#003 – Meet the Host with Ron Smith

Ron Smith is the founder of Chalder Consulting, a consultancy offering IT advisory, project management, and business analyst services. He is a husband and father based in New Brunswick, Canada.

Ron also runs Managing Projects, a site dedicated to helping project managers with thought-provoking articles, interviews, and training tips.

In this episode, Derek interviews Ardent Development co-host Ron Smith about his journey in the IT industry and why he’s doing the podcast.

Where to Find Ron Smith

@manage_proj on Twitter

On the web at https://chalder.ca/ and https://managingprojects.ca/.

Enjoy the show and be sure to follow Ardent Development on Twitter.

Follow @ardentdev

Transcript

Derek: Welcome to the Ardent Development podcast. I’m Derek Hatchard. I am here with Ron Smith. This week we’re going to do something a little bit different than normal. Normally we have a guest on the show. We ask them questions and we really help to bring some of their insights and thoughts to you. This week I’m going to ask Ron a couple of questions about himself so that as you listen to him talk on the podcast, week after week, you know a little bit more about who he is and where he came from. So first of all, welcome Ron. Thanks Derek. And why don’t you just take us back. Tell us how you got started in the tech industry.

Ron: So I built software for a living for years and years. And then I had a stint where I went on some testing teams so I tested some software and became a test lead and went that route. Then I started leading these development teams. What I realized was that I was a pretty good developer but I was really good at leading teams leading people. And I found that I was one of those guys that wanted to work with the teams to help the teams to grow and evolve them. So, I got into this I.T. technical project management. Started mentoring some other project managers as well. So that’s really where my sweet spot is. I’m one of those project managers that really enjoys hanging out with the developers and the architecture groups. I don’t code per se anymore but I’ve got that background that lets me stay in the conversation and I get some really neat projects because of it.

Derek: And you and I met we were talking about this just the other day you and I met maybe 16 or 17 years ago. We were both living in Moncton New Brunswick. I had started a consulting company. We ended up working together for a number of years. We bought a rental property together. We’ve done we’ve done a number of things. You really helped to keep the keep things moving in the right direction for the for the consulting company. You know as it grew you know it wasn’t a massive company but you know once you’re in more than a couple of people it definitely gets harder to get to keep everything pointed in the right direction. After that, we we worked on a number of projects together. Do want to give your point of view your perspective on some of the things that we worked on.

Ron: Well one of the things that comes to mind is we had our hand at a little startup that we bootstrapped on Tuesday evenings. We were both working and we decided to set aside Tuesday evenings one night a week. So we would collaborate on Tuesday evenings. We actually produced two products. You had a third product that you had kind of brought into the fold. That’s what we were doing we were determining where to host it. We were getting some administrative help. It was