About
In February of 1999 I boarded a train in Montreal, headed for San Francisco. Thought I’d take in the landscape, since I wasn’t in a rush. In fact, I had no particular plan at all, which was consistent with the theme of my twenties. My vague strategy was to shake up my headspace by moving to the opposite side of the continent, to a city I’d never been, where I knew no one.
San Francisco was the perfect place to become a web professional, and if that’s what I’d done, maybe I’d be retired by now. Instead, I worked office jobs, explored the city, and maintained a healthy level of daydreaming. After several months living in the tech capital of the U.S. doing absolutely nothing tech-related, I headed home. But something must have followed me back, because on a stop to visit my mom in London, Ontario — not the tech capital of Canada — I found myself standing in a bookstore holding an introduction to HTML in my hands. I guess I need to make a living, I thought. Maybe there’s something to this internet thing.
Turns out there was, and in those early days of the web, knowing HTML (or owning a book) made you an expert. Also, almost no one had a website and almost everyone wanted one. I became the go-to for friends and acquaintances, most of whom were in the arts, so I built sites for designers, photographers, theatre companies, and the Fringe Festival, among others.
Lots of people were getting in to the industry, including, conveniently, one of my new roommates. She’d co-founded a small agency, and soon I was giving them a hand whenever they needed help. She eventually moved on, and during a rough stretch they shrunk down to just two people. But soon enough they were ready to grow again, and in the summer of 2004, Warren Wilansky hired me and I joined him and Steve Bissonnette at their office in downtown Montreal.
I’d learned a lot on my own, but my ten years at Plank provided the true foundation for my skills. As a small team, we each had to create designs, write code and manage projects. When we took on dedicated developers and designers, I shifted my focus to improving and formalizing UX & IA considerations into our workflow and documentation. And it all happened in an industry where the tools and technologies were constantly changing. It was challenging, sometimes exhausting, and (almost) always fun.
It still is, and its staying power for me is in tackling that variety of work necessary to bring a site to life. Digging deep into content, planning and visualizing how best to present it to users, getting under the hood to write the code — if I had to choose only one, I think I’d give it all up.
Other Things About Me
Young Geoff
I grew up in Montreal, where my formative years were influenced by both the arts and technology. I attended an arts-centred school from grade one through high school, where I played the violin, built sets for plays, and learned to develop film. At home, I could often be found in front of my Apple II+, writing my first, simple programs.
Photography
I studied photography at Concordia University, and had my own B&W darkroom for much of my twenties. I miss the pace of working with film and prints, but not the chemicals. Selections from my mostly minimalist, digital-era work are on my alter ego’s site, wendellweeks.ca.
Xanada
Sometimes I get obsessed with a personal project, and xanada.org was one of them. It presents results from Canadian elections, illustrating how the first-past-the-post system is frequently a poor reflection of the popular vote.