A New Chapter

Hello out there! Relatively quick life update here – I’m joining a new company!

After nearly four years with ConocoPhillips, I’m joining Storyboard as a Full Stack Software Engineer.

I did truly enjoy my time working at ConocoPhillips. I worked on projects I’m proud of and teams I loved, I grew significantly as an employee and as a human being, and I made some very good friends along the way. It was my first job out of college, and I loved it – it was tough to step away.

What brought me to Storyboard was five-fold:

1. The product

Storyboard is the app for private podcasts.

Imagine a company wants to start a private, internal podcast for its employees. They want to interview the leadership team, send out weekly company updates, and roll out various forms of training in podcast form. There could be several hurdles to overcome. Secure distribution likely being the biggest one.

Many companies will do a great job recording an episode, but then post the .mp3 file on an internal SharePoint site and include the link in some big company newsletter along with fifty other things. Not ideal. You need to open the email, you need to be on the company network, you need to find the SharePoint URL every time you want to listen to an episode, the list goes on. I’ve seen this scenario first hand.

Storyboard solves this problem. If the company uses Storyboard to record/distribute its podcasts, the company’s podcast episodes are pushed to you like any other podcast player. These episodes are secured via Single Sign On (SSO) and only accessible by active employees.

2. My personal interests

Podcasts are just cool. I’d argue that I’ve gotten more value out of listening to podcasts than any other form of media. Some of my favorites include Accidental Tech Podcast, Big Technology Podcast, How I Built This, Syntax, and Startups For the Rest of Us.

As you might know, I also run my own podcast about athletics at The University of Tulsa. I love listening to and creating podcasts. The idea that I could actively help bring this medium to the enterprise is extremely exciting.

3. My professional interests

My previous two blog posts have been about 1) the Jamstack, and 2) WebRTC. This role combines both of those interests and so many more.

I spend the vast majority of my time both in my professional work and my side projects in the world of AWS - specifically on the serverless side of things. Recently, I’ve been deep into the AWS CDK for efficient management and development of AWS infrastructure. The CDK is incredibly powerful and I plan to use it as much as possible in my role with Storyboard.

4. It’s fully remote

The ethos of Storyboard is that employees should be able to collaborate and work together from anywhere. As such, everyone at Storyboard is remote. At the time of publishing I haven’t met everyone quite yet, but of those I’m aware - there are employees in Los Angeles, Denver, New York, and Nashville.

I’ll be working remotely out of Tulsa. It’s wonderful to be able to stay in the town where my wife and I graduated from college just four years ago, where my wife still works downtown, and where I still have so many close friends. The technology scene in Tulsa is also booming right now. Coworking spaces like 36°N and others, along with the Tulsa Remote program, have accelerated the city’s technology ecosystem rapidly.

5. It’s a startup

I’ve long been interested in the startup world, and this one checks all the boxes.

✅ A product I believe in

✅ A founder I believe in

✅ My ideal technology stack

✅ Remote work

✅ A combination of my interests

I’m psyched to give everything I’ve got to a product and a team like this.

Start Date

My first day with Storyboard is April 26th, 2021. I can’t wait.

While I did sincerely enjoy my time with ConocoPhillips, I couldn’t be more excited to begin this new adventure.

And if your company wants to get started with a private podcast, get in touch!