I'm Kevin Zink. I'm a dude who lives in Omaha, Nebraska. I've lived in Omaha since 2000. I'm big into computers, software development, and entrepreneurship.

Why Blog?

I enjoy writing and web development. Plus, this gives me something to look back on. I tend to forget what I did last week - let alone last year. Also, I hope to provide some value through my writing.

My Professional Career Thus Far...

I entered the world of professional Software Developer in 2004 after graduating. I started out working for a small company, Genesis Systems. At Genesis, I learned a great deal about the software development (web stuff in particular), small business, and how to party! I also met and worked with a fellow software developer dude named Dusty. All in all, I liked the small business atmosphere with its casual dress, cozy environment, and small teams, but I disliked the totalitarian management style that I experienced at Genesis.

In 2005, I left Genesis and took a job at Raytheon where I worked with another friend of mine Noah. A major factor in my decision to switch jobs was salary--Raytheon offered a substantial increase. I was also interested in experiencing the "corporate" environment with all of its processes and rigid command structure. I ended up spending a lot more time documenting and communicating than I did simply writing code... which sucked. Eventually, I found out that being a lowly cog in the Raytheon machine wasn't what I wanted to do. I left after about 8 months.

After Raytheon, I joined Securities America in hopes of finding something that I would better enjoy. Securities allowed me to work on web stuff again, which was pretty rad. The company had also grown from a small business to a mid-sized corporation over about a decade. As a result, it had traits of both a large corporation and a small business, which made things interesting at the very least. I enjoyed this job quite a bit. My coworkers were smart, trustworthy, and pretty cool people. While I could have sat at this job for a long time, I had antsies in my pantsies to do my own thing.

Enter BrightMix

After months of chatting and talking with Dusty, in July '07 we decided to start our own software development business, BrightMix. We're founding our business on the principles and beliefs that we've come to hold most important in software development and, in general, business.

Some companies we hope to model: Trizle, 37 Signals, and Eric Sink's SourceGear.

Persons who have greatly influenced our business beliefs: Jeff Atwood, Joel Spolsky, Paul Graham, and countless others (pretty much every feed on our google readers' feedlists).