Name? Job? Purpose in Life?
Angela Ehrenzeller. Project Manager. Try to make other people’s better.

Would you rather be stuck in a giant’s sweaty pocket or his shower drain for eternity?
Hmmm…both of those are rather disgusting. The idea of being continuously suffocated with giant sweat does not seem appealing, but I don’t like the idea of spending my days alone in a dark drain and being drowned with giant sweat in the end as well. At least if I was in his pocket I could get out and explore the world, seeing things from a giant’s perspective. Let’s hope my life never comes to someone offering me this decision.

If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?
To quote Facebook- “It’s complicated.”

Ok. Why the nickname, “The Lamp”?
When interviewed, I was asked what type of furniture I would be and why. I’m not sure why this happened, but I didn’t hesitate even a second and replied “I’d be a lamp because I like to shine.” I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

Favorite meal?
I love tomato soup, oatmeal, guacamole, trail mix and breakfast burritos. Not all in one meal, but I love them all.

If you had a super power, what would it be?
I’d read people’s minds. Imagine all the crazy stuff even the guy sitting next to you on the bus is thinking.

What’s your favorite smell in the world? Least favorite?
I love the smell of toast and of coffee. My least favorite would be fried food.

Most embarrassing moment?
I have a lot, sadly. One time while living in Spain, my boyfriend and I had planned to meet on one of the corners of a main square by a McDonald’s. I was standing there waiting for him and pulled out a book to start reading. An old man quickly approached me and started asking me questions like “Did I live close?” “Was I married?” and, instead of being smart and pretending I didn’t speak Spanish I answered him. Luckily, my boyfriend walked up in the middle of the situation and the man walked away. My boyfriend then informed me that I had been standing on the most well-known hooker corner in Madrid. My granny clothes and book must have just seemed like a disguise I guess.

If you were a color, what color would you be and why?
I would be green because it’s mystical, lively and comforting all at the same time. It’s energetic.

Do you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain?
Piña Coladas are a bit sweet for my liking, but if you’re caught in the rain I suppose it wouldn’t hurt…and, I AM into yoga but can’t handle champagne.

If you could describe yourself using 3 words, what would they be?
Loyal, active and goofy.

Frase española predilecta?
“que te cagas”

If Imulus was a person, what would he/she be like?
I think s/he would be a s/he. A brilliant, eclectic, goofbally hot mess.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?
I'm the new kid on the block here at Imulus. I like to think of myself more as a Mark than a Donnie. I have known the crew at Imulus for several years and jumped at the opportunity of joining them as a programmer. I work on the databases and backend logic of the websites we develop, and add my experience in mobile application development to the strong list of capabilities at Imulus.

If you could describe yourself with an onomonopia, what would it be?
huh?

What is your name, what is your quest, and what is your favorite color?
Sir Brycious
To seek and create software that makes people happy
Black, no wait …. that's the absence of color, greeeeeeen.

When you were a kid, did you always know you wanted to be a programmer?
I knew I always wanted to write code. I was lucky enough to have a computer teacher in elementary school (a rarity at that time). She entranced me with the cleverness of logic circuits and all the cool things you could make a computer do if you just knew how to speak its language. At that point I never really thought about being a programmer though, as it wasn't really a well known profession. I love science of all sorts, so I thought of being a physicist, chemist, mathematician or a computer engineer at various times in my childhood. Yes, I did want to be an astronaut, until I went to Space Camp and learned that it's really one of the worst jobs out there. It wasn't until early in high school with the rise of Linux and the open source community that I really thought of programming as a career path.

If you could have any super power, what would it be?
Teleportation. That way I could go anywhere I would normally go by car or plane quickly and with style. It would cut down the commute time and I could travel to all the places around the world that I want to see. No traffic, no TSA, just pure experience. Also, if you could do it fast enough you could emulate flying.

Tell us about mobile applications. What is your history creating them?
When the iPhone first came out, I was fascinated by the concept of it (and yes, I quickly purchased one). Instead of a phone that could do run dinky applications, it was a mobile software platform that had a phone application. When the developer beta program opened up, I was quick to jump on board and was thankfully one of the few to be selected early.

While this was going on I was writing highly scalable backend code for very large financial websites. A client of the company I was working for at the time wanted to create an iPhone app. I and another were recruited to take on this project. The app turned out the be a success, followed by another app that became very popular (over a million users). The team expanded to four people, and when the iPad was announced we started a project to get the Financial Times onto the iPad.

We designed and developed for something that we hadn't even touched, but the fruits of our labor were rewarded when we received an Apple Design Award for one of the top five iPad applications at WWDC in 2010. It was great to meet a bunch of extraordinary people and be in the presence of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field. I look forward to this year's winners, mainly so my picture will be removed from the Apple website.

You're called "The Magician" here at Imulus. What's your favorite magic trick you like to perform?
I like performing magic tricks that I've created. These often involve an integration of technology and magic, so you might see your chosen card show up on the home screen of an iPhone or materialize on a website. People think I should sell them, but there is something special of keeping them for myself. Otherwise, I love performing anything by Darwin Ortiz, Jeff McBride or Jay Sankey, and no, I don't know why magicians can never create a good website.

If you could relive the last 10 years of your life, what would you do differently?
The last 10 years of my life have been pretty darn good to me. Any of the "bad" things have had an upside. I probably wouldn't have bought an older house in the suburbs, but if I hadn't I wouldn't have re-connected with a friend who is now my wife, and I couldn't have thrown such lavish parties. It was also a good thing to learn that I don't particularly like home maintenance, and much prefer to live near the city in a small condo. I also probably wouldn't have worked for a government contractor, but again, without that experience I wouldn't have the chance to work on large scale software projects or learn that I detest excess bureaucracy and paperwork. Now that I'm at the end of it, I think I would have answered this question differently.

If Imulus was a person, what would he/she be like?
Imulus is like the eccentric aunt who has the scent of patchouli, gives her young nieces and nephews beer* and tells them about her adventures in Thailand with details that might be a bit too graphic for young people. She is there to encourage those around her to think outside the box, and approach an issue with a different viewpoint. Above all, her passion for life, knowledge and experience inspire those around her.

* Imulus neither promotes nor condones serving alcohol to minors

Tell us about yourself. Why did you want to be a front end developer at Imulus?
Casey Patrick O'Hara. Yes, I'm Irish. I'm originally from New Hampshire, so I'm culturally predisposed to using New England jargon, not paying sales tax or wearing a seat belt, and Tom Brady fandom. For reasons I'm still not sure of, when I graduated high school I decided to move to the frozen, wind-swept plains of Ohio to go to school. In December I graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in Visual Communication Technology. During my academic novitiate, I fell in love with web design and development. I've slowly moved away from design and now I focus more on the programming side of things.

Finding Imulus was pure kismet. I interviewed with Bruce and Taylor a few months before I graduated and we totally hit it off. It seemed like a perfect fit doing exactly what I love. I knew I wanted to live in Colorado, so the move was a no-brainer.

Your nickname is "The Prototype." How did you come about this nickname?
At my first Imulus team meeting, George polled the room "Who is our best JavaScript programmer?" I patiently waited for someone else to answer, but I couldn't keep my love affair a secret; I involuntarily shouted "I kick ass." Apparently they didn't know how much I love JavaScript when I was hired, and it quickly became a joke I probably won't live down any time soon.

If Javascript was a woman, what would she look like? Don't be afraid to get a little PG-13.
Courtney Love. Battered, sloppy, and drunk enough to be dangerous. If you look past the puke on her dress, it’s easy to see a few gems in there. Once in a while she will spit in your face, but you know she didn’t mean it because deep down she’s probably a nice person.

What about your job do you like the most?
I like that Imulus moves so fast. At times it can be equally exciting and terrifying, but it’s rewarding to work on a team of super-smart, super-talented people with an “Okay, build it” philosophy because it affords us the freedom to explore and experiment with new technologies. Research and learning are not only encouraged but required. This means our workflow and development processes are constantly evolving and never stagnate.

Least?
We’re often so busy building awesome stuff that it can be hard to find time to just stop and reflect on how awesome what we’re building actually is. Does that make sense?

Do you live free or die?
Yes.

Would you rather be a pirate or a dinosaur?
Definitely a pirate. As a pirate, it's professionally acceptable to get drunk and steal things every day. Plus, I've always wanted a cannon.

What do you like best about Colorado?
I've been here for a few months now and I'm still blown away by the landscape. I love driving up into the mountains aimlessly without a map or cell signal. I totally get off on that. The tech scene and entrepreneurial culture in Denver (and Boulder) is awesome. The weather and people are nice too. I still haven't been to Casa Bonita.

If you could have a dinner with anyone in the world or throughout history, who would you dine with?
I'd love to go out drinking with Charlie Sheen. Just once.

Describe the color blue to a blind person.
I fell for this trick once, except I was trying to describe what a square looks like. Before I got past explaining what a right angle is, I realized that my new blind friend had a saddle on his safety dog. I got too distracted imagining him riding the dog around his house that I never finished describing the square.

A recent How Magazine article dealing with the creative process led me to think about my own process. From what I can remember, I never went about trying to create a creative process for myself. I simply tried various techniques over the years and have come back to the ones that have consistently worked for me.

For the most part, I start every creative project with words. To me, in the end, you are trying to put certain words and concepts into the mind of the person viewing a particular design solution. This could be a corporate identity, website, poster, email, etc. Unless I know up front what these words are, I’m not sure how I would reach a solution that meets the goals.

After listing out the primary words based on discussions with the client, I begin to work on alternative words by using the Thesaurus. I will list out words and then search on new words that I think are interesting. The result of this is a list of lots of words that spark ideas of other words or related words or short phrases. These become the genesis for everything that follows whether it be a layout, a tagline, an illustration, a photo, a color combination, etc. All of these potential ideas lead back to the language that defines the design problem or the brand as the case may be.

As I get more visual that usually involves a bunch of thumbnails with rough ideas and lots of notes, arrows and asterisks. I hope that I can actually read these notes later and that the things that the arrows are pointing at can be discerned from a blob of ink. The asterisks mean that I think an idea might be pretty good. I might not feel that way the next day, but at that moment it seemed pretty good.

When it comes to writing headlines or ad copy that flow out of the process I tend to work from two directions. I may write some copy and then look for visuals to support them, and what usually happens is that I find some great images that speak to what I am trying to communicate but don’t work with what I have written, so I end up writing copy that works with the image. It’s like designing a living room. If you paint the room and pick out everything in the room and then go shopping for a couch that is going to match, you will never find it. If you start with the couch, you have a lot more flexibility in what you choose for the rest of the room. Not that choosing imagery is like buying a couch. Buying a couch is much more difficult. For that I have to gain the approval of the creative director, my wife.

Once I have a number of ideas in their early stages I take those ideas and try to flesh them out and see how they work in the format of the design. Some ideas that look great in a thumbnail tend to fall flat at full size or simply don’t work as well as they did when I envisioned them in my head. Hopefully some of the ideas do work as planned and even better, they are actually more successful when fully realized.

The final step is to articulate and explain the idea as it relates to the original design problem. Why is this a great solution? If you can’t explain it, you will have a hard time selling it. I’m sure I’ve left some things out and there are always ideas that come out of left field while I am on a run, trying to fall asleep, reading, or watching TV. And while some may call these ideas random and outside of a process, it is usually the process that has my mind ready to accept ideas that may come from outside influences and the process that gets my subconscious working on the problem.

I find learning about people’s creative processes fascinating, so if you have anything to share please feel free to comment on your unique process.

Well after being in business for 8 years we’ve decided to setup an operating agreement. It’s usually one of the first things you setup in a partnership / LLC; however the three of us decided to put this off to a later date in favor of using our funds to start the business. A few months turned into a few years and we finally just started the process.

For anyone who hasn’t setup an Operating Agreement before I suggest having some whiskey while working out the details. I say this because you have to work through all the ugly factors of what it looks like if you or your partners get disabled, dies, gets divorced, is forced to buy-out their share, or someone commits a moral turpitude (yeah, that’s a new word for me as well). Most importantly you’ll have to decide on the valuation of the company. Given that we never intend to sell the company or shares of it, this is one of those items we neglected to address for many years. In most cases valuation is arbitrary until you try selling the company; however it does play a part in the structure of the Operating Agreement. Knowing your valuation will help you plan for things like a forced buy-out or disability.

In our case we determined valuation by using a weighted average of 3 times our net profits for 2010 (current year), 2 times net profits in 2009 and the net profit of 2008 divided by 6. Then we applied an arbitrary factor to this number (for us it was 2) until we arrived at a number we liked and felt it would adjust nicely as we grew. As of October 2010 that value is $900k. This number is highly subjective to the owners’ goals for the company. For us, the valuation is low because we want to discourage the owners from selling their share to third parties. Additionally, if something happens to one of the three owners, Imulus will have to buy-out the other owner’s share, so in this scenario Imulus benefits from a low valuation. However, this doesn’t benefit the families of the deceased owner. Paying off the paltry sum of $300k to an ex-owner’s family likely isn’t going to replace the income of the deceased owner over a lifetime. That’s what life insurance is for.

It’s topics like this that you’ll have to address. Many of these topics are simply avoided because of the subject, yet if they are never discussed openly and addressed; then when something happens your company will be in a world of hurt. In hindsight, we’ve been driving over the speed limit without a seat-belt for the last 8 years – this was a reckless thing to do. If you are running a company without an Operating Agreement, I’d suggest looking into setting it up sooner rather then later. Start reading up on the topic over at NOLO and familiarizing yourself with how it all works.

Feel free to shoot any questions my way. I’d be glad to answer them based on my experience with the process.