Hi, I’m Adam.
So I’m finally starting a blog after over 15 years of writing software. That’s not to say I’ve had some half hearted attempts in the past… but I feel this time will be different. For one, thank goodness for GitHub pages and not having to deal with hosting a WordPress site. I mean WordPress is great, it’s just has too many bells and whistles for a simple blog IMO, plus it’s been fun learning how to generate static pages via Jekyll and deploying via GitHub actions… but I digress.
Why?
From what I can tell, the most successful blogs seems to be the ones which have utility to the blogger first and not just some place to market themself or serve as an online resume. My intentions behind creating this blog is to have a central place to house my project ideas and general musings about a variety of software related topics.
The History of Me
So who is this Adam Lepley guy and why should you care? Great question… I’ll have to get back to you on that. However, what I may be able to offer a reader is a slightly different perspective on software development, which I credit to my untraditional path into this industry.
Growing up in a small midwest town in Wisconsin, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to computers early as a child. My father worked for various printing companies 80s & 90s and started as a pre-press draftsman. At that time, “graphic design” consisted of working on light tables and doing film-based layouts for magazines and catalogs. As computers became more powerful and could handle manipulating digital graphics, he had the good sense to educate himself on some of the early computer systems like Sitx Imaging Computers and eventually Apple Macintosh.
Being a early 90’s kid, my first computer was a old Commodore 64 that I believe my father bought at a garage sale. That computer, that I’m assuming he paid a few hundred dollars for at the time, came with a whole box of goodies including a floppy disk reader with random software, monochrome (“green screen”) display and a dot matrix printer. There was even a few games too, like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which left some lasting impressions.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Box Art
Looking back, what I’m truly grateful for is not only having access to a computer at a young age, but also given the freedom to explore that computer with full autonomy. My father gave me a used computer, and basically left it to me to figure out how to use it. I now believe that set me down a path of wanting to understand how things work, and critical thinking skills that would serve me very well in my career later on.
After the commodore, my other two memorable computers I acquired as a kid was the Apple IIe (hooked up to family’s TV via RCA cable) and the real star… the classic Macintosh SE, finally a operating system with a real GUI!
My Software Journey
So although I have a decent understanding of computer hardware and it’s various internal components, software has always been my real passion. Looking back, I believe that spark started in 8th grade when I got introduce to HyperCard which I used for a school project. I don’t even think HyperCard was even taught in school, but they had a Machnitosh in the classroom and I took advantage. I can’t say I remember much from my childhood, but do have vivid memories of trying to create a simple game which basically consisted of a hallway with three doors which (one in front, two on the sides), and you would have to pick the right sequence to get to the end with differnt obsticales along the way. At this time I didn’t have access to the internet, or even a HyperCard book, and remeber the sence of accomplishment when I finally got it working figureing it out on my own, and then later presenting that to the classroom who at the time where very impressed (this was 1997, in a small town mind you). Sadly this was the last actually “game” I ever developed.
As I got into High School, my father at the time left his company to open a small printing company of his own, and purchased more a powerful macs and started using early graphic design applications like Abode Photoshop 3.x, Illustrator and QuarkXPress. I quickly got familiar with these tools and have found memories of him showing me how to use various features like image cloning (rubber stamp) and color correction.
Adobe Photoshop 3.0 Screen Shot
I would often help my father on projects throughout high school, and when I graduated I initially starting down the path of becoming a graphic designer and attended a art collage in Chicago. This was around 2002-2003 and after attending that collage for around a year, I quickly learned that graphic design as not for me and left the program. At that time, graphic design was somewhat of a new offering and just too broad of a topic and was mostly taught by art professors. That meant that those who where more naturally artistic and could draw tended to do better. Nowadays graphic design has become much more specialize and had there been a User Experience (UX) track back then, I may have stuck with the program.
After leaving collage, I ended up diving into the workforce and ended up working at a bunch of various jobs before ending up at a manufacturer who created slot machine for casinos. At that time I didn’t have any degree, so started working as an assembly worker helping build the machines. Basically, a modern day slot machine is a computer inside a very secured box. Within a year, I got promoted to Quality Assurance and was responsible for testing the machines. As part of that job, I needed to learn how to work with Excel since that’s where we entered our test results… little did I know that’s where my software career would start.
As I worked in QA, and would entered data into this excel spreadsheet which my manager took and reported to his superior. I eventually became very curious about Excel and when the line was down I would spend any free time creating my own version of excel and tweaking it to be more streamlined. I then discovered you could add controls and create mini forms in excel… which I did a eventually created a procedure that was more efficient then entering raw data and also auto aggregated the results using macros so the manager didn’t have to. This got me a noticed, and a couple of years later got promoted to the call center as a technician working second shift. This gave me the opportunity to go back to school (University of Wisconsin - Parkside) working towards a Computer Science degree… I finally had a career direction.
Running a Call Center
Working at the call center was a great experience. Not only did I like customer service in general, I was fortune enough that the manager who hired me into the call center also happened to have a little experience with coding (mostly as a hobby) and introduced me to Visual Basic 6. This was not part of my job (or his), but working at the call center I quickly saw opportunities to make some processes more efficient. I started writing small windows applications in my downtime which I would give to my follow call center technicians which would capture data during a call more efficiently, and eventually was able to integrate with our phone system so that forms would popup when a call came in. Those solutions nowadays are common place, but at the time those types of integrations where not readily available.
So after working in the call center for a couple of years, my manager at the time left the company which created an opening that I was fortunate enough to get. Luckily I had a great team that mostly ran itself, which allowed me to continue to improve our call center applications. This again got me noticed since I was producing interesting reports from my department with new metrics never before captured from the new data I was collecting in my apps, which helped identify product issues earlier. That lead to other departments asking for similar assistance with their software solutions. Mind you, this was a fairly large organization with a large IT staff who mostly focus on development of their ERP system, which was Oracle, and not creating applications outside of that. The reason other departments were coming to me for application development, a call center manager, and not IT was IT’s backlog at that time was so long that departments with software needs mostly gave up asking for enhancements and resorted to exporting their data from Oracle, only to managing their department internal processes in Excel. It’s a pattern I would see often in my career.
From “Shadow IT” to Software Development Manager
Over time while working as the Call Center Manager, and at the same time building applications for other departments to help automate were business process, I became what is un-affectionally called “shadow IT”. Eventually, especially when I started asking for servers, the IT department came to the conclusion that I belonged in their organization and started my first real development position as a solution architect.
Before transitioning to IT, my tech stack was mostly .Net and C# and was creating WinForms applications for a variety of departments using Access as a database. Once I got into IT, I started learning SQL server and eventually starting building applications using either SilverLight or WFP, which made deployment way easier then WinForms. This was the beginning of my experience building n-tier applications with a API backend (using WCF). That tech stack got me very far. I left that company as the “Senior Manager of Custom Applications” and had a few .Net developers reporting to me and was responsible for all custom applications that were non-Oracle, which was typically built on Microsoft technologies.
Becoming a consultant
After 10 years of working for slot machine manufacturer and going from working on the manufacturing floor to a software development manager, and then venture into the world of software consulting working for various agencies. This has exposed me to a plethora of technologies. Some notable technologies I’ve become familiar with is Azure, Xamarin (mobile development), Angular, React, Docker, NoSQL, Sharepoint, PowerApps & Dataverse. I’m also a decent UI designer when needed, and use tools like Sketch and Figma regularly.
But more then tech, the exposure to many companies/projects over the course of my career helps guide me when creating software solutions. I often find focusing on the business problem first rather then the technology or platform archives better results. I strive to create long lasting relationships with my clients in an effort to become a partner in their success.
Current Day
Currently, I’m happily working as a independent contractor who works with other agencies. I formed my own firm last year call Empath Design and opened a small office in Kenosha, WI. The name of the company comes from the design approach called Empathic Design, which Wikipedia defined as the following…
The foundation of empathic design is observation and the goal to identify latent customer needs in order to create products that the customers don’t even know they desire, or, in some cases, solutions that customers have difficulty envisioning due to lack of familiarity with the possibilities offered by new technologies or because they are locked in a specific mindset.
As a naturally empathic person, I strongly resonate with the goals of empathic design and believe in the power of creative problem solving while listening to your client’s closely. Software development should always be a highly collaborative experience where processes are challenged in an effort to create application users want to use, rather then have to.
In addition to creating variety of software solutions for my clients, I also mentor a few new developers and run local workshops after hours to teach basic coding. I love what I do, and enjoy sharing that passion with others.