I graduated from RISD in 1986 with a Bachelor in Fine Arts and a professional degree in Architecture.
Back then, we used drawing boards with parallel rulers to draft. Renderings and 3D drawings were constructed by hand using triangles and the "perspective method". Now, those beloved and once indispensable instruments are in storage gathering dust.

It's incredible how much things have changed since Cad Software and the computer were incorporated into our profession!

20 years later, while running a successful architectural firm in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I began to hear more and more about "Web 2.0" technology. YouTube, Flickr, Myspace and Facebook were becoming mainstream and I couldn't stop thinking about them. It was clear to me that by facilitating social interaction and broadcasting user-generated content these services would fundamentally change our daily lives and work environments.

At the time, my office was staffed by a great group of people, whose savviness and independence freed me up to delve into my new interest. I began to spend long hours in front of the screen getting familiar with the various services that captured my attention. What started as a part time investigation quickly became an exhaustive and exhausting one.

In May of 2007 I founded MyarchN with lots of enthusiasm, very little funds and a still developing understanding of the brave new world of "Web 2.0". And to top everything off, I took on this new challenge around the time of the greatest thrill in my life, the birth of my first child, Kai. Six months later, to celebrate our joy, my wife and I and Kai went to Sicily for a three month stay during which I continued working the site from the nearest Internet café.

At the end of the three months trip we didn't know how to leave Sicily, it had grown on us so much, but it was time to go back to Puerto Rico. MyarchN had a few hundred members back then, with Italians making up the bulk of the visitors. Talk about a coincidence!

Since then people from all over the world keep joining MyarchN to participate in the cultural and professional exchanges that go on in the virtual community. What started out as a simple idea has taken on a life of its own and is contributing to the layers of knowledge and culture that continuously flow between data centers and people.