Part of an ongoing series to get acquainted with the citizens of Vodoriland. Collect them all!
Name: Conrad Akier
Title: Consultant
Specialties: Java developer, dabbles in front-end development, and official unofficial keeper of the Vodori social calendar
If you had a super power what would it be?
That's a tough one. With super power comes super responsibility.
I'd say time travel, as today's superpowers are merely tomorrow's technologies, but the constant stress of making sure I don't ruin the future would spoil the fun. So that's out.
The ability to fly would be cool, but so is getting patted-down by a stranger and having someone else fly while you get to enjoy the view.
So I guess the only obvious choice remaining is the ability to upload knowledge to my brain, Matrix style. I mean, knowledge is power, right? There's so much to know, yet so little time to find and learn it all.
What is your definition of a Vodorian?
Sassy. [laughs] I don’t think there’s one word; there’s such a spectrum of people here. Spirit. There’s just this togetherness. It’s about cooperation. Basically, it’s like a cult minus the religion and, well, mass suicide – thank goodness for that!
How weird are you on a scale of 1-10?
I'm convinced all developers are a weird breed and that includes myself. I like to think I'm somewhere in the middle. Or a 13.
Do you have a theme song?
Lost of Love by The Bad Plus. There’s no lyrics and it’s the kind of song I can and do listen to over and over again.
I go through stages with music where for a few weeks I listen to classical and jazz then something completely different the next few. Lately, it’s been mostly people I saw last month at Lollapalooza, like Beirut, Phantogram, Deadmau5, The Kills and Ratatat. Or anything with an accordion in it. I also love the accordion; I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I'm Polish and it’s in my DNA.
Where do you find inspiration?
The projects I like to work on the most are the ones where people are helped by it. It’s a little convenient that what I work on now helps people that have or treat diabetes. It also helps immensely when there's something I can learn or challenge myself with. Fortunately, there's no shortage of that at Vodori.
Those two aspects have been a big part of what I do on my own. I once tried to start a non-profit with one of my best friends from high school and a friend of his from college. It was basically like a Facebook for non-profits in Guatemala for volunteers and donors. We wanted to try to link them all together so they could share resources, share ideas, and get resources from donors or other sources. I ended up going down there for about 3 weeks and we went to as many non-profits as we could, surveying them to find out what their needs were so we could model the site around that. It really opened up my eyes to their needs and challenges. We’d get a list of NGOs in a certain town and the data was just so inaccurate that we couldn’t find half of them. Often there’d be two non-profits set up in the same city or neighborhood and they wouldn’t even know about each other even though their goals overlapped.
We had a computer science class at my alma mater work on it as part of their semester project, so there were 15 students working on it at one point and we even had a board of directors. Unfortunately, we had to put our ambitions with the project on hold due to a number of difficult reasons, but it's something I'd eventually like to revisit and revive.
Better Know Other Vodorians:
Jeremy Arnold, Technology
Carrie Blood, Strategy Analyst
Jesse Krantzler, Technology
Christine Mortensen, Design/Strategy
Matt Young, Technology
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