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Album Cover Art, Rock Music, and Small Business Apps with James Churchill
17:13 with James ChurchillWait until you hear your favorite C# teacher's origin story....
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Hi, I'm Craig,
welcome to the Treehouse Show.
0:00
The Treehouse show is our weekly
conversation with the Treehouse community.
0:02
In this episode, we'll be talking to the
host of the Dev Team Show, killer drummer,
0:10
and .NET Treehouse teacher,
James Churchill.
0:14
Thanks for being on the show James.
0:17
>> I'm glad to be here Greg.
0:19
>> I was wondering,
how did you get started in technology?
0:20
>> Well, how much time do you have?
0:23
>> Let's do the long version.
0:25
>> Okay, great, so
0:26
in my 20s I had been working at
a long term care pharmacy provider.
0:28
Which is kind of a dry, boring way of
saying that we filled prescriptions for
0:34
patients that were in nursing homes.
0:39
Started there as a driver, delivering
drugs, and then, [LAUGH] exactly.
0:42
In my Volkswagen beetle, no less.
0:47
>> [LAUGH] Nice.
0:48
>> And then as the company grew,
cuz we were really small, and
0:50
as the company started to grow, I learned
new positions and grew with them.
0:52
So I went from driving,
to helping stock shelves,
0:56
to learning how to fill prescriptions, to
learning how to enter prescriptions into
0:59
our console based computer
system that we used at the time.
1:03
>> Green screen.
1:06
>> Right, exactly, lots of typing, though.
1:07
That's where I learned how to re-type.
1:10
[LAUGH] And then eventually went on to
supervising a group of technicians,
1:12
did that for a couple years,
got super burned out.
1:17
I just was through with it,
and started to think about,
1:21
well, what do I actually
wanna do with myself?
1:24
After I've done that job for
eight years, time for something new.
1:26
So the two things I came up with was,
I had been doing some print designs,
1:30
sort of in my spare time, as a hobby.
1:34
And I thought that seemed interesting to
me, to change to doing something creative.
1:36
And I also thought about audio engineering
as well, which is something that,
1:41
I ultimately decided the print thing
would work out better for me, personally.
1:45
>> So I did that, and took a pay cut,
actually, to go take a job.
1:50
It was a very small company, we had maybe
20 employees here in the Portland area.
1:55
But privately owned, they brought me
in to start doing graphic design.
2:00
They did CD and cassette duplication for
local bands and small labels.
2:04
>> Okay, like to distribute?
2:09
>> Yeah, yeah, so bands would go into
the studio, make their recordings, and
2:11
then come to us and say, hey,
I want to make 1000 copies of this.
2:14
But we need packaging,
to make it look legitimate,
2:18
like something you could actually sell.
2:20
So I would sit down with them and
talk about like, well,
2:22
tell me about who you are, which your
music's like, and what you're looking for.
2:25
And they'd often give me photographs and
whatever else they had available.
2:30
And then I would sit down and
go off and design an album cover and
2:33
the packaging that went with it.
2:36
>> You designed the covers of,
what kind of music was this?
2:37
>> All kinds, in fact, that was
a really eye opening experience for me.
2:41
Because I had a lot of experience
with rock bands and rock music.
2:45
But my first job was completely in
Spanish, and it was a mariachi band,
2:48
which was just awesome.
2:52
It exposed me to this world, what I
had been aware of was a small sliver,
2:54
if you will,
of everything that is out there.
2:59
>> So you did a mariachi band,
do you have these album covers?
3:02
>> I do.
3:06
>> Can we go see some of them?
3:06
>> Sure
3:07
>> [MUSIC]
3:08
>> That's awesome, that is so cool.
3:53
>> Yeah,
keeping in mind that it's the 90s, so
3:56
maybe design aesthetics have
changed over time, of course.
3:59
>> That was killer in the 90's though,
I can see it, I see it.
4:03
>> Well, I never saw,
I was very much focused on it.
4:05
We were all about cranking things out,
to be perfectly honest,
4:09
even though we put a lot of care and
attention into it.
4:12
We were also trying to be affordable,
so it was, get the job done, but
4:15
get it done quickly.
4:19
>> Okay, gotcha.
4:21
>> So to that end,
yeah I was a good designer, but
4:22
I don't think I was a great designer,
to be clear.
4:25
But I did that for a number of years,
now we're kind of into the late 90s.
4:27
And I started my family, my son was born,
and we needed to make more money.
4:35
>> Okay, as you do.
4:41
>> So now, yeah, so now I'm like,
well, what am I gonna do now?
4:42
And I really liked what I was doing,
this creative process,
4:45
creating something from nothing.
4:48
And having been exposed to the early
beginnings of the internet by that time,
4:51
I thought,
4:55
digital design really seems like something
that would be interesting for me to do.
4:56
I did what made sense to me, I went and
bought a book, called HTML in 24 hours,
5:02
bought a computer.
5:07
I had a computer, but it was kinda cruddy,
and not really up to snuff, so to speak.
5:08
So I bought a new computer, sat down every
night after my wife and son went to bed,
5:13
and I did a chapter a day.
5:17
So in 24 days I learned about HTML,
well, HTML in late 90s right?
5:19
So I think it was HTML4 maybe,
I'm not sure, no CSS,
5:24
everything was attribute based.
5:28
>> And tables?
>> And tables, absolutely.
5:30
So I took my Photoshop skills
that I had learned and
5:32
honed over the years doing print design.
5:35
And combined that with what I knew
in HTML and a basic text editor,
5:37
and I was creating web
pages at that point.
5:41
>> Awesome, for who, for the-
>> Same company,
5:44
so I had the opportunity again to
grow within the small company.
5:47
And so we had a couple of other
people that were doing print design,
5:50
I was able to move out of doing that and
started doing this web design.
5:54
And at the same time I was also
doing some CD-ROM authoring,
5:57
which was small applications that
were very multimedia driven.
6:01
>> Right, cuz you used to
put the CD in and it would-
6:05
>> Right, right.
6:06
>> Cool, what was that written in?
6:07
>> We used a couple of different things,
so Macromedia Director,
6:09
which ended up eventually
becoming Adobe Director.
6:13
Which I think is still a product,
believe it or not.
6:15
So that was one way that
you would do it and
6:18
they had their own programming
language called Lingo,
6:20
which I would double in a do a little bit,
but if only I absolutely needed to.
6:23
>> I think Elena started in Lingo as well.
6:27
>> Yeah, she mentioned that to me.
6:29
And then I also did Macromedia Flash,
which went on to become Adobe Flash,
6:30
of course.
6:34
And I did a lot more ActionScript,
a lot of Flash development.
6:34
>> What sort of things were you
doing with that on these CDs?
6:38
So you put a CD in-
>> Yeah, different kind of things.
6:41
[CROSSTALK] Some stuff for bands, cuz
occasionally bands would come in and go,
6:43
hey, we need a website to help promote the
album that we're getting ready to release.
6:47
And people were very much thinking
along those lines in the early 2000's.
6:51
>> When you go to the webpage, and
the little video plays in the beginning.
6:55
>> Absolutely.
>> The loading, gotcha, okay, cool.
6:57
>> So, while I was doing that,
I was continuing to sort of push into web
7:00
design, but I really didn't
see myself as a programmer.
7:04
So I was doing what we would think
of today as frontend development.
7:08
>> Static.
7:12
>> Static, I'd write the HTML,
no database,
7:12
no data, nothing server-side even.
7:17
The ability to do any sort of logic,
or processing on the server and
7:21
return the response,
that was not in my realm.
7:25
And to that end, we were getting ready to
do an e-commerce website with the company
7:28
that I was working for.
7:31
And I was handling the look and
feel, the design side of it, and
7:32
we hired a consultant to come in and
do the backend programming.
7:35
And we worked together for about a month,
and at the end of that month,
7:38
when he was getting ready to leave,
he pulled me off to the side and said,
7:41
hey, we need to talk.
7:44
And I was like, okay, yeah, what about?
7:45
He's like, I've watched you work,
you'd make a great programmer.
7:48
Which was really like a revelation to me,
I was like, well, wait,
7:52
what do you mean by that?
7:55
Because to me,
even though I had taught myself design and
7:56
had learned those things.
7:59
There was this wall that I couldn't
see myself overcoming or going beyond,
8:01
because I wasn't a programmer.
8:06
And I also, oddly enough,
didn't see it as a creative endeavor,
8:08
which I was completely wrong about,
of course.
8:11
>> Why didn't you think you could
jump that wall, what was the wall?
8:14
>> I guess it felt too technical.
8:18
At the time I felt like,
well surely that's not something,
8:20
that's something people go to school and
learn to become an engineer.
8:23
It's not something you
would teach yourself,
8:27
you wouldn't teach yourself how
to become an electrical engineer.
8:29
So why would you teach yourself
to become a software engineer?
8:31
And it probably didn't help that my
brother had gone through school and
8:35
had become an electrical engineer,
and got his degree.
8:39
He minored in software engineering.
8:42
So, I had an example right in front of me,
so
8:43
to speak, I saw how that was done,
in the real world.
8:47
So it was just my view of the world,
if you will.
8:52
But this person gave me that push and
said, no,
8:56
just go read these books, which I did.
8:58
And man, it was an amazing experience,
because now I felt empowered.
9:01
Hey, I can do databases,
I can do server-side processing, and
9:07
I can own that entire process.
9:11
And all of a sudden, I began to see all
the ideas that I could do on my own,
9:13
the applications I could build,
and then I went off and did that.
9:17
And because of the small company, and they
had some other business endeavors they
9:21
were in, I started going to them and
saying, you know what you need?
9:24
Instead of using this Excel spreadsheet,
or doing this paper based process,
9:27
let's create an application.
9:31
So I started developing
these small business apps,
9:34
to basically make their
business processes better,
9:38
digital-based, accessible anywhere
they could get to it online.
9:43
>> That was huge in those days, right?
9:47
>> Huge.
9:48
>> You couldn't, the Excel spreadsheet,
you were stuck there.
9:49
But now you've made it so they can go home
and check when they need to, awesome.
9:52
>> Yeah, and centralizing their data so it
was easy to search through, and on and on.
9:56
Having, again, l was a one man show there,
[LAUGH] a one person show.
10:01
But they trusted me, and
l had a really great environment, l was so
10:08
lucky to have that, to be able to grow and
make a ton of mistakes.
10:13
People would say,
you taught yourself that?
10:17
Man, I think I've spent twice as many
hours as people probably spend when they
10:20
go through other ways of
educating themselves.
10:25
[LAUGH] It's the school of trial and
error.
10:27
>> School of hard knocks. [LAUGH] >>
Right, exactly, but yeah, super fortunate,
10:30
and I did that for about three years.
10:33
>> What was that language that
you were starting out there?
10:35
So I started with Microsoft's, and we
call it classic ASP, active server pages.
10:37
>> So that's right into it.
10:43
>> Right into it, and
10:45
it's so weird because I didn't
even really look around too much.
10:46
I was sort of aware that there
was this thing called Java,
10:49
but that seemed even less obtainable
[LAUGH] than what was in front of me.
10:51
So we had a Windows server, and
I thought well I'll learn that,
10:56
and so I was doing VBscript of all things.
11:00
I don't know why I chose that over,
cuz you could also use Jscript,
11:03
which was Microsoft's
version of JavaScript.
11:06
But I chose VBscript because it seemed
like the right thing to do, I guess.
11:08
But yeah, I did that,
I learned SQL Server, and
11:11
then eventually, around 2003
when .NET appeared on the scene,
11:14
and ASP.NET became the successor,
that was the natural progression.
11:17
>> So ASP.NET,
you teach that now here a bit?
11:21
>> Absolutely, yeah, so
.NET's been around for awhile, so
11:23
once I kind of made that jump into
the .NET world, I stayed there,
11:26
because it's rich, and really powerful,
and you can just do a lot with it.
11:30
I did lots of web development,
I went on and
11:34
eventually did some desktop
development using WPF.
11:37
Eventually came back and
learned ASP.NET MVC,
11:40
which is sort of the next version,
if you will, of ASP.NET.
11:43
As opposed to doing what we call web
forms, which we don't teach web forms here
11:48
at Treehouse, but we teach MVC,
which is more popular now than web forms.
11:52
>> Okay, cool, so you teach ASP.NET here,
you also host a show here.
11:56
Can we talk a little bit
about your show you host?
12:03
>> Yeah, so it's called the Dev Team Show,
and it's a show that,
12:05
we pick topics and talk about topics that,
12:10
we try to focus that on people who
are working developers, working on teams.
12:13
So we might talk about code reviews, for
12:18
instance, we have an episode that we
talked about hype driven development.
12:20
>> That was fun.
12:24
>> We talked about, recently,
QA testing automation,
12:25
the role of design in development,
just a variety of topics.
12:29
>> Cool, that's awesome, and now for
my favorite part of the show, James.
12:33
What is something that the students
at home might not know about you,
12:36
just by watching your content?
12:39
>> Well, so I mentioned earlier that
when I was doing pharmacy work,
12:41
that I was moonlighting and
doing print design.
12:45
And that was kind of just the off
the cuff comment, you might wonder, wait,
12:48
he was doing print design,
how did that get started?
12:50
It was really driven out of necessity.
12:53
So I'm a musician, I actually have
an associate's degree in music,
12:55
that's where my education is at,
is in music.
12:59
>> Cool.
>> And that in my 20s,
13:01
I was all about the music,
I was playing in bands, and
13:03
was working to really become discovered,
that was the goal.
13:07
>> Really, what sort of band were you in?
13:12
>> So the name of the band
was called Crying Shame.
13:15
Well, there was a band before that,
there was lots of bands.
13:19
>> [CROSSTALK]
>> When I graduated from high school,
13:21
I didn't go to college, instead, me and
my friends, we jumped in a van, and
13:25
we moved to California.
13:29
>> You hit the road, you lived the dream.
13:30
>> We played on the Sunset Strip in
Hollywood, I played at Kazari's,
13:32
Troubadour, the Whiskey,
all those clubs down there.
13:35
>> Woah, I've been all there, I've been
to all those places, that's awesome.
13:38
What kind of music is it?
13:41
>> So, we were like a late 80s hair band,
basically.
13:42
>> No, you were in a hair band.
13:44
>> Yeah, kind of hard to imagine, right?
13:45
>> [LAUGH]
>> But it's true.
13:47
>> That's amazing,
there's some photos of this.
13:49
>> There's lots of photos.
13:52
>> My gosh, I can't wait,
let's take a look.
13:53
>> Okay.
>> [MUSIC]
13:56
>> So how long did that last,
what happened with that?
14:30
>> So the whole reason why
I did the pharmacy work,
14:32
that was my day job,
that's what paid the bills.
14:35
>> So you could rock at night.
14:39
>> So I could rock at night and
on the weekends,
14:40
cuz we were doing original music.
14:43
Which your paying gigs, whatever money
you make funnels directly right back into
14:45
paying for your efforts, for recording, or
for promotion, then doing the next gig.
14:50
So it's a labor of love,
not a financial one, so to speak.
14:56
So yeah, that's what I did during
pharmacy, because it didn't fulfill me,
15:01
it wasn't a passion of
mine to do that work.
15:05
Then I was able to keep all that,
that part of me, from my music.
15:08
When I made the jump to
doing print design fulltime,
15:13
it was an interesting transition.
15:15
Because now I was spending
more of my waking hours
15:17
doing something that I really enjoyed,
and it wasn't just work.
15:20
>> That music led, that makes sense, now,
why you're doing these CD covers, okay.
15:25
>> Yeah, in fact, I got that job because,
and this is this is really great,
15:28
I got that job because I was doing
an album cover for a friend of mine.
15:32
He was in his band and
we had played together in other bands, so
15:36
he goes, hey could you do our artwork,
and I said sure.
15:40
And so I had Wednesdays off on the
schedule I had, and he said come on down,
15:43
we're gonna drop our stuff off.
15:46
And so I went with him, and
15:48
we went to the company that I
eventually went to work for.
15:49
And we're standing there in the lobby, and
15:51
they had a sign on their front desk that
says we're hiring a graphic designer.
15:53
And so I talked to the receptionist,
I said, well, I could do that job.
15:57
And she goes, okay, let me call the person
down who's in charge of hiring.
16:00
And he came down and we introduced
ourselves and he goes, well, so
16:03
where do you work now?
16:07
And I go, well I work at a pharmacy,
as a pharmacy tech.
16:08
And he's like, [SOUND] he goes well,
I don't wanna talk to you.
16:10
And I was like, well, I could do this job,
and he goes, [SOUND].
16:13
And he really just wouldn't
give me the time of day,
16:17
because I wasn't working full time doing
that, I didn't have any credibility.
16:20
So, he reluctantly took down my name and
number and then disappeared, and
16:25
I thought, well, I completely blew that.
16:28
There's not a chance they're
gonna follow up with me.
16:29
But a few days later,
another person called me and said, hey,
16:32
we've got a job for you.
16:35
Can you just do this contract work,
and I said, sure, I'll do that.
16:36
And the one thing I did that
made them give me more work
16:40
was when I said it would be done by
Wednesday, it was done by Wednesday.
16:44
[LAUGH]
>> Nice, deadlines.
16:48
[LAUGH]
>> It had almost nothing
16:49
to do with the quality of work or
how great it was.
16:51
It was that I did what I said I would do.
16:53
>> It was that you hit your deadline.
16:55
Nice, man, nice, that is awesome.
16:55
>> [LAUGH]
>> Thanks for watching the Treehouse show.
16:58
To get in touch with the show,
reach out to me on Twitter, or
17:05
hit us up in the Treehouse community.
17:07
See you next time.
17:09
My neck is so
sore from all that head banging.
17:10
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