For the last decade and some change, I’ve found the Internet to be a remarkable and never ending place; it absolutely fascinates me! Over the years I’ve fallen in love with and made a passion out of making the Internet a truly amazing place to be and appreciating it for everything it is to become. Through the Internet, I found my voice, I found my confidence, and most importantly, I found my purpose.

My passion for web design and the Internet started to take it’s course sometime in 2001 when I was just a young dreamer. I was always active outside, in sports, and did well in school, but I sure do remember spending hours on hours on hours learning how the Internet worked back then. As a matter of fact, I built my first website when I was around 13, during the summer in which I was transitioning from moving between towns and switching schools.

This was only the spark that started my fire, though. During high school, things only got more “realistic” for me. In a time, long, long ago before Facebook and social media ruled the web, the Internet had social platforms such as Xanga and Myspace. The “out of the box” look and feel for both always seemed so boring to me, so I took action and used what I knew to change them; I began creating custom themes for myself and friends to use.  To add skillsets to my arsenal, I took every computer class I could in high school including three different typing classes, introduction to microsoft office, web design, and advanced web design. My advanced web design class was responsible for creating pages and content for numerous sections throughout the entire high school website! How important do you think I felt? I was finally doing something “big” that tons (realistically only like a few hundred, but that was a lot back then) of people were going to see!

After graduation, the bar was starting to be set higher for me. Now that I was fully confident in applying my skillsets to real life situations, I was ready for the next level. During college, I attended Wichita State University. Going in, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but knew it had to do something with computers and technology. Through lots of trial and error, i.e. Graphic Design and Accounting, I landed on Management Information Systems; MIS is basically the Computer Science of business degrees.

While attending college, I was an active member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Throughout my four years as an active member of SAE I served as Webmaster for three of them. I was responsible for providing them with a website to use as a recruitment tool when they needed it the most. The website was used to showcase philanthropy events, introduce each active member, and organize upcoming events. In fact, we had several pledges who said they found our chapter through the website! Alongside that, I was also webmaster for SAE’s philanthropy, Wichita State Dance Marathon, which is a non-profit organization established to raise money for Children’s Miracle Network. Now I was at a point where I was creating websites for large student organizations and raising money for a national non-profit organization!

After walking through the halls of Sigma Alpha Epsilon for the last time as an undergraduate, I was faced by the real world. He was looking me right in the face asking me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It was simple and instinctive, I answered with “web design and build the Internet.”

Being a “web design lifer” – I’ve developed a very distinct style to how I do things. I believe in balance and square corners. My best (and probably worst) characteristic is my extreme attention to detail. I love things being correct, no matter the sacrifice. In my honest opinion,there’s no better satisfaction than getting things done. I hate wasting time and there’s not much more infuriating than “tomorrow” – very few reasons are worth waiting for. I love opportunity and strive to surround myself with like-minded people.

Mason’s Social Profiles