opportunity for me because I made so many valuable connections. Living on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean was no longer an issue; in connecting my local design community with world-renowned speakers, I had connected myself with an incredible international community of designers and developers who attended, sponsored, or spoke at the conference.
During this time, I also learned about the many pain points that thousands of event organizers have everyday including the cost of event apps that enable organizers to sell event tickets. In short, it cost me $2k to sell tickets for my conference each year, and I had to wait months to get paid. This wasn’t good enough. So what did I do about it? I built my own event management app, Evey Events, with a friend. Instead of paying $2k in fees, it would have only cost me $120 using Evey. Sales from tickets are deposited into the organizer’s bank account within 3 days, not weeks. Evey has now been used by event organizers around the world including OVO, Drake, Harvard, Draft Kings, Smashing Magazine, Shopify, and many more. Evey has processed over 100 million dollars in sales and became the top event ticketing app on Shopify helping event organizers all over the world. Recently, we had a very successful exit and sold the app to a great company: Stay Tuned.
It’s amazing where one simple idea, like hosting a small hometown conference, can take us.
Most recently, I was Director of Design at CoLab Software: an enterprise software company that helps mechanical engineers collaborate. In this role, I built a design team to 6 designers, established design thinking methods/frameworks, and introduced OKRs at the company level to provide focus, alignment, and vision for the product and company with the goal to better serve the customer.
Before CoLab Software, I was a Product Designer at Trello for 5 years, and I'm quite proud of the work I was a part of there: new and updated mobile apps, Trello+Dropbox Integration, Trello Power-Ups, Trello's Design System, Trello Automation, and Trello's Unsplash integration.
Before Trello, I worked as a Designer Advocate with Shopify. My goals at Shopify were to educate and provide valuable resources to the Shopify Partner community. This involved running webinars, writing articles, creating resources, and meeting partners at events. Design and education were at the core of what I did on a daily basis.
I continue to work on personal projects to fine tune my craft, and I’m always eager to explore new ideas and technologies. I’m still as passionate today as I was over a decade ago when I brought my idea to reality with Go Beyond Pixels. I’m particularly inspired by AR/VR, AI, and machine learning, and the unexplored possibilities we’ve yet to imagine in these areas.
I am more focused than ever on product design and development. Having taken Evey from a project in my bedroom to a successful product and eventual lucrative exit, I am focused on the big picture in all the products I work on while understanding the many steps it takes to make them incredibly useful, enjoyable, and valuable for humanity.
Design and technology hold no limits. They allow us to dream, and they enable us to challenge the status quo in order to improve our communities. I’ve experienced this personally as they’ve taken me down a path to places I had not imagined, and the best part is that this is just the beginning.
Things are only impossible until you do them. Onward.
Looking to chat? Email me