Hello, I’m Nolan.
Nice to meet you.
1984-1994
Origins
My earliest memories of computer programming stem back to the beginning of the 1980’s when I would watch my uncle programming RPG for the IBM AS400 at our family business. As an 8 year-old, I revelled in the concepts of machines that could talk to one another as I watched what rendered on each desk’s monochrome monitor… with a dark theme at that. This was also my first interaction with easter eggs in software, as with a few key commands I could access hidden menus and print out large-scale ASCII art on our massive dot matrix printers. At an early age I saw computers and code as both a business tool and creative medium. Fast forward to the early 90’s while sending bulk marketing broadcasts to pages of fax numbers ( I believe my father invented spam ), I peered over my brother’s shoulder as he input bus schedules into a text document that had a unique syntax. With his Netscape Navigator box he quickly explained what a web browser and the internet was and told me to ask our uncle to explain HTML.
On a lined pad of paper my Uncle simply wrote:
<html>
<body>
Create anything here.
</body>
</html>
This brief conversation was a revelation, and it set me on a creative and technical journey for the next 20+ years in roles spanning the gamut of web technologies, oftentimes being ahead of the curve with new ideas and innovations.
1995-2005
1.0
In my first year studying New Media at university, I had a teacher who vehemently held conviction that '“you will never edit film on a computer.” Met with backlash and criticism which made its way throughout the hallways and faculty, this phrase would become a rally cry for a handful of us in the program who began pushing the boundaries beyond static websites, photoshop and fractals to video on the web. Post graduation (1999) I co-founded a boutique creative studio and the website Jerkyvision.com, a concept not unlike what YouTube is today. At that time there were no cell phones that could record video, or streaming platforms for independent creators to publish their work. Instead we had analog camcorders, long digitization and compression times, slow dial-up and DSL modems, Macromedia Flash and Director, and a tonne of creativity and drive. We held focus groups with other filmmakers where we discussed concepts like playlists, voting, fullscreen playback, and community. These were early concepts which pre-dated streaming platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, and we were ahead of curve of innovation.
At the heart of our creativity and innovation was the daily influx of inspiration from emerging digital artists at that time. Creators like Gmunk, Praystation, Presstube, Moock, K10K, Evil Pupil, True is True, VolumeOne, Designgraphik and countless more were pushing the boundaries with Flash, motion graphics, and graphic design. Little did I know back then how these artists and creative technologists would come full circle into my world years later.
2006-2018
2.0
After a successful four years working in satellite radio on e-commerce and music streaming, I entered into start-up culture and have never looked back. As the co-founder and product engineering lead at Guardly, we pushed the boundaries of next-generation 911 concepts, situational awareness, and indoor & outdoor location tracking and mobile communication which lead to in-depth conversations head of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about how our product was the most comprehensive solution (albeit private and difficult to scale nation-wide) in the market capable of identifying building, floor and room accuracy of an emergency call from a cell-phone. This was early 4G, and 5G was barely on the horizon. My work eventually led to a US patent, which I’m extremely proud of to this day. And to my knowledge, carriers and hand-set makers still cannot get this level of accuracy of indoor positioning. Now that 5G is here, I often think about reviving this work in order to help people in emergency situations. The key takeaway from this experience is that we were early create innovation that embraced ambient data; a notion that would become a theme in future work.
More recently I have been collaborating on Blockchain projects that I believe will have a long-term benefit to the web moving forward and have going down an IoT (Internet of Things) rabbit hole. At Piaro, our vision is to build products that consolidate smart home technology into one connected space creating ambient intelligence to augment and compliment the natural rhythm of the home and the people who live in it for a more enriched life at home. We’re members of the Thread Group and Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) and we’re building the future of the smart home with technologies like IoT Core, Elixir, Firestore, Thread and Matter.
2019 - Present
3.0
We are currently experiencing a digital renaissance that is creating new communities, social hierarchies, and artistic concepts that will leave a mark on society and art history. Currently, my professional and personal work focuses on a range of cutting-edge technologies, including the Internet of Things, Web 3.0, blockchain and decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens, e-commerce, and artificial intelligence. I am committed to constantly learning and evolving creatively. As a photographer, I use generative and AI art tools such as Processing, the Hype Framework, MidJourney and Stable Diffusion to experiment and transform my photography into new artworks that can be enjoyed on both gallery walls and screens.
At a Glance
Creative Technologist with 20+ years of experience designing, architecting, and developing scalable, engaging experiences for devices.
Highly Motivated Leader with strong problem-solving skills and ability to manage conflicting priorities, while achieving business objectives.
Entrepreneur with strong interpersonal and communications skills determined to facilitate goal achievement within team while ensuring a high level of enthusiasm, culture, and professionalism.