About Me

Hi! I’m Andy, just an average guy who is trying to find his true calling in life.

I conjured up business ideas when I was a kid, drawing storefronts and floor plans on scrap paper around the house. While in high school, I became interested in web publishing, so I worked on websites for fun. After graduating, I decided to go to college for Advertising to mix creativity & business.

My first jobs out of college were in web development. My current full-time gig is in Communications for Quartet Service Inc., a mid-sized IT company serving central Toronto. I run the website, work on sales & marketing projects, and manage our SharePoint team sites. Before Quartet, I was an SEO Specialist with iSTORM New Media in Kingston, ON.

Outside of work, I’m contributing to the Toronto WordPress Group, WordCamp Toronto, and the GTANet family of gaming sites; dabbling in illustration, playing videogames, reading plenty of books; and obsessing over technology and the web.

You can find me on Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.

A Few of my Favourite Things

  • Interests: Design (architecture, industrial, graphic, print) and the outdoors.
  • Music: An eclectic mix of rock, jazz, trance, alternative, country and folk.
  • Food & Drink: Curry Pad Thai, Steam Whistle pilsner, coffee, jasmine green tea.
  • Parts of Toronto: The Beach, Queen Street West, Little Italy, Bloor & Bathurst.
  • Artists: Charles Schulz, MC Escher, Yuko Ota, Meredith Gran.

Timeline

2010-Present: Toronto WordPress Meetup & WordCamp Toronto
I cranked up my involvement with the local WordPress community, handling communications for WordCamp Toronto 2011 (email newsletters, website updates, social media accounts). In 2012, we launched the WPToronto website as a community hub for WordPress in Toronto.

2010-Present: Quartet Service Inc.
Hired as in-house web guy. Mini-projects include rebuilding the company website, implementing sales campaigns, tracking sales leads, managing our internal display network, and building/managing SharePoint team sites.

2009-2010: iStorm New Media
SEO Specialist working on internal projects and client sites. My biggest undertaking was a revamp of Niagara Park Commission’s tourism website, in which I handled information architecture and some minor WordPress troubleshooting.

2007-2011: Freelance Web Development
I built websites and provided consultation for small businesses, independent artists and not-for-profit organizations in Kingston and Toronto, either directly or through partnerships with local designers and agencies.

2007-2009: St. Lawrence College
Advertising student at St. Lawrence. I won a handful of extra-curricular competitions, including the Ontario Colleges Marketing Competition and Ontario Heads of Business competition, and graduated with honours.

2003-Present: GTA Network
Webmaster on GTANet, a network of fansites dedicated to the Grand Theft Auto series from Rockstar Games. Much of what I’ve learned about effective marketing comes from watching the Rockstar New York team in action. Great crew of guys and gals!

2002-2006: Peterborough Collegiate
Integrated Arts student at PCVS (recruited for Drama, swapped to Visual Arts, spent all my time in the Comm Tech lab). PCVS is a public high school with a hard lean towards academics, the arts, and liberal politics. Go Raiders!