Curtis Blackwell

@curtisblackwell
🐐
Chicago, IL
he / him

Maker

Software Architect

Full Stack Developer

Pair Programming

TDD

Laravel

AlpineJS

VueJS

TailwindCSS

PHP

HTML

CSS

Constructive Feedback Provider

Indie Games

cypress

Jest

CliftonStrength: Developer

CliftonStrength: Empathy

Affinity Designer

Affinity Photo

Markdown Evangelist

Cocktail Enthusiast

Backend Developer

Polymath

Imposter Syndrome

Admitter of Failures

First Generation College Graduate

Tech ethics

Ethics

Inclusion in tech lover

Creativity

Obsidian.md

Ensemble Programming

Black Lives Matter

System Architecture

Git

Game Enthusiast

Human

Stack Overflow

Software Engineering Leader

Laravel Forge

Learner

Documentation

Introvert

Antiracist

Visual Studio Code

Contributor

Front End Developer

SQL

GitHub

Seen Some Sh*t

Side Hustle

Rabbit Hole Explorer

Self-Taught

DEI Advocate

Software Engineer

Software Developer

Early Adopter

Life Long Learner

Front-end Developer

Coding

Web Developer

Consultant

Professional

Mentor

Software Engineering

Hi, my name's Curtis Blackwell and I like 🐐 goats 🐐.

I also build software for the web and got started in 2007. Now-simple tasks like adding drop shadows looked a lot different back then. It meant we had to create images in Photoshop then slice, export, and `background-repeat` 1px × ~10px PNGs for each side and corner back then. No fancy `box-shadow` luxury for us in the twilight years of that saucy HTML4 + CSS2 gloss.

Lately I've taken on more leadership roles in my work. Since joining Highland in January 2018, I:

got an established dev team to learn and embrace Laravel's and Vue's conventions,
created a framework for collaboratively defining development standards,
organized a biweekly, all-dev meeting where we conspire to make our work better,
mentored other developers,
led a team in using Shape Up to unanimous delight,
supported my product manager in her work using Thinking in Services to uncover and solve for gaps in a complex project (I'm convinced Thinking in Services is the next big thing in strategy and service design), and
helped co-workers get a DEI working group off the ground (and kept it alive after they took new jobs elsewhere).

A unique blend of empathy, insightful criticism, a low tolerance for unpleasant working experiences, and the tenacity to improve my environment and the surrounding ecosystem make me an invaluable team member.

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Outside of work, I enjoy casual and strategy gaming, listening to and making music, mixing and drinking cocktails, and going for meandering walks with my partner.

I'm open to

open source contributions,

giving resume feedback,

volunteering,

activism,

joining company boards,

mentoring,

writing,

advising companies,

making introductions,

speaking on podcasts,

brainstorming,