Darryl Patterson

I started my career in the interactive business in 1992 as a partner at a boutique interactive shop that specialized in the music biz. My goal was to always push the limits of technology, having produced hi-rez CD-ROMs for 8-bit systems (that’s 256 colours for the layman) and B2B extranets long before the term “extranet” was coined. After 5 years dealing with labels and musicians, I moved on to help build the interactive departments for 2 boutique creative shops, working with clients such as Sony Canada, Merisel (now Synnex), Universal Music, Interac, Compaq Canada and Scotts Canada.

In 1995, I began teaching in the CE program at Centennial College’s Centre for Creative Communication. There, I developed and taught courses from basic HTML to advanced programming & databases. I also had the privilege of sitting on the program advisory committee for a new Information Architecture post-graduate diploma the college was developing. After 10 years, I had to give up teaching due to family & other commitments. That said, I would like to go back to teaching part-time again sometime in the future.

Looking to get away from partners and offices, I began to work contract in 2001, mostly from my home. I did some great work for many smaller clients, this work later becoming the foundation of the code framework I use for all projects to this day.

In 2004, I found my way to the Euro group of companies. My first task was to standardize the way code was managed and built. This involved developing a proprietary code framework, setting up version control (subversion), setting up the dev environment (IDEs and such), defining best practices, setting up the code promotion infrastructure/flow (dev, QA, staging, production) and making sure our developers followed our code standards. As the VP of Interactive Services, I oversee the entire interactive team, which currently includes project managers, flash developers, programmers and account managers. I work very closely with the account group and the creative team on all interactive work at the agency.

That’s me and my work. More importantly, I’m the father of 2 wonderful children and I have a very supportive wife (it’s taken a lot of patience on her part over the years!). I make a point of not working on weekends so I can spend some quality time with family & friends. I also volunteer for Scouts Canada as a scout troop leader and I am a member of the East York Rotary Club.

You can view my resume for more specific info about my work history.