Careers, Jobs, Eh?

[Shilo Rune 96]

I have always wondered everyones backgrounds here on the board. So what's your job? What's your gig? Are you design friendly or practical friendly?

[Shilo Rune 96]

Originally Posted by Shilo Rune 96

I have always wondered everyones backgrounds here on the board. So what's your job? What's your gig? Are you design friendly or practical friendly?

I work in nursing at OHSU and recently started freelancing in web design. I hope to drop this boring healthcare job and express my creativity with web design soon enough! I started designing in high school, with a basic architectural class. I even won an award through the AIA in 2007, "Grand Prize Intermediate Division." After high school I thought nursing would be fun, but I absolutely hate it now. I kinda had a wake up call a few months back...

Anyway, I look forward to hearing from y'all!

[MarkDaMan]

Back in my late teens I was obsessed with the redevelopment of our downtown in Chandler, Arizona. Small potatoes compared to what is now going on in the greater Phoenix area, and nothing like Portland. So, I moved back to Portland at 20 hoping to get an urban planner degree. As life would have it, other plans were in store and I ended up working for an educational non-profit. Still there today, 10 years later, working on a writing project teaching teachers how to teach writing in a new way.

I still love urban planning and development, but tracking it became my hobby instead of my career.

[PDX City-State]

This is a fun idea..

I used to be a commercial real estate appraiser and broker, but left that world for food about five years ago. I currently plan food festivals and food events here in Portland and around the country. I also do some food journalist and occasionally write about design from time to time. I've been reading this blog for about eight years, which is crazy to think.

I love urban development, and admire those in that industry at all levels--from brokers to appraisers to developers to planners with the foresight and patience to do any of these jobs well. Good development takes years and years to pull off. For me, loving architecture, planning, and neighborhood development is a hobby--which is a good fit for my level of patience.

[tworivers]

Good idea.

I co-own a record shop. Before this I had the thankless job, for 10 years, of working with homeless adolescents. I traded a steady paycheck for freedom.

I've always been interested in architecture and cities --grew up in DC but have lived either here or in Olympia since 1996. I'm especially curious about the interplay between capitalism (and its emphasis on profit margins), the process of design, and regulation. Also the important discussion around historic preservation and the scale/design of new buildings in historic areas. Portland is a good laboratory for all of the above.

If there are two things that I hate it would have to be the automobile and faux-historicism.

[bvpcvm]

I've always been drawn to cities, probably because I grew up in a series of tiny shithole towns. As soon as I was old enough to take the bus myself I was heading downtown after school, and I've lived in DT or NW ever since high school (which is quite a long time). I don't really have any formal experience/education in design; I have a fairly typical liberal arts degree and work as a web application developer for the government. My wife has an architecture degree and we have a toddler who is obsessed with the streetcar.

Like tworivers, I also hate cars.

[Norelco]

I'm an occupational safety manager with the BLM. I was born in Milwaukie, lived in West Linn, Sellwood, Molalla, and SW Portland as a kid. I went into the Army and lived in podunk towns most of my career.

I fell in love with Downtown while working for the Forest Service in 2001. I would travel here every few weeks from Corvallis.

After my trip to NYC in 2009, I loved the city. My wife and I always wanted to do the "urban thing" and here we are. Living our dream!

[JordanL]

I work as a LAMP stack web developer, and have worked for several start-ups, and even owned my own. I also was the PR Director for Occupy Portland between October and December, and that was very interesting, and very much a full time, thankless job.

[davehogan]

Originally Posted by Shilo Rune 96

I have always wondered everyones backgrounds here on the board. So what's your job? What's your gig? Are you design friendly or practical friendly?

Currently I'm in sales/marketing, but I've also worked in IT and project management pretty extensively. I grew up in Buffalo, where urban planning doesn't exist, but moved to San Diego at 21 and a year or two later ended up through some strange luck on an advisory board related to their search for a new airport (they wanted a mix of people across the community, and I was the only person covering the under 40 demographic that volunteered) so between that and my brother being an architect I just kind of got interested in planning and design. (My dad and brother are both very into architecture, so I got dragged along to all kinds of cool places that they wanted to see up and down the east coast.)

I've never worked in urban planning, but I started reading this site in San Diego as I was watching the housing boom of the early 2000's in one of the hottest markets in the country, but never registered for an account until after I had moved to Portland in 2006. It was cool when I got to Portland because these forums had already kind of given me virtual tours of some parts of the area.