Nick Hodulik, President and CEO
Nick Hodulik is founder and CEO of General Things. Nick has been working with computers for over 20 years and has a broad understanding of business, technology, people, and how they all interact.
As Director of Technology for Razorfish Subnetwork, which included such high-traffic sites as disinfo.com and bust.com, he managed all of their internal information technology, as well as website development and programming.
After Razorfish, driven by his unending love of cocktails and technology, he helped program and launch the now-defunct Remote Lounge in New York City’s Bowery, which was outfitted with hundreds of cameras arranged in a modern-day video “telephone bar.”
Nick made his way to San Francisco in 2001 and started General Things, Inc., where he has since been at the helm. In his spare time Nick laughs and tries to make other people laugh. When he’s not doing that he’s lifting heavy objects or cooking delicious ones.
Jonathan Taylor, Vice President
JT brings over 10 years of experience to General Things from the technology, healthcare, and real estate industries. In college, his professional career started by developing backup hardware and software solutions for large enterprise clients. Subsequent roles included soirees in Product Management, Marketing, Program Management, and Operations. He’s been hooked on coming up with creative solutions for clients and dealing with complex project challenges ever since.
He currently provides account management and project consulting to Tolleson for a number of their key corporate clients such as HP, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, Genentech, VMware, CVS/pharmacy, and Steelcase, while helping out on technology strategy and other internal projects for the studio. He enjoys working through the creative process on both print and digital projects, while helping to shape branding, identity, and influence marketing decisions along the way. He holds a BA in Business Administration and a second degree in Biology. Outside of the office, JT loves video games, travel, electronics and cars. He enjoys eating almost any food, but most often dreams of having an endless supply of peanut butter.
Demian Rosenblatt, Senior Designer & Branding Expert
Demian combines his experience in storytelling and brand theory with proven design results. With over 14 years of hands-on, problem-solving, supervisory design experience, Demian’s work has run the gamut from inclusive corporate identity and branding design, user/web interface and packaging design, print/outdoor/TV advertising, and motion picture graphic animation. Demian also created early groundbreaking interactive work for the web and for CD and DVD-ROM.
As ZEFER’s Director of Branding, he got to work with Time-Warner, Akamai, The Walt Disney Company, IBM, and AOL. His branding design experience since then has provided solutions for Michael Jordan’s SolToro Tequila Grill, The National College of Design & Technology, DorfmanPacific, Munro Shoes, ThermoGenesis, The Red Hat Society, Equator Extreme Anywear, Scala, and Hartford York. His graphic animations have been prominently featured in motion pictures such as Seven, Executive Decision, Outbreak and Crimson Tide, and his work as an Art Director yielded a fresh atmosphere and a new perspective at the House of Blues.
Besides the creative side of his work, Demian is equally technically adept. He is capable of supervising and working with high-end print, web, video and motion picture production, and uses the latest cost-effective digital technology. Despite this breadth of experience and media, Demian is always quite focused on what really matters: finding the simple truth that lies beneath every problem, and then using design to solve that problem.
Demian attended the California Institute of the Arts with a BFA in Fine Arts. He currently teaches Branding Theory and Practice as well as Graphic Design at San Francisco State University’s Multimedia Studies Program.
Chris Hein, Designer/Developer
Chris grew up in Northern California with silicon flowing through his veins, being taught at a young age about many aspects of the high-tech industry. He brings a world of youth to our office with his experiences as a web developer/designer. He has been in the industry for over 4 years, developing/designing applications for real estate companies, corporations, and online communities. He has a strong attention for detail, and is absolutely fascinated with the way people interact with the social web. He is always trying to find new ways to create better user experiences.
When the design process is “over”, Chris can be found hacking away at ruby code, buried in unix commands, or soothing the ways of the php monster. Following some of his favorite acronyms AMSDEOT (A method should do exactly one thing), and CAPITROAE (cut & paste is the root of all evil) along the way. When not basking in the glow of his 23-inch monitor, Chris can likely be found throwing himself off bridges, or falling out of airplanes in the greater Bay Area, as the adrenaline and gallons of Red Bull, “gives him wings.” chrishein.com
Jason Galvin, Developer
Jason grew up in Europe and fell in love with California on his first visit to the US. He has been working as an Internet programmer in Silicon Valley startups for over a decade. Jason has built web applications for companies in a wide range of industries, including advertising, mortgage, and entertainment. He has the most fun when he works in direct collaboration with creative people to build innovative solutions for the ever-changing world. When Jason isn’t programming he can be found exploring the Bay Area’s numerous mountain bike trails, street cafes, and bars.
Jeremy Linder, Developer
As a boy, Jeremy’s parents had high hopes for his career aspirations. His mother was sure he’d be a doctor and his father was confident he’d be a lawyer. He sure showed them.
Jeremy received his Masters in Computer Science from Columbia University and his BA from the CUNY Honors College. His main points of interest during school were computer graphics, computer vision, and internet technologies. Jeremy’s worked with a variety of frameworks and has written a couple of his own. He eats programming languages for dinner, grilled lightly with a twist of lemon, and has a love of designing whole systems from database to user interface. Besides kryptonite and the color yellow, his main weakness is that he tends to write solutions to problems faster than it takes him to find an already-written solution elsewhere.
He currently lives on the Upper West Side in NYC, where when he’s not ruining his eyes staring at his computer monitors, he is either playing keyboards for his band, except Saturday, cooking for whoever will eat from his kitchen or warding off the popular opinion that he does, in fact, get no sleep.
Carlo Mogavero, Developer
Carlo Mogavero has been involved with technology for 20 years including IT and web technologies. He has created standards based websites for 12 years and Drupal based websites for 5 years, leveraging Drupal’s strength of site scaffolding, framework extension, and community focus. He has applied his enjoyment of problem solving for varied types of clientele from musicians to non-profits to conferences, developer communities, and others.
Fred Schoeneman, Developer
Fred Schoeneman is a Ruby on Rails developer at General Things. Before joining General Things, he was the co-founder of an insurance certificate tracking startup, a commercial diver, and an Army Ranger–where he learned, unlike fellow General Things developer Chris Hein, to hate jumping out of airplanes. Fred enjoys mogul skiing, making wine, cooking French cuisine, and writing fiction, some of which gets published and can be found here! He is also hard at work on a personal project called MerciboQ! This pet project is Fred’s way of showing his appreciation to those who have lent him a helping hand along the road of life.
Fred is a Stanford dropout with two classes left to finish a History degree. Perhaps he will one day take them…
Dan Steinicke, Developer
Dan Steinicke is a largely self-taught software developer with over a decade of experience in Python, LISP (inside of AutoCAD), and Ruby on Rails. He is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan (Wolverines!), who came to the Bay Area by way of Santa Cruz. Before landing at General Things, Dan made stops at LeanLaunchLab and OSAF (Open Source Application Foundation) aka the Chandler Project.
Dan is a strict practitioner of environmentally friendly living. He spent three years at Missouri’s Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage where he built his own super insulated solar house, mostly with the help of just one other person.
Ryan van Niekerk, Developer
Ryan is a Las Vegas native who began his love affair with technology at a young age. He decided to make his love official and enrolled in college in Vegas to learn more about web development. Ryan quickly learned that college isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, so he dropped out and decided to teach himself. We’d say that was the right move.
His primary focus at General Things has been on front-end development, but he has occasionally gotten his feet wet on the back-end. Other than programming, Ryan enjoys playing Xbox and is quietly considering moonlighting as a professional gamer. If he isn’t gaming or programming, Ryan can probably be found in one of San Francisco’s many indoor rock climbing gyms, or in front of his Breville Juicer.
Glenn Weatherson, Designer/Developer
Glenn is a twenty-something, front-end web designer having fun with CSS & WordPress. Glenn got his first taste of grassroots design in high-school, documenting his friends and daily life through a personal blog which eventually turned into an ongoing chip away at the craft. This led to working with both small and large business, as well as predominant freelance work.
He gets a kick out of helping individual business owners work through their web ideas while trimming all of the fat, especially if that company is bicycle- or outdoor-related. He enjoys working with teams like PLA and ZLOG using an original approach to figure out what they genuinely want.
When he’s not pushing pixels Glenn enjoys riding any type of bicycle, exploring the outdoors, or headshotting in Call of Duty.
Ryan Hennessey, Project Manager
Ryan graduated from California State University, Monterey Bay with a degree in Business Administration. Her leadership skills and her interest in social media/networking and web applications geared her towards project management. The redesign and development of the professional LGBTA social networking site dot429 relaunched under her supervision.
She joined General Things to help organize and guide projects, as well as to provide a complete process description of the project to each client. She’s slowly becoming rather geeky and thus fits in quite well with the rest of the team. General Things says that they can “explain technology to anybody,” and she knows first hand that this is true. Everyone is incredibly willing to teach, even to the most technically challenged of them all. Lastly but certainly not least, she tries to keep everyone laughing while working hard.
Scott Rowland, Project Manager
Scott Rowland is a project manager at General Things with a wealth of experience working on large projects for big companies. He graduated from Indiana University (GO HOOSIERS) with a major in Informatics and a minor in Political Science. He spent 2 years working for Daves & Associates in Seattle where he managed multi-national projects for the Microsoft Partner Group. Prior to his stint in Seattle, Scott spent 11 years in retail sales and management at Circuit City and BestBuy.
Scott enjoys working with people and tech, but he unsurprisingly has a variety of interests that don’t involve the office. He loves the great outdoors, with hiking, walking, and fishing high up on his list of favorite things to do. He also enjoys watching sports, playing poker, and hanging out with his girlfriend and their pets.
Sharon Callaghan, Office & Finance Manager
Hailing from Ireland, Sharon majored at University College Dublin in …. Improvisation (Sociology, really). After traveling the world seeking the Meaning of Life, the Absolute Truth, etc, she sailed through the Golden Gate, decided ‘enough is enough’ and stayed. Applying an effortless fixation for order, neatness, and structure to managing other people’s finances (as opposed to her own, some say), Sharon has built a thriving financial administration business with clients in Realty, Construction, and Web Design. Working on the simple principle that ‘debit is the side nearest the window’, all went fine until they moved her desk – that was August 2008. Ever inventive, she now insists on working only in windowless offices and vetoes all attempts to alter her working environment.
When not balancing the books, Sharon chases after her two sons among the hills and forests of Marin County – she continues to search for the Meaning of Life, the Absolute Truth, etc – and is determined to disprove the widely accepted answer of 42.
Michael Hines, Intern & Writer
Michael is a freelance web writer from Southern California who recently joined the General Things team as one of the company’s first interns. His duties include, but are not limited to: composing case studies, blogging/tweeting office happenings, and mailing the occasional package. Michael is currently studying at San Francisco State University where he is majoring in Criminal Justice. His work has appeared online at Trend Hunter, CarBuzz, and eHow.
The only things Michael enjoys more than writing are running, weight lifting, watching movies, and a cold beer on a hot Christmas morning.
Nandita Menon, Intern