From Rollercoasters to Hospitals Without Getting Sick
For years I've been enmeshed in startups, enjoying the adrenaline filled funding cycles, wacky ideas, breakneck development cycles and incredible people. I've finally been tempted off the midway rides by a Vancouver post-startup, one45 Software. The promise of working on a mature project with a very large user base to solve problems that will have large societal impacts was a powerful pull. Couple that with smart people and a stable, revenue positive company in a funky heritage building and I was hooked.
I'm the new Sr. Developer at one45 and I'll be working on optimizing the delivery of medical education with the long-term goal of helping to design curricula that produces better doctors. It's a combination of efficient process optimization and predictive statistics - both of which have been recurring themes in much of the work I've done in the past. I find the prospect of working on code that is in wide production use to be very satisfying.
This also means that I'm working back in the downtown Vancouver core which makes me quite happy. There is something special about Vancouver's heart that resonates deeply with me, I can't quite explain it. It's a quiet energy that permeates the streets; unlike the high frequency buzz in Toronto, or the fast walking and driven movements of New York. Almost a fusion of the sharp Silicon Valley enthusiasm with a restrained, polite Canadian flavour. An admixture of bemused tourists, distracted suits and stoned neo-hippies. And, even better, my best friend is soon to be working but a few blocks away in Gastown. Really, what more could I have asked for?
This will be a less twisty but no less enjoyable road to follow, one that winds through old pastures and haunting grounds. A traveller returning home but with new eyes and vantages, seeing different things in the same vistas. I'm very grateful for the amazing people that joined me on the road this year as well as the ones I've parted with.