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Trajectories

Daylight Partner Talks About A Friendship That Changed His Life

When I graduated from college back in 1998, I promised myself one thing – not to spend my days in front of a computer. Back then it seemed easy enough. Keep in mind that current tech giants like Apple had just stared down bankruptcy, and Google didn’t even exist yet. Needless to say, the technology scene was nowhere near what it is today. Well, as it turns out, here I sit, just one year shy of spending 20 years doing that very thing I told myself not to do when I first set out to find my career path.

So what happened?

Bill Connolly.

Bill had just moved from the East Coast into the apartment complex above my future wife’s apartment. I was only a year out of school, still at my first job, and trying to figure out what I was going to do for a career with a marketing degree. He was a few years older and had been cutting his teeth as an interactive software developer.

One thing that was immediate when I met Bill was his creative and energetic personality that sucked you into his geeky, technical world. The development landscape was just embracing “new media” at the time, with applications like Flash just being in its infancy stages. It was clear to me, as he showed me what he was doing in Adobe Director one evening, that he was passionate about his work and loved this new future of software development. I was curious and wanted to learn what it was about this “new media” that had Bill so excited. He gave me a copy of Flash 3 and Photoshop 5… and I was hooked. From then on, I knew it was going to be hard to keep that graduation promise.


A few years after we met, Bill and Shawn started working together, and in 2003, after the tech bubble burst, Shawn ventured out on his own to start Daylight. I didn’t know Shawn at the time, but again, Bill serendipitously stepped in and introduced me to him. I began moonlighting with Daylight, and the rest is history.

In fact, a fundamental part of what we do at Daylight is to foster and cultivate that same creative enthusiasm with our employees and our business partners. It’s amazing what software and some lines of code can do for a company. As technology developers, our team has the power to drastically improve the trajectory of a business and that fuels our excitement. From websites that attract new business leads, learning management systems that train your workforce and internal business applications that are the foundation for streamlining multi-million dollar businesses, we’ve been fortunate to help a number of our clients do just that.

It’s hard to believe that my friendship with Bill is going on 20 years. A lot has changed since then, but the important parts have remained the same. Bill still has that enthusiasm, and as Development Director at Daylight, I still get excited about client technical challenges the same way I did when Bill showed me Lingo and Adobe Director in his apartment years ago.

Two men posing for a photo in front of flowers

Sure, the development process involves a lot of time in front of a computer, but I can’t think of a better way to spend my professional life. We love this stuff, and I’m grateful to Bill for getting me started in the right direction.

Some people find religion, money or love and it changes their trajectory. I found my friend, Bill Connolly.

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