After Motorola made the decision to close the Boynton Beach facility, I became interested in what could be accomplished in small entrepreneurial alternatives to the large corporate experience. The career change helped expand my professional expertise from the fairly narrow and highly specialized technical skills of the Motorola positions with a more general understanding of everything involved in running a business. With fewer co-workers to rely on for help and widely ranging issues to resolve, the small business situations forced me to raise my level of resourcefulness and creativity in successfully finding solutions to the issues at hand.
WEB WORK
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
— Albert Schweitzer
ANANTEK
The first company called Anantek was a technology startup that used a GPS module and the Motorola 2-way Paging protocol to communicate with small electronic tracking devices for the transportation markets. Although we were successful in designing and developing a working prototype called the Watchdog or Anantek ERT100, our financial estimates to operate the company did not turn out to be accurate and the company was forced to close.
- Assisted in the development of an Emergency Response application written in Visual Basic and using Microsoft Visual Studio.
- Built an automated RF Test System and modified my previously developed Motorola test routines to evaluate performance of Anantek devices.
- Successfully performed tracking device field tests using live USA Mobility and SkyTel 2-way Paging networks.
HDTV LABS
I then was part of a second startup opportunity with a company called HDTV Labs. The product line of electronic devices was developed primarily for the commercial satellite TV markets of DIRECTV and Dish Network. HDTV Labs wanted to develop an Ecommerce website for additional sales to independent dealers and installers, so this was my first opportunity at website design and development.
There were serious discussions held with both DIRECTV and Dish Network in being an electronic device supplier, but we were never able to come to an agreement on a pricing structure for the products. Without the sales revenue from these two major customers, individual sales to smaller dealers and installers were not enough to sustain the company and it too was forced to close.
- Designed, developed, deployed and maintained the company’s Ecommerce website using the AspDotNetStorefront software package, Authorize.Net payment gateway, real-time shipping rates and interfacing software to automatically connect website orders to QuickBooks Accounting software.
- Photographed and enhanced website product images with Adobe Photoshop software.
- Completed various typical satellite TV installation diagrams with detailed descriptions on how best to utilize our electronic devices that were new to the industry.
USALERT / OSI INTERNATIONAL
I had various Motorola connections in the South Florida area and began working with some former associates at a company named USAlert. Their product line primarily consisted of pagers and paging systems for the volunteer fire and safety markets, products I was familiar with from my work at Motorola. They had seen my previous website work and brought me in to upgrade their two websites, develop custom email promotions and work on technical aspects of the electronic products.
USAlert used one of the websites to target communication device dealers who would then sell to their local customers. The second website was used to sell directly to the general public. So, to differentiate pricing levels between these two markets, another company called OSI International was formed to support the general public or “non-dealer” customers.
- Designed, developed, deployed and maintained both USAlert and OSI International websites.
- Created custom ASP.NET and HTML web pages with layout, text content, and image selection. Added over 100 technical documents to each site (many of them I developed), video for the primary pager products and over 15 downloadable software packages.
