Jonathan Sharp, co-founder and president of appendTo, has a busy day ahead of him tomorrow. At 9 a.m. he’ll be delivering a keynote speech at Omaha’s Heartland Developer’s Conference. During the day he’ll log onto Skype to communicate with the rest of the appendTo team, which is located across the U.S. Then, sometime in the evening, he’ll be stopping by Startup Weekend Omaha to talk about startup lessons learned.
After these activities, he’ll head back home to his place just outside of Omaha in Plattsmouth, Nebraska. If there’s still sunlight left, he may head out to his and his wife’s stable to take one of their four horses for a ride. Or, if his two-year old daughter is wanting to play with dad, he may take her out on her pony.
That’s life for Jonathan Sharp, who, after founding a jQuery consulting and training shop with friend and Denver resident Mike Hostetler (left), decided to remain based in Omaha. AppendTo officially calls Denver its home city but, like Jonathan, its employees are located across the U.S.
“We said, you know, we don’t really see any value in moving closer at this point.” Sharp said. “We have the tools such as Skype that we can communicate face-to-face everyday, and we do, and beyond that it really doesn’t matter where you sit.”
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Sharp said that he and Mike were both previously freelancers so the culture of working independently has been carried over to the culture of appendTo.
Face-to-face meetings are still, however, important to Sharp and outside of the trips he takes to see his appendTo co-workers, he’s heavily involved in the local jQuery community to fulfill that need. “Myself being on the jQuery team, I wanted to connect with other local developers,” he said.
Sharp runs Omaha’s jQuery Meetup, and when I asked him what his thoughts were around the meetup and the tech scene in Omaha he said:
Omaha really does have a tech scene, just by what people outside of Omaha think, and the jQuery meetup is really one of those things that proves that with, I think, close to 80 people signed up as members. So that’s one of the things I tout when I go to another city, I say, ‘Guess how many people are in the jQuery Meetup?’ Someone always gets really smart and says ‘One,’ and I say, ‘No, actually 80.’ So we’re up there with some of the larger cities, too, and definitely a solid representation.
One of appendTo’s most recent hires, Omahan Andrew Wirick, formerly with at BlueCross BlueShield of Nebraska, connected with Sharp at the jQuery Meetup. On Meetup.com, Wirick is listed as the co-organizer of the jQuery meetup, joining Sharp in growing the local tech community.
View the video below to hear more from Sharp about living in Omaha, what he thinks the city is missing, and what’s next for him on the speaking tour.
Read more about Sharp, Hostetler, and appendTo in our posts:
