June 1996 - July 1996

Ireland

Two generations removed from Ireland on my mother’s side, three on my father’s, it seemed natural to make Ireland the destination for my first international trip. I planned it out in detail.

My nana (mom’s mom), Mary McGuirk, was born and raised in Greencastle, a village in the low-lying Sperrin Mountains of County Tyrone. She left at eighteen from Derry, reaching the Brooklyn home of her aunt and sponsor. Eventually she made it up to Yonkers, NY, where she spent the rest of her life. She kept up with things back in Ireland, and was in touch with the O’Brien family, who had bought the McGuirk house at some point. I made the trip and met them.

My dad’s family came out of eastern Galway, not far from the medieval cathedral at Clonfert. The story of my visiting the Killackey ancestral home will have to wait, but suffice it to say it was quite by chance. Me and my sister Mary became the first Killackeys to visit the old home — a cottage, really — since my great-Uncle Vincent and his persnickety wife Claire visited sometime in the 1960s.

These two brief stops were part of a much larger voyage of discovery, the photojournal of which I will post when fully digitized.

July 1996 - November 1996

Sullivan & Cromwell

After returning from a month in Ireland, I began my first job: Legal Assistant at Sullivan & Cromwell, a law firm headquartered in downtown New York City.

There were interesting aspects: I got to work with Justice William Kennedy’s son. I met a CEO or two. Got patted on the head for initiative at one point.

But I wasn’t using my head. And I had to admit that any desire I had for the corporate attorney’s life, which is what I had come to S&C to witness first-hand, was motivated by money. I would find myself eviscerated.

Still, I figured, shouldn’t I give it a fair chance, say, one year?

Then one day, a partner I was assigned to sent me off to get cigarettes for a client, observing as I left that I hardly needed my college degree, did I, for that?

Ouch.

But I’m glad she said it, because she was, of course, quite right. I walked off to do her bidding resolved to use my college degree to quickly find something more interesting to do.

November 1996 - November 1997

North Brooklyn Development Corporation

Having discovered corporate law was not for me, I headed to Greenpoint, Brooklyn to see about housing and urban community development.

December 1997 - May 1998

@NY

By summer 1997, I had made up my mind to take a cross-country bicycle trip starting the following spring. I figured on finishing a full year at North Brooklyn, then moving to something short-term and immediately lucrative.

The dot-com economy was inflating. New York’s entrants were geographically centered in what was referred to (somewhat pathetically) as Silicon Alley. I went to work for @NY, one of several startup news outlets covering the City’s new industry. My job was to sell advertising in @NY’s first-edition Silicon Alley Red Book, a directory of local new media companies.

Having run ad sales for the Columbia Guide to New York, it was familiar territory. I did pretty well, got paid commissions, and saved up what I thought I might need for a journey across the United States.

May 1998 - November 1998

Expedition ‘98

At some point in the summer of 1997, I got it in my head to ride my bicycle from New York back to my parents’ home in Yardley, Pennsylvania. I remember getting a police escort over the Outerbridge Crossing early in the morning. It was eye-opening, that experience of traveling long-distance by bike. I settled on the idea soon after of seeing the United States by bike beginning the following spring: Expedition ‘98.

I put the word out to friends and eventually invited along Tina Hermos and Bob Welsh, both friends from college. Bob had been my Editor-In-Chief on the Columbia Guide to New York and had succeeded me as Publisher. Tina and I had worked together as Residence Advisors. I can’t say the three of us were a perfect fit, but we had some fun.

We did not make it together the entire way: Tina had to head back east for school at the end of the summer, by which time we’d only made it to the Black Hills. At that point, Bob decided on a pace toward our destination, Seattle, that was slower than I could go, given a promise I had made to meet a friend in Hawaii. Bob eventually did reach Seattle. I did, too, after which I spent a few weeks in Hawaii, returned to Seattle, and continued from there to San Francisco via Route 101 and the Pacific Coast Highway.

I am working on digitizing my photo journal. For now, suffice it to say it was a wonderful way to introduce myself to the United States. I hadn’t been further west than Pittsburgh prior to that trip.

January 1999 - February 2000

Staten Island Economic Development Corporation

I returned to the east coast after the bike trip and decided to give it one more shot in the not-for-profit world, this time in Staten Island.

It is fair to say that most New York residents’ only interaction with the Forgotten Borough is the Staten Island Ferry. Perhaps it is equally fair to say the Staten Islanders choose to live there, in part, for its suburban qualities. The upshot being a kind of psychological strait between Staten Islander and non-. There is a distinct Staten Island community, and it feel small, even though the population numbers close to 470,000 as of the 2010 census.

The Staten Island Development Corporation (SIEDC) is essentially the Business Improvement District (BID) for the borough. My official title was Development Manager. In truth, the person managing development was SIEDC’s very effective Executive Director, Cesar Claro. My role was to support him and others concerned with raising our operating and programs budgets. In this capacity I did what was asked of me. Real excitement lay with developing the group’s first website.

I asked for the project, got it, and finally set my sights on web development.

March 2000 - April 2001

Jasper Design

I joined Jasper Design as a HTML coder in March 2000. Eventually, I took on User Interface (UI) design responsibilities as well. After the Columbia Guide to New York, it was the first job I really enjoyed, owing entirely to a great group of colleagues, especially my friend and technical mentor, Jamie Katz.

On the job, I became a pretty good HTML coder. On my own time, I became interested in every technical aspect of the web, from backend coding in Perl and PHP, to database design, to webserver administration and more. I got interested in hardware, too, assembling my own PC from parts I had researched. I still have it.

My time at Jasper coincided with the dot-com crash: by March 2001, there were signs that business was slowing. Add to that a growing feeling that I could do more and better on my own, and it was time to bring my time at Jasper to a close, and to start up Killackey Interactive.

March 2001 - December 2011

Killackey Interactive / Progressive Technology Partners

I went out on my own just as the dot-com bubble burst. That may have helped small providers, since many solid clients, no longer willing or able to pay dot-com era rates to the major and even mid-sized agencies, were willing to at least look at smaller providers. Whatever the case, I was able to land a few good clients out of the gates to get me on my way.

Killackey Interactive became Progressive Technology Partners, LLC in 2003. In the post-bubble world, I figured a solid-, even clunky-sounding name might help prospective clients feel more comfortable. Killackey Interactive seemed too fly-by-night. A friend who has a branding agency said I had it all wrong. Reason being “Killackey Interactive” is fun to say. Hmmm.

At any rate, things have worked out over a decade of business. Learn more about Progressive Technology Partners at www.ptpllc.com.