User:MikeDeVine

Education
Rochester Institute of Technology

New Media: Interactive Development (3rd Year Transfer Student)

Skills/Abilities/Neat Tricks

 * Game Designer by trade
 * Award-winning graphic design and layout skills
 * Highly experienced in team building/management (handy in an open-source work environment)
 * Also highly experienced in child care and education (worked for several years with local YMCA and Boys & Girls Club chapters)
 * Competent artistic abilities, both analog and digital, 2D and 3D (proficient in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, QuarkXPress, Flash, Maya, and numerous open-source equivalents of these programs)
 * Modest programming skills (HTML/XHTML/CSS, Visual BASIC, Java, ActionScript 3, rudimentary Hex editing, etc.)
 * Excellent problem-solving skills (for figuring out those damn logic errors)
 * Entrepreneurial experience (founded successful small computer service/repair business)
 * Idea machine (for sparking interest in new projects)
 * World Record-setting finger snapping skills (not as handy in an open-source work environment, but still entertaining)

About Me
I'm a third-year transfer IGM/New Media student, which essentially makes me the world's oldest freshman at 21. After graduating I hope to work in the game development field and eventually become a Game Designer at a major studio. It's been a long winding road for me to get here to RIT: I spent four years at my local two-year community college on Long Island in order to earn enough credits to transfer here with an Associate's in Computer Art- without breaking the bank to do so.

During my stay in the Long Island branch of Purgatory, I served as Layout Editor and Editor-in-Chief for the school's newspaper, which won several awards normally reserved for 4-year schools. I have many years' experience in journalism and graphic design in both print and online forms, as well as computer art.

I also worked as a counselor and Chief Technician/Technology Instructor for my local Boys & Girls Club, which in addition to my prior five years' experience as a summer camp counselor at my local YMCA and my background as the son of an Early Intervention Speech Pathologist has given me a substantial amount of insight into the development of children's' minds as well as a fair grasp of how kids of different ages define "fun"- a concept I think is important to have a handle on from the early stages of any kid-oriented project.

Finally, I founded a small business, Neighborhood Nerd, late last year- a computer repair service with a unique business model designed to support my Boys & Girls Club during the economic downturn, essentially by serving as a for-profit arm of a non-profit company. While the Boys & Girls Club and I were unable to finalize a formal partnership agreement before I left for RIT this fall, Neighborhood Nerd had still managed to become a profitable business in less than a year, something I take a lot of pride in (especially since it was probably the ONLY business to make a profit in fiscal 2009 without needing a bank loan and/or a government bailout).

So yeah, I've been pretty bored with Long Island's lack of game design-related activities, and I'm looking forward to finally getting some experience in a role similar to what I can expect to see someday as a full-fledged Game Designer- and I love having the chance to be a part of something with such noble intentions like the OLPC project, and being able to actually make a tangible difference here. I've got some experience and abilities I can bring to the table aside from just straight-up programming (which I'm only barely proficient at); I guess I'm what you might call an 'ideas man', so hopefully I'll find enough ways to be useful on this project.

Projects

 * Ebook Reading And Distribution Solution - Project Lead
 * Fortune Hunter - Artist
 * Lemonade Stand - Artist

Contact

 * Email: [mailto:pixelSHREDDER@gmail.com pixelSHREDDER@gmail.com]
 * IM: pixelSHREDDER (AIM), pixelSHREDDER@hotmail.com (Live Messenger), pixelSHREDDER@gmail.com (Google Talk), pixelSHREDDER (Skype), pixelSHREDDER@ymail.com (Yahoo! Messenger)
 * OLPC Wiki: My User Page
 * Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=name&id=691775547
 * IRC: mikeDeVine; alt: mkDeVine (freenode)