About Me

My long relationship with technology started in my early teen years posting on BBSes and building my own computers. After more than a decade of tinkering, I decided to make it my profession by building my first web site in 2006. That first, frustrating site led to more sites, then small clients, then big clients, a product business, and finally to a career in digital identity.

I've found that I'm happiest in a "bridge" role, one where I can take time to understand a system or technology and then bring that understanding to others. I've been able to do that in various ways from engineering and team leadership to in-person instruction to partner relations to architecture.

Along the way, I’ve worked with and for companies and agencies both large and small, including Okta, Auth0, Precision Nutrition, 10up, Manning Publications, Alan Colmes, Coca-Cola and Pepsi (at the same time!), Edelman, AT&T Wireless, Johnson & Johnson, and many others.

You can learn more about me professionally on my hire me page or through some of my professionally-focused blog posts.

Personally, my favorite combination of things is a bike ride (any kind) with a great conversation (any topic) followed by a great meal (any country). I'm a dad and a husband and a 60/40 split extrovert/introvert (I enjoy being social but need to recharge). I use he/him pronouns and work hard to be an ally. You'll usually find me trying to do my best.

You can learn more about me through some of my more personal blog posts.

Here's what is going on right now.

What I'm thinking about

• I'm still very excited about note-taking in general and personal knowledge bases, like Obsidian. I take notes daily and collect information I use online in mostly-plain-text files locally. I find this helps greatly to get stuff out of my head, make connections, pick up where I left off, and stay organized.
• I've gotten very deep into digital archiving all of my personal documents, photos, personal data, etc. I'm a bit obsessed with the idea of a simple timeline of my life events and those of my kids. I recently released an open-source personal data pipeline to handle personal data gathered from APIs.

Where to find me

• The best way to contact me is via email at josh [at] joshcanhelp [dot] com.
• I store all my public code on GitHub and find myself on there quite a bit. I open source everything that’s not proprietary or for sale. Thoughts on that here.
• I keep my LinkedIn profile mostly up-to-date so that serves as my resume for now.
• I am "on Twitter/X" @joshcanhelp ... sort of ... more on that here.
• You san see a feed of changes to my site on GitHub here. If you star or watch that repo it can function as somewhat of a subscription here.