How are you doing?
Let me introduce myself, and tell you a little about myself and Flying
Tugboat Studios.
I was born and raised in Maryland and grew up in Washington County (North High, Class of ’96) but spent the last ten years hopping from city to city (also, hello to my friends in Florida, Texas, and California) in the video games industry. Well, I’m back!
So, why move back to Maryland and start a web design studio? The simple truth is — I got laid off. It happens. While doing the whole “looking for a job in all the wrong places” routine for about a year I came to the conclusion that I had totally lost my mojo. While lack of mojo isn’t the only reason I wasn’t getting awesome job offers, it does infuse the job hunt (and more importantly interviews) with positive energy; the kind of energy that can only be created by genuine enthusiasm.
How did I get my mojo back?
Well, I found something to be excited about – the opportunity to start my own business. Yes, in the middle of a recession and in an industry that I knew only a little about (Don’t look at me that way, I’m not crazy!) I’ve actually been doing web design for years but only for my own website and a few friends and family. I briefly was a part time webmaster back when Netscape was the reigning browser king, but that seems like so long ago it is barely worth mentioning. Heck, half the people on the internet don’t even know what Netscape is!
There are so many parallels between making games and developing websites; too many for me to go into here (maybe in a later post) so it feels like a great fit. It is a “threefer”. I get to be my own boss while doing a lot of things I like and I get to feel good by being employed again.
So who else is on the crew? Well, my sponsor, CFO, and dad (yes, they are all one person). He’s a busy guy, so don’t expect to see him much on the Blog but he’ll be happy to chat your ear off if you give us a call.
What is our mission?
To boldly go where no other studio founded by a father and son team in the worst economic climate in decades has gone before — into the black. I’d love to fork some self-righteous business mission statement on you (i.e., “We at genericsoundingwebstudio.com believing in fusing user experience fundamentals with strategic planning and performance marketing to…” *snore*) but really, who really talks that way?
What do we do?
Websites. All KINDS of websites. Big websites, small websites, ecommerce websites, content management websites — pretty much any type of website that a small business needs. As the sole web designer/coder/artist here, the only thing I can’t do is make it real quickly. If your deadline was yesterday, I don’t have a team of guys who can just hop on that. I can line up help for bigger projects, but even that takes time. We also host websites, but mostly the ones that we make.
Well, that’s it.
Expect more in the following weeks as I share information about websites that may (or may not) be useful to you. If you really like hearing from me, sign up for the newsletter and my crazy ideas and snarky comments will be beamed directly into your inbox.
Attribution department: The fantastic photos of me found on this website were provided by Ben Tankersley. Some may have been cropped or otherwise mangled to fit correctly on the page.