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 Digital, I oversaw the entire digital team including project managers, flash developers, technical developers, information architects and quality assurance engineers. I worked very closely with the account group and the creative team on all digital work at the agency. I managed $1M+ budgets.

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 am also a member of the East York Rotary Club.

Accomplishments (in reverse order by date):

• Built up 2 successful boutique interactive shops in the 1990’s;
• Developed XSLT based PHP 5 framework (code named ‘Gaia’);
• Did the application design & implementation for a process and asset manager for an animation studio (9 Story);
• Built a web portal into mining analysis data before data web portals existed (Lakefield Research);
• Built an interactive ad builder for Scott’s Canada;
• Contributed to Jean Chretien’s Team Canada to China;
• Developed the first Web Develoment Certificate program in Canada (@Centennial College);
• Created visually impossible frame & table based website layouts before slicing tools existed;
• Built and deployed video websites long before video was even considered viable;
• Value Added Reseller Extranet before the term extranet even existed (Merisel Sellution aka Synnex);
• Built a web-based email display client before RocketMail (aka: Hotmail) existed;
• Visually stunning CD-ROM dev in the age of 256 colours;
• A leader is mixed-mode CDs for the Canadian music business.

Feel free to ask me about any of these projects, I still have code kicking around.

You can view my resume for more specific info about my work history. My resume isn’t always the most up to date. View my LinkedIn profile.