GeekApproach

My name is Robert Entenman.  I’m a geek and I live in Seattle, WA.  From a young age I’ve been interested in technical, geeky, fun, strange things.  A lot of that tends to deal with computing and gadgets, but I often branch out into more mainstream topics.

As a kid I was fascinated by computers.  My father was a draftsman and is also a big geek at heart. I had access to electronics, circuit boards, IC’s, drafting tools, and computers as a kid.  My mom stayed at home with my sister and I until I was 10 and started working part-time.  She introduced me to literature, music, cooking, and people.  Because of both of them and their unique talents, I had a wide exposure to a lot of arts and sciences.

I started programming at 6 using a BASIC interpreter built into a Tandy Color Computer 3 (CoCo3 or TRS-80 for you Radio Shack junkies).  I started developing simple apps that took in input from the command line and dumped it out to the only save device at the time– an analog tape system.

Over the years I graduated up to a Mac 512k, an Intel 386, 486DX2, etc.  My reach and interests became broader; I got into music, writing, and hardware a lot more.  At 12 I launched my own business, Intrepid Computer Services.  Armed with nothing but a free Juno email account, some business cards, and my skills I went out and helped people with a variety of projects: basic web design (some of them are atrocious), computer/tech support, phones, and special projects.  I had a lot of fun doing it and it started to make me a bit of money.

When I was 15 and a sophmore in high school, I joined the administrative side of the school district I was in.  As a Tech intern over the 3 years following I participated and developed a wide variety of projects: Lightweight VB apps that interfaced with our Novell GroupWise back-end, Oracle PL/SQL applications that talked to our myriad of databases, and the beginnings of HTML2.0 and CSS interfaces.  I dabbled a bit in JavaScript programming while there, and in school learned Turbo Pascal, Borland C, Microsoft C++, and  bit of Microsoft J++ (glad that’s dead).  I thought for sure that programming was something I wanted to do– I had the chops for it, and aside from my horrendous math grades I thought I’d be good at it.  I think others thought I would be too.

Something was amiss however– I hated coding things in group projects.  Working on such small minutae that I didn’t know the facet or function of individual code blocks was frustrating and I eventually changed my plans upon graduating from high school to heading for the nearest community college.  I screwed around a bit– My brain doesn’t like to sit still for very long (it still doesn’t).  Eventually I found my way into the photography program where I enjoyed working with traditional B&W photo elements: chemistry, film, printing, and teaching.  I became the local Lab Technician there for a couple of years and helped teach about 20 hours of classroom instruction per week.  The gig was a lot of fun– I was able to meet a new batch of people every 12 weeks, learn new things, explore creating my art, and have a 3-day weekend each week.  The only real downside was that it didn’t pay a lot of money.  Still being a nerd at heart I posted a resume to monster.com and was picked up by an events and exhibts company called The Production Network in August 2004.

I was clearly their youngest employee ever– that didn’t really phase me.  I had been teaching a variety of people different ages chemistry, math, principles of art for a few years.  I started out doing small technical events for Xbox, back in the Xbox 1 days.  I did some heavy lifting on the Halo 2 launch in NYC, some great Game With Fame events around the country, and the beginnings of the Xbox 360 launch events.  That first year I travelled more than I was home– a new party every weekend, and hawking video games and a brand.  That was probably the most fun I’d ever had.

My role at TPN grew and grew.  I became the Project Manager on the Nintendo of America (NOA) account, and eventually joined a newly created technical division within the company as a Technical Director / Program Manager.  Within that group I became responsible for creating new technical solutions for all kind of projects– large-scale translation engines for webcasting, robotic delivery vehicles, custom-build studios with IR and RFID tracking systems, 3D stereoscopic rendering displays, high-end 4K projetions, and multi-faceted synchronized content delivery systems.  I worked hard, played hard, and kept trying to have fun.  2006 brought with it a lot of international travel for our Boeing account and I had the great opportunity to spend a lot of time in Cape Town, South Africa, London, Hong Kong, and mainland China.  2007 brought the Dalai Lama to town and I worked very hard on webcasting tools.  2008-2010 had me graduating to a overarching design and integration role and I had the chance to interact with new clients looking for that creative spark.

In May 2010 I left TPN to join the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a Technical Coordinator.  Sadly the position didn’t last as long as I would’ve liked, and I now find myself without a job.  I’m currently unemployed, but am actively looking and keeping my skills sharp at the same time.  Aside from looking for work, in my spare time I’ve taken up: learning the play the piano, learning ActionScript 3 and the Flash development engine, learning Objective-C and the iSDK, and starting to take some additional math classes.  I think my long term plan is to head back to school, but I honestly have no idea what is next for me.  I’m hoping it is equally awesome, geeky and fun.