Chris Geirman

“I code because I love to code and appreciate the opportunities it affords me.”

Hi Chris - tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you and what do you do for fun?

Thanks, guys - I’m really honored that you’re interested to learn more about me.

I’m a programmer at heart, but I’ve made my living mostly as a manager of developers and human factors engineers - especially those working offshore.

But for fun, I enjoy exploring new technologies, playing soccer and whitewater kayaking. Living in San Diego where rivers are sparse, I tend to whitewater kayak the least, playing soccer a couple times per week and exploring technologies daily.

Most recently, I’ve been doing a deep dive into React Native which I’m extremely excited about!

What do you do for a living and how long have you been in this industry?

I’ve been working in web technologies since 1999, so 16 years.

Back then, JavaScript was looked down upon. It’s amazing how it’s become a first-class citizen since then. It’s equally amazing how sophisticated the industry’s tools and solutions have become since then.

What brought you to Egghead in the first place?

I’m not sure it was my first interaction with Egghead, but it was the most impactful for sure. Back in April 2015, a friend forwarded a tutorial on React Native titled, React Native Fundamentals by Tyler McGinnis.

I had been doing a lot of research on various non-native mobile development technologies. To me, it never made sense to hire 2+ highly specialized, highly paid developers to build essentially the same app. A manager at heart, I want to optimize and make the most of my limited resources.

So, cross-platform solutions that reuse as much code as possible interested me the most. However, most of these solutions fail to live up to their promise in any but the most trivial of use cases.

What are some big successes you’ve had recently?

I assume you’re referring to my technology successes here, but I’m going to go a different direction. This year, I set two personal goals for myself. First, I wanted to dramatically improve my whitewater kayaking skills. Second, I wanted to stop researching mobile app technologies and start applying them.

To dramatically improve my whitewater kayaking skills, my girlfriend and I spent three months of this past summer living in Portland, OR where world class rivers were abundant. I’ve been kayaking for 10 years, but generally only get 3-12 days per year on the river. It’s tough to get any better that way.

This year was my best year yet. I was able to get 45 days of paddling in, which includes 16 days on the Colorado floating through the Grand Canyon. In the end, I don’t know if I’ve dramatically improved, but I will call this a success nonetheless.

With my first goal accomplished, it was time to turn my attention toward the second. I started a tech meetup called, Full Stack Lunch San Diego where a bunch of techno nerds get together and discuss tech over lunch.

I had mentioned numerous times that I planned to build a mobile app this year and one of the guys approached me and offered to pay me to write an app for him. Of course, I don’t charge him for all the inefficiencies that go along with learning a new technology, so he gets a great deal and I get paid to learn while working on a real world use case. So, this was a win-win.

What are you most excited about for your career in 2016?

I code because I love to code and appreciate the opportunities it affords me. If I need money, I can generally use these skills to put money back into my savings account. But my focus is to apply my skills to create a business of my own, as I’m sure most software developers hope to do.

A few years back, I founded a company, FrogQuest which has been a lot of fun. I basically organized photo scavenger hunts which put teams in competition with one another to either seize an opportunity or fabricate one, then get a photo of it as proof.

For example, they might need to get a photo of one of their teammates in a thumb war with a police officer. I initially thought I’d run these events publically, allowing anyone to sign up a team and compete, but this proved to be a difficult marketing challenge.

Next year, I’m planning to focus more on private events such as bachelor/bachelorette/birthday parties, family reunions, and corporate team building events which will require several tech changes to the platform, including a new mobile app! I’m really excited to create the mobile app!

I have a few other ideas that fall on the entrepreneurial side of the fence as well, but I’m also keeping my eye out for consulting gigs related to react native.

Chris Geirman works as a technical consultant by day to help him bootstrap various entrepreneurial endeavors by night, chief of which is his baby, FrogQuest. He has over 16 years experience building user-centric apps for web and mobile devices, with a particular strength in managing offshore technical teams. These days, he’s consumed with everything React Native but is nearly as excited by the marriage of Angular 2/NativeScript. Available for hire, you can get in touch through twitter @geirmanc.

“I love to code and appreciate the opportunities it affords me.”