Now
After a last-minute exodus from Bali, I'm finding refuge and stillness in my hometown of Venice Beach, California where I'm leaning in to my Ashtanga practice, coding, reading, writing, collaborating, and planning for the long-haul of this pandemic.
If there is time to build the world you always dreamed of, that time is now. Contact me if you'd like to collaborate.
What have you done?
Almost everything I’ve ever made no longer exists — this is the way of the digital dimension. Hopefully there are still people who remember the things I’ve created on my journey. Here are some bullets in reverse chronological order:
- I was the Chief Software Architect and Head of R&D for Lucid in New Orleans, New York, and London where I built a real-time sample marketplace that choreographed how to get real people to answer real questions at an incredibly large scale. At Lucid I also designed and launched marketing products for ad tracking, ad effectiveness, and data segment rating.
- I was a Hacker-In-Residence at Betaworks in New York City where I created and launched a collaboration platform called Sitedrop, worked building an animated search engine called Giphy, and collaborated with some amazingly talented individuals on numerous other experiments.
- I’ve had a long-time collaborator, Thomas Brodahl with whom I collaborated or built almost every company and project since 2003.
- Together we were partners at Polychrome in Los Angeles where we designed and developed websites, applications, and content management systems, we directed commercials and designed album covers, live events, packaging, and processes for innumerable clients, partners, and large companies that you’ve likely heard of. We threw events, and art shows, designed clothing, mentored young talents, and learned from each other on a daily basis. It was probably the most rich and stimulating time of my career so-far.
- Thomas and I started a web design and interactive studio called Stolen which we later merged with our close friend and collaborator Tom Dolan at Polychrome. In total I spent about a decade operating some version of a digital agency.
- Thomas and I ran a design portal called Surfstation for nearly a decade.
- I built the web platform for The Guerrilla News Network, one of the first citizen journalism networks.
- I’ve spoken at conferences about web design and engineering, physical interactive design, rapid development, humane technology, and how to have an interesting and fulfilling career
- I co-wrote the book PHP MySQL Website Programming with two of my close friends Chris Lea and Mike Buzzard.
- I was the webmaster for Epitaph Records which was a massive pivot point in my life and prepared me and set me on a path for much of everything that I've done since.
- I performed self-produced electronic music as “Alpha Decay” which at the time was also my hacker moniker.
- I played guitar and keyboards in an industrial band called “Auto Aggression Device”.
- I left high school early to work for Earthlink as their Regional Head of Web Development in The Midwest.
Locations
- 🌴 Bali
- 🗽 New York City
- 🌱 Costa Rica
- 🌄 Ojai
- 🌹 Sussex
Platforms
On almost all large platforms you can find me as @jcinis. My most active are the following:
Experiments
Affiliations
- Betaworks Venture Fellow
- Brave Earth Partner
- Culture Hack Labs Advisor
- The FundMember / LP
- Guidepost Growth CapitalOperating Advisor
- LucidShareholder
- WisdomVenture Partner
Contact
- email j [at] cin.is
- pgp 6B17 D120 6162 67ED
