Some years ago, I was out skating with my oldest daughter, pushing her around during a public skate. And all I could hear was this crunch, crunch, crunch. It was so loud it was giving me a headache.

And at thirty years old, it was the first time I realized that crunching ice was the sound of hockey, the sport I’d been playing since I was twelve. You see, I’ve never worn my hearing aids while I play because they used to fail, so I didn’t recognize that crunching sound.

I would never have heard that sound while players approached me when I was on the boards, not even when I played for Team Canada on their gold medal-winning team.

Where some see a disability, this attribute has provided me with unique insights through my career as a developer, technical founder and executive.

While developing software and system architecture for web and mobile apps, I have come to understand the power of detail and clarity. These are embodied by my three core development principles: security, scalability and readability.

Every pixel matters. Every line of code must be written so that others can work with it seamlessly. The next team should be able to take it and build on it.

It must be clean, clear and secure.

In my world, these are the three pillars of development excellence.

Through my work in startups and as a hiring manager and tech executive at larger firms, I’ve seen how different people can help or hurt your efforts. The right developer in the right environment is worth 10x, but an exceptional developer in the wrong environment can kill your project. A great technical manager can raise a firm, and a weak one will drive it into silos and failure.

My mission is to develop great products and guide good developers to greatness.

As well as as the few startups I’ve been involved in, I also created one of the biggest developer communities on the web. Between Larachat and DevOpschat, I’ve brought together close to 50,000 developers on a couple of Slack channels.

These communities reside on my automated platform architecture and provide ways for developers to learn faster through direct interaction.

My current projects include the development of Canada’s innovation ecosystem with my founding partners at Unleashed Ventures.