Portland, Oregon
The hardest problems are not inside systems. They live at the seams between them.
I’m a Seam Specialist. I solve the problems that happen between systems, teams, and organizations — the ones where both sides are working exactly as designed and the failure lives in the space between them. Thirty years of this, most of it in Portland, all of it spent asking the same question: can we fix the seam instead of forcing either side to change?
“The biggest opportunities aren’t inside systems. They’re at the seams between them.”
Seam Specialist
Three problems that lived between two correct answers
Design ↔ Development
37 columns vs. 36
A design arrived on a 37-column grid, the build system expected 36, and the obvious answer was a redesign. I wrote an SCSS function that translated one grid into the other instead. Neither side redid its work.
Design intent ↔ Browser reality
The Surface prototype
A WebKit-only animated prototype had to run on a new Microsoft tablet in a browser without the media queries it depended on. A screen-detection script and a universal zoom adjustment closed the gap, and the prototype survived intact.
Database ↔ Infrastructure
Two right answers, one broken system
An oversized SQL Server crashed on virtualized hardware. The database team found no database problem. The virtualization team found no virtualization problem. Both were right, and the failure was living in between them.
In each one, both sides were working exactly as designed. The failure was in the interaction, and so was the fix. That is the whole job: can we fix the seam instead of forcing either side to change?
Writing
Notes from the middle of it
- 7 min read
Both Teams Were Right. The Database Still Crashed.
The most expensive problems I have been called into did not live inside either system. They lived in the space where two correct systems met. Here is what I look at first, and why I stopped asking who was wrong.
- Seams
- Architecture
- Engineering
- 3 min read
3 Topics About AI on the Founder Wisdom Podcast
I recently had the opportunity to join the Founder Wisdom podcast to talk about artificial intelligence, software development, and where both are headed over the next several years.
- AI
- Podcast
- Development
- 5 min read
AI Doesn’t Replace Great Technology Partners. It Changes What Great Partners Do.
AI made building software faster without making building the right software any easier. What that shift actually demands from a technology partner, and what it demands from the client.
- AI
- Partnership
The work
What people hire me for
Fractional technical leadership
Senior engineering judgment for companies that need a CTO's decisions without a CTO's headcount. Architecture reviews, build-versus-buy calls, hiring, and the unglamorous work of paying down debt before it compounds into a rewrite.
AI strategy that survives contact
Roadmaps, technical audits, and governance for teams adopting AI. Less demo, more of what holds up in production: evaluation, security posture, review practices, and the org changes nobody budgets for until they are already late.
Modernizing what you already have
Most companies do not need a rewrite. They need someone who can read a decade-old codebase without flinching, find the three structural changes that unlock the next three years, and sequence them so every increment ships.
Every one of these is a seam between two things that need each other and do not speak the same language. Most of it runs through Hello World, the consultancy I founded in 2015, where a team handles the build. When an engagement is mostly judgment rather than delivery, it is usually just me.
Track record
Where I’ve put the hours
Hello World
Founder & CEO · 2015 – present
Agencies
A decade, before it was called digital
Government & corporate
A decade, at a very different tempo
Mentorship Saturdays
Founder · 2014 – present
Bridges to Change
Board Chair · 2022 – 2024
- The longer version
Off the clock
Not everything is about software
Coaching
Years on the sideline of youth basketball courts, which taught me more about running a team than any management book did. You cannot fake a season, and the scoreboard reports on your coaching every week whether you asked it to or not.
Mentoring
Mentorship Saturdays started in 2014 and never really stopped. It is a seam too: the gap between people who want in and an industry that never wrote down how it actually works. Helping people cross it is the part of this career I would keep if I had to give up the rest.
Portland
Rain, coffee, a tech community that punches well above the city's weight, and a basketball team that keeps me humble. I have spent most of my career here on purpose, and it shaped how I think about building things to last.
Get in touch
Got two systems, two teams, or two realities that refuse to line up?
Tell me what is on each side and where they meet. I answer my own email, usually within a day, and half the time the answer is that nobody is wrong yet.