Document:Q10496

Back in 1999, I began to conceptualize an idea for an Internet art gallery where upcoming artists and musicians could display their work. I built a proto-type, enlisted a handful of artists, and in November of 1999 launched SocialArt.com. Social Art was, at best, a great portfolio. Without mechanisms in place to generate new content and keep the site fresh, or people to promote the site, the appeal of Social Art faded. The energy required to maintain a place for artists to display their work was immense, and so the idea for Social Art began to seem pointless.

By September of 2002, I had spent two years learning how to program computers in order to further my understanding of Internet technologies. I set out to learn the full gamut of web technologies and how they were interrelated. I learned many things including: database design and implementation, both object-oriented and procedural programming styles and how to design enterprise systems, how to seamlessly utilize applications with databases, how to administer networks and the servers on them, how to enforce security and optimize an application