Hi I’m Jon Kragh a Programmer & Entrepreneur.  I can be contacted at jon@proactivelogic.com and my software consulting practice and portfolio can be found at the Proactive Logic website.

This is my bio, which is a work in progress…

I was raised in Jackson, New Jersey, a rural town in the United States of America.  Jackson was a great place to grow up because we had lots of land to do whatever we wanted on (for example backyard golf, playing baseball, and as we got older parties in the woods!).   

In second grade I started using my brothers DEC computer which looked something like the picture to the left.  At the time, he was attending Steven’s Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ where they required all of the Computer Engineering students to have one of these expensive computers (well expensive to my family anyway!).  I remember missing the bus one time in second grade because I was playing artillery on this beast.  Between having a DEC computer and being addicted to Mr Wizard , I was destined to become involved in technology.

Along the way, I actually kept a pretty good balance between social life and the computer.  I’m not the average geek!  During high school I was involved in a lot of sports, the most influential ones were weightlifting and the football team.  I played defensive tackle on the varsity football team.  In high school, I started to get my entrepreneurial itch.  I started selling candy in all of my classes and made about $40 a week just going to class. At the time, it was enough for a tank of gas and a couple of slices of pizza on the weekends.  During the winter months I lifeguarded indoors where I made some spending cash, and wrote a couple of “joke” programs on my TI scientific calculator from school (I hear that the programs I wrote are still being passed around Jackson High School).

While I was in High School, I got involved in the Punk Rock scene and started one of the first Punk Rock websites on the internet, Punx United.  It had show listing and a bunch of writings (pretty much a blog).  A little bit later, I started the record label Diyrection Records, where my good friend Nate later joined as a partner.  Eventually Diyrection Records ended up putting out 4 releases: a Boxcar 7”, the Second Chance Full Length “When it rains it Pours”, Foolproof’s “Ego”, and Milkshed’s ”Melody is a Friend of Mine”.

Second-Chance was a band that I was in, and we toured the United States and Canada quite a bit. We also played a lot of basements and VFW halls all over the NJ/NY/PA area.

I played guitar and sang.  During the time that I was in Second Chance and running Diyrection, I was going to school at Rowan University for Computer Science.  I was also working at a small Microsoft Solutions provider putting up E-Commerce sites for fortune 500 companies during the “internet bubble”.  This was how I funded my Diyrection Records and part of the Second Chance expenses.  It is also where I got involved in Microsoft programming technologies.

At the height of Second-Chance’s popularity, the band felt increasing pressures to focus more on our “real-world” responsibilities.  That tension eventually split up the band.

Fortunately, everyone that was in the band is doing very well.  Each member is extremely successful in the real-world.  For example Jeff the drummer has a 4000 square foot loft in Soho in NYC and many other apartments.

After the band split up, I took the opportunity to work at BarnesandNoble.com, the 4th largest retailer at the time (in 2001). I wrote a lot of code around the shopping cart and account management the first year there and in my second year I wrote a lot of the automated warehouse fulfillment code.  I then moved on to Deloitte and Touché helping create their global audit system (40,000+ users).

Eventually in 2005 I started my own consulting firm: Proactive Logic. I telecommute almost exclusively, and build mission critical applications for my customers. The Proactive Logic site showcases what I have done professionally with my consulting gigs.

So far I have come a long way from growing up in the woods of Jackson, hopefully there will be many more interesting things in life to come!

And here  is my Corporate bio that I sometimes give to clients upon request:

Jon Kragh is the Chief Technical Architect and founder of Proactive Logic LLC.  Jon also created www.vastrank.com Jon has designed, developed, and delivered mission critical enterprise applications over the last 12 years for www.barnesandnoble.com, Delotte & Touche, Comverse Telecommunications, and many other large corporations.  These systems served as the key systems that drove the main source of revenue for each company.  As an avid technologist, Jon has an extreme passion for technology and a propensity for quality.

Jon is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery Security Special Interest Group and an active member in several Microsoft .Net programming communities.  Jon’s technical articles are read by people from over 100 countries each month.  Jon’s new blog is at www.jonkragh.com and his past technical articles found at http://proactivelogic.com/blog/