Title: Lead Product Architect/Lead Developer

Joined Arc90 in: January 2007

If I could meet anybody: Leonardo da Vinci, the classic polymath. He was motivated in different fields and prolific. I would like to ask him how he did it.

During the summer of 2006, Chris Dary visited New York City for the first time. He walked around Manhattan, discovering what the city had to offer. He also interviewed with Arc90 at the company’s Midtown office.

Prior to his interview with Arc90, the Kenosha, WI (population: 96,845) native was one person who didn’t dream about living in New York City.

“I could never see myself here,” the 24-year-old recalled. “I expected that I’d head out to California or stick in Chicago.”

Dary applied for the Web application developer position at Arc90 after seeing a posting on 37 Signals.

“It seemed like such a cool job so I thought maybe it could work,” he added. “I was willing to adapt and move to New York.”

At that time, he was finishing up the Computer Science program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and working as a Web developer at Kenosha’s Carthage College.

“I wasn’t looking for a job,” Dary said. “Arc90 was the first and only place that I applied to. It was everything I wanted in a company. Everybody was really casual and also very smart and approachable.”

Four months later, on New Year’s Day 2007, the then 22-year-old moved to New York City; he started working at Arc90 the following day.

“I moved here with two suitcases and I was homeless,” Dary remembered. “I brought just the basics, my clothes and my laptop.”

Dary lived at the Vanderbilt YMCA on 47th Street, around the block from Arc90′s office, for two weeks before finding roommates on a month-to-month contract on Craig’s List. He eventually moved to his own apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and currently resides in Gramercy, Manhattan.

Since Dary previously spent over an hour on the train to and from Brooklyn, he loves his current commute.

“I can walk to work within twenty minutes,” he said of his Manhattan address. “I’m much closer to good stuff in the neighborhood.”

Dary is the mastermind behind Kindling, Arc90′s first product. Kindling is a web-based application that cultivates and manages the ideas of people in a company or organization.

Dary attributes the conception and launch of Kindling to his time at Arc90.

“The democratic vibe is displayed in Kindling,” he explained. “It brings the small company feel to larger companies.”

For Dary, a key part of the small company atmosphere-and the concept of Kindling-includes the ability to share and critique ideas.

“I really like that we don’t have any sort of hierarchy at Arc90,” Dary noted, “I think it is really beneficial for a small company like us because it makes it easy to bring things up to people. You can criticize something to make the company better.”

While Arc90 has grown in size since Dary was hired in 2007, the company has also increased its talent pool.

“You can see the different skill sets as a result of the heterogeneity of Arc90,” Dary noted. “We have a whole group of PHP developers doing great stuff with the Zend framework.”

It also helps that Arc90 fosters a learning environment where co-workers can turn to each other for advice.

“If I have a question or problem, there’s always somebody here who has an answer for it,” Dary said.

Dary considers himself lucky to be working at a place where he can call his co-workers his friends.

Last summer, he traveled with a group of people from Arc90 to see The Killers at the Borgata in Atlantic City, NJ.

“It was an amazing night because it’s a rare trait to have your co-workers be such close friends,” Dary recalled. “We were with the bosses. I really like that, at Arc90, the word boss means somebody who runs the company but we are also friends.

“At Arc90, work and play aren’t mutually exclusive,” Dary commented. “I genuinely love coming into work every day, and I think that’s rare. I count myself as pretty fortunate for that.”

When Dary isn’t listening to Okkervil River or going to the movies, he spends his weekends visiting friends in Kenosha.

“I go back once a month,” he said. “I had really strong ties with my friends before I left and that’s not going to go away.”

Dary is also a strong supporter of the Kiva, a charitable micro-lending website.

“I think it’s an incredible way to help the working poor improve their quality of life,” he said. “Someday, I will probably end up creating a charitable endeavor like Kiva.”

The Kindling team will be presenting Kinding, our idea management and collaboration tool, at Monday’s NY Tech Meet-up.  This was originally planned for last Monday, but Mother Nature pulled the old “snowball to the face” move and it was postponed.

There are still a few tickets left if you’re interested in joining us… the crowd of 600+ will watch as Rich demos the app while walking a tightrope and juggling laptops. A sight to be seen!

Seriously though, come find us if you’re there. Love to meet you.

Title: Lead Strategist

Joined Arc90 in: October 2007

If I could go anywhere: Brazil because I’m into the music and it’s warm there.

Jess Eddy’s love affair with design dates back to her sophomore year of college. At the University of Maine, Arc90′s lead strategist was focusing on journalism until she enrolled in her first typography class.

“I started taking as many design classes as I could,” said the Prospect Heights, Brooklyn resident. “I started picking up freelance work because it was a cool and creative field for me. When you design something, it’s tangible, you can hold it in your hands after you are done, and that has a ‘wow’ factor for me.”

Although the school didn’t have a design program, it didn’t hinder Eddy’s drive. She worked for the administration and designed brochures.

“There was a lot of freedom in the role and that’s still something I like to this day,” she said. “I could just sit down and design and produce stuff without much hassle.”

After graduating from college, the Maine native packed up her Toyota Tercel and moved to Boston. She was hired by the  Planetary Group, an artist development firm that specializes in publicity and radio promotion, and also worked for Metropolis Communication, a graphic and web design company.

“There was a big push to do Web stuff but I was geared towards print,” she said. “I was young and naive. I thought the Web was a lesser form of design. Print was tangible and you respected it.”

Eddy was laid off in the fall of 2001. Without a back-up plan, she started working in local restaurants and taking freelance jobs. She also reevaluated her career options.

“I made a big transition to Web work because it is all that was out there,” she said.

In 2005, Eddy moved to New York and eventually started working for Dotglu, an advertising agency.

“I found myself wanting to do more work with technology,” said Eddy. “It is not a priority in ad agencies. There’s a traditional aspect to the industry that hasn’t grasped onto technology.”

After seeing a job posting on 37 Signals, Eddy applied for a Web application developer position at Arc90.

“It was a stretch for me because I wasn’t one,” Eddy recalled. “I was a designer wanting to change gears. I knew I wanted to build things and design interfaces for Web applications.”

Eddy was invited to visit the Arc90 office and introduce herself to the company.

“It was a chance to come in and meet people,” she said. “It wasn’t supposed to be an interview, some of the people didn’t know they were going to be interviewing me that day. I’m glad it turned into one.”

She was hired on the spot and started working at Arc90 the following week.

“She had a really strong design sense,” recalled Chris LoSacco, one of three Arc90 partners who interviewed Eddy. “She was able to articulate key concepts of design and really knew the approach she was taking.”

As Arc90′s lead strategist, Eddy’s job responsibilities include design, client engagement, and working closely with the company’s Web application developers.

“At Arc90, you can build your own story,” Eddy stated. “You get hired and have a title but you build your own role. There’s flexibility and you’re not pigeonholed.”

One of her side projects at the company includes running Crazy Eddy’s, the office’s coffee shop. The coffee connoisseur wanted to cut out the trips to Starbucks and bring the art of brewing coffee to Arc90.

“I enjoy the luxury of making a pot of coffee,” she said. “I saw a coffee machine at Macy’s and thought it would be perfect for my desk. I brought it into work and we started talking about how we were going to structure it.”

Eddy and some of her Arc90 co-workers built a system for tracking coffee consumption. Each employee has a coffee card with a preset amount. The swipe of the card is processed through a database, a web client, an API, and an AIR account.

“As developers and people like us do, we went overboard,” Eddy said. “We have the perfect combination of people who are skilled in the specific technologies so we built some tools and got a system in place.”

When she isn’t indulging in her daily coffee ritual, Eddy is shooting photos for her Flickr account, spending time with her cat, Monty, or shopping at Rugged Sole.

“My sneaker fetish only started when I moved to New York,” she said. “I was able to find myself a little more, along with my sense of style. I found my comfort zone and sense of self.”

Eddy also attributes her sneaker fixation to her love for hip hop music.

“I am obsessed with hip hop,” she said. “I grew up in the 80s, when hip hop was making its mark,” she said. “I grew up in Maine but we don’t have a lot of culture. I was looking at it as an outsider.”

Despite her extensive resume, there is still one skill that Eddy is interested in picking up in the near future.

“I want to learn how to break dance,” she said.

Title: Flex Team Lead

Joined Arc90 in: September 2006

Most people don’t know that: I’m an excellent snowboarder

When Andrew Lewisohn interviewed with Arc90 for the Flex Developer position, his expectations about the company were a bit askew because of its Midtown address.

“I had only worked in corporate places,” the Hoboken, N.J. resident recalled. “In that environment, you wear a suit. I came in and saw everybody was dressed very casually in jeans and sneakers. It was summer so everybody was wearing T-shirts.”

Lewisohn survived the culture shock; the 28-year-old admits that he won’t be going back to the corporate world anytime soon.

“This is my ideal work environment,” he said. “I wouldn’t know how to adapt to working in the real world again.”

The casual dress style isn’t the only reason he loves his job.

“I love the culture here,” he said of Arc90. “It’s more relaxed. It’s about productivity instead of logging time.”

“There’s no hierarchy-it’s a very small pond with a lot of big fish and that makes it competitive,” Lewisohn added. “Everybody is good at what they do so you don’t have to worry about people falling down.”

Lewisohn graduated from Muhlenberg College with a degree in English Literature and entered the world of technology by chance.

“I kind of backed into it,” he said. “When I finished school, I got a job as production assistant and they needed work done in Flash.”

Lewisohn was one of the first Flex developers at Arc90. His expertise and management skills contributed to his promotion to the role of Flex Team lead in June 2008.

“We hired more developers and I moved into the mentoring role,” he said. “I helped the new developers learn how Flex works and helped them overcome any problems they encountered while developing.”

The Flex team consists of five developers, including RIA Web Developer Sima Shimansky.

“It’s a lot of fun working with Andy because he has a good sense of humor. It’s also humbling because he knows so much about Flex and has such a tight grasp on application development concepts,” said Shimansky. “I try not to think about the fact that he’s two years younger than me.”

Working closely together over time, the two have established a bartering system where his Flex knowledge is exchanged for her baked goods.

“It kind of became a thing where she could get my attention by placing baked goods in front of me,” Lewisohn said. “Now, whenever she needs major help, she brings me cookies. I think the arrangement works well.”

Shimansky further showed her appreciation by baking a large cookie for Lewisohn’s last birthday.

“He is always taking time from whatever he’s doing to help me with Flex stuff because that’s his area of expertise,” said Shimansky.  “I wanted to give back a little in a way that showcased some of my own expertise.”

Lewisohn’s dedication to his job-and Arc90-was evident when he was willing to spend a significant portion of his day traveling on bus between Manalapan, N.J. and New York City. During his first eight months at Arc90, Lewisohn spent approximately five hours on his daily journey to and from the office.

“Whenever I get irritated with my commute, I just remember what it used to be and I feel better,” he said.

Lewisohn spent most of his travel time reading and averaged about three books per week. As an avid reader, Lewisohn would have also considered a career as a writer.

“If I weren’t a programmer, I would be writing a novel,” he said.

Come behind the scenes and see where the Arc90 peeps spend our days (ok, some evenings as well…).  We’re hosting a networking party in our offices on Thursday, February 12 from 7-9pm. 

Curious to see where Kindling was born?  Like pizza and beer?  Want to meet the NY tech crowd?  This is your party.

RSVP fast… we only have 60 spots.