Welcome to my Personal Page

3-2-08

Hi there. I’m the founder of Tokerud Consulting Group. Come on in! I run the company and function as our top database architect and consultant. I’ve been an application designer for a while - try 20 years! Luckily, this work stays exciting because each year computers get faster, FileMaker gets more powerful and new gadgets and networking options become available. I always have a new palette of "tools" (read toys) to work with.

Even better, I love the deep collaborative relationships I develop with you, my clients. You are the expert on your business and I’m the expert on FileMaker and creating business software. Together we can do great things.

I believe that you should know who is behind the product you purchase. Who stands behind the product and who helps you when you are shopping and after you buy? This page is here to satisfy your curiosity. Hope you enjoy your visit!

My Business/Tech Background

This is a new addition. I realized that I should make sure you can find out the broadstroke basic resumé items quickly. It's probably scattered around elsewhere, but here goes the bullet points:

B.S. Psychology, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.

M.A. Urban Sociology, UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco, CA.

I've been a database developer since I started as a trainee at Control Data in 1980. That gives me 25 years of database design and development experience. I spent 5 years at Control Data Business Information Services division in their San Francisco field office as an Applications Consultant. This was great experience because I shared accounts with a marketing rep and got about 30% of my income from commissions which gave me some good business experience.

I've been specializing in FileMaker since mid 1986, the year I started my own business. The first year I tried several databases like Omnis 3, Reflex Plus and FileMaker Plus. As the years went by, I tried other databases as they were released like 4D, dBaseMac and FoxPro. All the while, I spent the vast majority of my time on FileMaker and have considered myself a FileMaker specialist since 1988 or so.

MBA Marketing, UC Berkeley with a secondary emphasis in information systems.

Added my first employee in 1989 and renamed the business Tokerud Consulting Group. Our official size has fluctuated over the years from 2-6 people and I now tend to work with my team as independent contractors which feels very appropriate to the times.

Launched our Studio Manager product in 1993 at a pretty low key level just to make it available on request to folks outside the SF Bay Area.

Studio Manager just kind of grew over time and was helped greatly by the spread of information over the internet which was just starting up with web browsing in the mid-nineties.

In February of 2000, Kathy Tomyis and I decided to get serious and we both started putting a lot more time into the product - me on the heavy duty technical stuff and the website and Kathy on the user interface (a lot of the work of product development), tech support and the user manual, demo and demo manual.

My Tech Ronin Blog

This weblog is a new writing venture for me. I write about life in the 21st century, free agent nation, the death of the good job, social networking, personal branding, emarketing, social software and personal technology. As a tech professional and passionate social observer, I fill my blog with my own experience and ideas plus all the information and ideas I can gather. I focus on individual solutions, not corporate solutions - this bias is in the grand tradition of Macintosh. Each entry in some way is designed to give you (and me) understanding and mastery of our current and future circumstances so we can pursue our passions and prosper.

We’ve lost the security of the *good job* and predictable economic times. What we’ve gotten in return is a wide-open, highly connected field of opportunity that welcomes new ideas and creative solutions. It’s kind of like the wild west - information-age-style! You aren’t likely to get into a gunfight (well at least not in most places) but it’s a sort of free-for-all. The status quo - what status quo? In this environment, if you take your head out of the sand, you can look around and make some significant adjustments and take new actions that will lead to success while everyone else still has their heads in the sand!

My biggest unfulfilled passion in life is to get my ideas out into the world. I’m a voracious learner and creative thinker. And I don’t like keeping all these thoughts in my head - they get lonely in there. If you aren’t familiar with weblogs, they are more dynamic than webpages. Mini-articles called "posts" are added daily or weekly depending on the blog. Weblogs or "blogs" for short, tend to be more current and responsive to what’s happening right now. Also, there are special tools like TypePad to make this easy - you don’t have to fire up a full-blown web-tool like Dreamweaver to post your thoughts of the day. Come and check out tech ronin and see what you think. It even has an About Me page with a 1 page bio in it. You see, there are layers and layers...

Web Minister

I’m the Web Master or Minister of Tokerud Domain and Studio-Manager.com. I’m having fun lately bringing these sites into the 21st century with cascading stylesheets and blogs. From there, I’m headed towards more interaction. I want to provide room for you to comment. It’s coming. If you have feedback about these sites, just email me at janet@tokerud.com.

My Genealogy Blog

On and off, I delve into my family history. After buying a bunch of books (5 so far), three software programs and entering 289 people into my tree, I’m getting the hang of it. When I get a chance and inspiration, I like to let people know about what I’m finding, on my other blog entitled Janet’s Genealogy Blog. If you are a genealogy hobbyist or think you might like to be, check this out. I'm still hoping to have more time to devote to this fun hobby. I've so far taken some of my vacation time on 1 research trip in search of gravestones, birth certificates and marriage licenses. It’s a great excuse to go to some out of the way little places.

The Real Me...

Truth be told, I’m more likely to be surfing the net or reading about my latest passions than traditional leisure pursuits. I love people, but there’s so much to learn about emerging technologies including their impact on us. One of my favorite story-telling techno books is Smart Mobs by Howard Reingold. Fiction often falls by the wayside except for something like Pattern Recognition - intriguing contemporary sci-fi from the master.

Movies Are Good Sometimes

When I need a real break, what do I do? I often drop into one of our local movie theaters to see the latest movies like, lately: Bourne Ultimatum, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Me. I like lavish, believable sets and great acting and plots that are not merely unceasing action. These movies take me away to a very rich, non-linear world of experience where I recharge my batteries, rest, relax and experience things outside my normal life. It’s like travel in many ways. Just cheaper and quicker.

If I’m not totally engrossed in web surfing, reading my favorite bloggers or writing software and don’t have the energy to get out to see a big screen movie, I might pull a DVD or laser disc out of my collection. My memory fails me, so after 18 months or so, I forget enough of the the details to make a good movie worth another view. And, I like the extra features like director and actor commentary and featurettes about the making of the movie. Of course, lately, I am even more likely to go to iTunes and check out a TV show that I've been hearing raves about from my friends.

More Net, Less TV

I'm hooked on 24. Too bad Kiefer spent a couple months in the slammer for drunk driving this fall and now they are saying the next season 7 isn't going to be out until 2009!

Lately I've been watching Prison Break and Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. But that's only Monday night and the seasons this year are pathetically short.

Before the writer's strike, I was watching CBS mostly, a little Numb3rs, NCIS (Mark Harmon is a lot better when he plays cranky). I catch the occasional Without a Trace and avidly track NFL football. But these days the TV switch is usually in the off position. I am down to basic cable plus $5 extra for some high def channels because I just don’t watch much TV.

After Christmas I bought the first season of The Closer for $20 off Amazon. That was a deal! Since then I've rented the 2nd season in 4 episode increments. Kyra Sedgwick definitely rocks and the writing for the show is both funny and suspenseful. I'll be picking up season 3 asap. It's fun to crank through a season's worth of TV shows without commercials over the span of a couple weeks.

I haven't bought an Apple TV box yet but will at the first excuse I can think of. Actually, with the economy looking to possibly go off the rails entirely, I'm tempering my spending. That, of course, didn't stop me from buying an iPod touch after already buying the iPhone last June. That was a bit much, but then it was for Christmas. I love being a two-fisted iPhone, iPod touch user! It's amazing. But it is a bit of a downer now that each is already a 2nd class citizen next to its respective 16gb iPhone and 32gb iPod touch. I promise not to upgrade (till the 3g iPhone comes out).

What I did buy recently is an EyeTV for $100 (regularly $150) at MacWorld Expo. It's a cool way to record TV. I can record all the HD channels I get now by plugging directly into the Cable outlet in my home office. No cable box, so no extra Comcast charges! Just the way I like it. If there is ever something really good now I can use the EyeTV as my DVR to record shows to my giant-size and plentiful hard drive set-up.

I Love Football Season

With all the trades, it’s harder to love a team like I did in the old 49er heyday years. But, I like to watch a good NFL game and my local teams are the Niners and the Raiders. Uh, this season has been going nowhere fast. I’m not used to this much losing - week after week. I thought the Raiders had a lot of potential this year. But, their offense stunk up the place compliments of their wide receivers and whatever the coaches/owners were not able to do to turn that around.

With a really good running game and a decent defense, the 49ers had a remarkably good season - considering their talent. I really hope Smith keep improving and start being the star he was in college. It could go either way.

Bedtime Reading

Then it’s bedtime. I have several enticing books to read at any given moment, but now that I have wireless access from my bed, it's tempting to bring my MacBook Pro upstairs... There's a lot of competition for my nighttime reading. I could surf, read tomorrows news on the New York Times website or I could read my favorite bloggers.

I rarely take my MacBook Pro to bed. It is more likely that on a Saturday morning I might run downstairs and bring my MBP back upstairs while the house is warming up.

I have lots of books and when good ones come along, I read a lot. Latest favorites have been State of Denial, Mind Set!, The iPod Fully Loaded, and The Perfect Thing.

Tiburon: Home Sweet Home

After 9 years in the San Francisco East Bay, 9 years in the City and 17 years in Mill Valley, this year we moved about 7 miles to our neighboring city, Tiburon (Google Map). I like proximity to San Francisco for business and pleasure. I'm now about a mile from the Ferry so can walk to the ferry and leave my car behind to get into downtown SF.

It was a bit of a shock to move out of the forests of Mill Valley to the rocky and sunny Tiburon, but I'm getting used to it. Tiburon has water on 3 sides and seems to get a lot of light. Right now sun is streaming into the livingroom (March 2nd). I walk every day through St. Hilary's Open Space Preserve and end up downtown for my morning breakfast at Caffe Acri on 1 Main Street. The Acri is a lively coffee place (free wi-fi) with an excellent eggs and toast breakfast that comes with a big bunch of fruit (lots of berries!).

Another fun thing is that besides about 1/3rd locals out for a morning walk for coffee, we get 1/3rd cyclists and 1/3rd tourists fresh off the Ferry from the city. This makes for quite the upbeat atmosphere! I like it as a stimulus for my morning Moleskine writing.