Eric C. Anderson Autobiography 7

Reflections on Corporate Life:  Apple vs. FlashPoint 

Frankly, my experience in corporate America was instructive.  My time at Apple was very enjoyable because I was far enough away from the upper management maelstrom: I was on the Engineering Ladder.  With the exception of being shot down at the Cross Functional Review Board, and hearing stories of the huge fights between groups and managers, I lived a pretty calm life.  However, the outcome of the management maelstrom was an incredible waste of engineering effort.  Most engineers at Apple never got to complete a product and ship it!  The projects were constantly being tinkered with, cancelled, or redirected.  Entire developed and working technologies were tossed out at the last minute due to on-going management fights for control and power.

Unfortunately, at FlashPoint, I was right in the maelstrom  Not being a good "politician" makes me a really bad match for the extreme political environment of a venture capital start-up.  I was unwilling to compromise my beliefs, and thus there was a lot of friction and pain.  Frankly, I think this has been a growing problem on corporate America, leading to the serious lack of trust in management and accounting firms we now see.

Starting Anderson Creations 

Once I left FlashPoint, I did not wish to return to the corporate upper management world - at least not without very very serious review of the driving principals behind the CEO and Board of Directors.  I am sure there are companies out there that would meet my criteria, but I don't know of any that also need my experience and skills.  Also, as I had worked with several ministry organizations over my career, I became very interested in transitioning to a more ministry-based direction.

In that regard, I spent the first three months of my new life after leaving FlashPoint Technology, from March 2001 to early June 2001, developing the new website for BWGI Seminars, an organization I had been involved with for over 10 years.  That website was very successful, and was later replaced by an even larger version.  That version - completed just before I started on the online education system - lasted until it was replaced in 2016 by a web development company.

Anderson Creations:  Technology Consulting, Website Development, Intellectual Property Development

In June of 2001, I set up a small consulting company "doing business as" Anderson Creations.  I focused on writing patent disclosures for clients and helping them to extract inventions out of their engineering departments, and website development.  The Lord provided all of my clients!  Every effort I made to get business failed, but a number of relationships just fell into my lap!  I am very grateful for the care I have received from my God.

As the summer of 2001 passed, it became clear that our cost of living was not in line with my new goals.  Specifically, the major remodel we had just completed when I left FlashPoint had increased our debt and our monthly payments to uncomfortable levels.  With much pain, it became clear that we needed to sell the home we had just spent almost 2 years in making just the way we wanted.  Sigh.  It would now sell for well over $1.5 million if we still owned it today (2017).

We successfully sold our home in December 2001, and moved into a rental in January 2002.  The goal now was to choose a place to move to that would meet our changing needs.

The Big Move to Nevada! 

Most of my work was done at home.  I had occasional meetings with my clients.  It became clear that most if not all of the work I was doing could be done almost anywhere, using the internet or telephone consultations rather than face-to-face meetings.  We set out to locate a place where we could buy a home outright, and reduce our cost of living significantly.

With a little research, it became clear that California was out.  We decided to look at Nevada and Washington.  Our visit to Nevada turned up a lot of very interesting information - and convinced us that Gardnerville was the place for us.  We built a new home, completed in February 2003, and moved to Nevada in March 2003.

2003 Inventor of the Year 

The Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Lawyer's Association favored me with the Inventor of the Year Award for 2003.  The reprint from the Record-Courier, my local newspaper at the time, is available here.

Fine Art Photography 

In 2005, I decided to finally take the big leap and add another business to Anderson Creations: fine art photography.  launched a new website at

www.luminousImpressions.com 

This site was used to present multiple artists, including my own work.  A direct link to my art is via www.whatgodcreated.com.  This website has been inactive since about 2010, and the "contact us" and e-commerce functions have been disabled.  However, you can see some of my photography - mostly film, and some early digital - at that site.

Websites!  More Websites! 

My first website for BWGI Ministries was SpiritualRecovery.com.  In 2005-6 we put together a brand new, fairly large website: WhatGodIntended.com.  This included several online courses, but there was a problem:  in those days, not so long ago, the internet was not so fast, and many people did not have the ability to play videos over the internet.  So we created a system that allowed the website to access files on a CD-ROM.  The various CD-ROM’s contained video files of the course material, and pages of course material and quizzes were on the website.  This work was completed, and worked quite well.  It was when Dr. Eckman asked for me to do a few more that I suggested maybe we should consider creating an online education system instead, so it would not entail so much custom programming to build courses.  This ultimately led to the creation of EduPlex Ministries in mid 2009.  I also created many other websites for various small organizations during this period.

EduPlex Ministries 

In 2006, I launched a new ministry, a non-profit 501(c)3 religious organization based in Nevada.  EduPlex (the word) is constructed from Educational Complex - the education version of a Cineplex, for example.  The vision of EduPlex was to meet the crisis in Christian leadership training in the developing world by providing free transformational Biblical, theological and ministry educational materials that transform the heart and equip the mind to produce Christ-like mature leadership: to become the Free Biblical University for the developing world.   You can still access this website at www.eduplex.org.

Courseware Development 

The EduPlex courseware development system took several years of full-time programming to complete.  It included over 60,000 lines of source code, mostly in Visual Basic and SQL, plus a large dose of HTML and JavaScript.  The idea was to make courseware development essentially free, so that cash-strapped ministries could create courseware and offer them at low cost online.  At that time in history, a typical courseware development company charged over $20,000 per minute for courseware development.  Where we failed was in marketing what we had developed, which led us to consider going "for profit" and raising capital to make use of our technology.

EduPlex Interactive and EduPlex Connect 

As we were running low on funds - funds from my retirement savings - I laid off the 4 employees of EduPlex Ministries and hired a CEO for a for-profit startup.  Our goal was to establish an education company and raise venture capital, using our education system and video conferencing system technology as the core.  Unfortunately, the VC investors were quite jaded about education systems, so we dropped that, and focused on video conferencing.  There was some interest - we actually got a promise of $1 million from an angel group, if we could find a lead investor.

Sandpoint - Finally! 

In 2012, we sold our home in Nevada, spent a year roaming the west in a 40 foot diesel pusher RV, and ended up settling in Sandpoint, ID a year later.   A policeman friend had told us about Sandpoint, and, after researching it, we thought we better check it out!  We were not disappointed!  We sold the RV and bought a smaller one, which we still own.

We live at the base of a mountain, in tall pine trees.  It is a beautiful area, and we have our own well, septic, emergency backup power, and much more.

4 Years Later… 2017 

It is now fall 2017.  Much has happened in the brief 4 years in Sandpoint.  I got my Ham Radio license again (AF7YQ).  I started playing with Arduino.  I bought a DJI Phantom 3 Pro quadcopter (drone), and did some arial photography.  I studied and got my FAA UAS remote pilot license.  Now I do some commercial arial photography, mostly for real estate.  I lead a Bible Study - we did Romans, and are now working on Hebrews.

I now blog, having set up several blog sites for clients, now i have my own, Through My Lens, right on this site.  And, I am the Vice President of the local Ham Radio club, Bonner County Amateur Radio Club (BCARC), and teaching basic electronics and Arduino.   I developed a unique Repeater Controller system using Arduino which supports four different repeater setups including a link to a repeater network.  This required learning to use online tools for circuit capture, PCB layout, 3D drawings for the enclosure, and ordering PCB’s from China, parts from the new online Radio Shack (Amazon.com), and getting 3D parts printed.

I have more friends than I have ever had at any time in my life!  I don’t mean "work friends" but real friends.  And, I have had spiritual impact on men’s lives via my understanding of Paul’s Gospel - in Romans, which I learned from a number of sources, but the best is Andrew Farley.  If you feel your understanding of the Gospel is somewhat lacking - it ain’t working for you - check out his book "The Naked Gospel" or listen to his sermons.  I really had a life-change going through his Romans series with my men’s group!  Every Sunday morning, at 8AM local time (10AM Texas time) we tune in to Church Without Religion morning service, and listen to Andrew, via FaceTime Video on my Apple TV.  Then, we go to our local church.  If we had to miss one of these, it would be the latter.

We are now wanting to downsize, and simplify.  So, a new address change might be in the works!  But still in Sandpoint!

Hope you enjoyed my brief autobiography!  

Eric Anderson