Wade Meredith is…
A designer who can code working at the intersection of art and science since 2005 (ish)
I have supercharged myself and my creativity with technology for as long as I can remember. First it was Lincoln logs, then LEGO, and eventually Printshop on my Dad's Macintosh Performa 6200. In high school, I got into theater and worked as a camera operator at the local TV station. We shot a live morning show before school, and I made movie with my friends after. The local college film festival even selected one of our projects for an award but kicked us out after discovering we were a bunch of high schoolers.
By 2004, I was working as a marketing assistant for a large general contractor–doing print design and literally getting people coffee. Blogs were new, cool, and dominating my free time. I decided I had to make one. After writing six hundred blog posts over a year and a half I was getting two or three million monthly page views and making real money, but I wanted to design and build software. So, I sold the site to a Canadian blog network and got a portfolio together.
An integrated marketing agency called Voltage Creative hired me to help their transition from brand and print to digital. For six years I learned the business of design, branding, web development, account management, and sales. The agency grew in my tenure, I gained a mentor and lot of friends. Over a decade later, I still talk to people from Voltage just about every week.
Looking to specialize, I became an interaction designer at a medium-sized software company. Within three years I was a senior interaction designer, and eventually I was the director of user experience the last two years of my tenure. My user experience design axe is now sharp enough to shave with.
The prestigious global branding and marketing agency VML recruited me as an information architecture specialist. VML’s clients have names like Ford Motors, Wendy's, Pfizer, and Coca-Cola. I designed information systems and internal tooling for many of these companies. I learned a new appreciation for the art and science of marketing and saw my work impact on an all-new scale.
The last couple of years, I have been managing multiple software engineering teams for a large financial services company. We delivered numerous software stories, epics, features, and modules on budget and on time through the miracle of evidence based planning. I leveled up my people and project management a few times over and met a dozen people I’d work with again.
At present, I’m approaching twenty years in the industry. For the last ten years, I have enjoyed working remotely with diverse teams worldwide. I am based in Kansas City and still design and build things almost every day.