About Me

I'm Jeff Sawyer, a software engineer and writer based in the Bay Area. I've spent my career at the intersection of technology and community, building things for people I care about. When I'm not coding or writing, you can find me exploring the outdoors, fishing, rollerblading, running, or spending time with my family.

The Early Years

I was introduced to computers in the 80s and quickly became obsessed with programming in Pascal. I spent countless hours developing video game concepts: a side-scrolling platformer, an RPG, a Street Fighter 2 clone, and even an art tool to generate sprite sheets and backgrounds. Each project taught me something new about game design and building tools that solved real problems.

When BBSs were all the rage, I ran my own Bulletin Board System using PCBoard. Using PCBoard's scripting language called PPL (PCBoard Programming Language), I created a "Rumors 2000" PPE (PCBoard Programming Executable). This allowed users to submit one-line rumors or jokes that would then be randomly shown at the bottom of the BBSs menu.

Building Communities

I started inline skating in 1995 and instantly became passionate about the sport. I went on to build my first full-fledged website around the year 2000 called Havenskate.com, which at its peak received around 350,000 hits a month. The early versions included a Perl script I wrote called Rumors 5000 that recreated the Rumors 2000 feature from my old BBS. I learned a lot about developing business relationships while working on Havenskate.com: reaching out to skaters and business owners for interviews and partnerships, working with companies on product reviews, and coordinating exclusive content with game producers.

Through Havenskate.com, I got the opportunity to learn PHP and MySQL, developing a content management system based on those technologies. This created one of the first social networks for rollerbladers, designed to reach out and give back to the community and sport that had brought me so much joy.

In 2004, I graduated from San Jose State University with a double major in Business Marketing and Film. This education provided the foundation for everything that came after.

In 2007, I reunited with an old skating friend and we created Rollerhome.com, a new platform built on an improved CMS that featured user-submittable news and a fresh design. It represented the next evolution of what we'd learned from the Havenskate era.

Career & Education

I've had the opportunity to work with amazing companies including Cisco, PlayStation, Namco, Trion Worlds, Epic for Kids and most recently Hasbro. My experience spans product development, creative direction, gaming, publishing, and technology infrastructure.

What I've learned across all these roles is that the best products come from understanding real people, listening to communities, and solving genuine problems. Whether it was building tools for skaters, creating games, or working on infrastructure at scale, the through-line has always been about the impact I can have on the communities I enjoy.