All You Need To Know
I was born in Washington, PA (lovingly referred to as Washpa) on August 13th, 1981 - the same day of the year as my dad (which made remembering his birthday quite easy) as the 6th and final child in the family.
I grew up and had a pretty normal but not terribly eventful childhood. I played some sports (baseball, football, soccer), but particularly excelled at baseball - playing for about 12 years and being an all-star in all but my rookie season. I broke some bones (my left leg when I was 3 and my right arm when I was 7).
I was a very good student in high school, graduated in 1999 and headed off to the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown as a Computer Science major. Johnstown didn't have a very happening scene (not that Washpa does), so I transferred a bit closer to home to California University of Pennsylvania. I also changed up my major a little bit - changing it to Applied Computer Science (which got rid of a whole bunch of unnecessary math) with a concentration in Management.
While at Cal, I worked for the SAI Webteam on campus. This is where I really honed my web development and design skills. We worked on a variety of web sites for on-campus groups and activities. My senior year, I worked on the CUE (California University Experience) co-curricular transcript application. This online application creates an official transcript of students' non-academic on-campus activities.
I was rewarded with a graduate assistant (GA) position for my work on the CUE transcript to further enhance and grow the application. Over the next two years, I worked on the CUE app and on my Masters degree in Multimedia Technology (audio, video, web, etc).
Before I graduated, I started working as a part-time in-house freelancer for GKV advertising in Baltimore, MD. After working with them for a few months on a number of high profile projects (Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Staybridge Suites, and many others), I moved on to a full time job with a small web development firm in Cumberland, MD called Willetts Systems (who I still partner with from time to time on projects). This is where I really learned how to provide a higher-level of customer service to clients. It also lit a fire inside me to start my own business.
After a year and a half at Willetts, I decided to strike out on my own. I launched Verner Web Studio on October 1, 2006, and the business has just been picking up steam since. And now you are all caught up...
