Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Milo Caruso. I am a full time web developer for Convention Data Services (CDS), a part time freelance web developer on the side, a painter on the side of that and a father and husband before any of it.

At CDS I develop soup to nuts registration pages that allow online as well as onsite registration for shows ranging from a few dozen to tens of thousands of registrants. I also specialize in integrations with third party vendors via web services.

For my freelance work I focus on a variety of sites from simple brochure style sites, to simple content management systems, to complete marketing portal sites.

What services/products do you offer?

Web Design & Development
Static & data driven websites
Simple CMS System for simple sites
Complete portal sites for directory style websites
A smattering of Flash
Surreal Paintings

Who/where is your audience?

At CDS our clients run the gamut from small associations to large multimedia corporations such as Nielsen Media. My freelance work on the other hand, focuses mostly on building sites for small to medium sized businesses from Maine to Brazil to Arizona. A lot of the businesses that I work with are sole proprietor or “mom and pops” with big dreams and smallish budgets.

What is the website?

Fulltime: http://www.conventiondataservices.com

Freelance: http://www.milocaruso.com
Painting: http://art.milocaruso.com (please excuse the appearance, it is under long term re-construction)

Well-Funded or Bootstrapped?

Birkenstock funded, not even a boot to strap, at least milocaruso.com, CDS is well funded.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?

It is hard to say as I am going in so many different directions. I see two primary paths. One is to continue to grow my own development business and go out on my own. The thought of this is exciting but daunting and honestly a bit frightening.

The other is to stay with CDS, which to be honest, is the best job that I have ever had. I love the environment, my co-workers and the work. CDS has offered me many professional growth opportunities and continues to challenge me on an everyday basis.

The 5 and 10 year markers are along one of those two paths, just in a way that I can’t quite see yet.

In either case I can see myself moving more and more from strictly “web pages” to application development, freestanding Windows apps, Java, GTK or web based. I see myself growing out of the public facing side of things and moving more into enterprise level applications, intranets and cross systems integrations.

I have worked on both style of projects and enjoy them both so it is really hard to say where things will take me or I take them.

I could be a famous painter in 10 years as well.

I will be the harried father of two teens in 10 years, that is the only thing I am sure of.

Where were you born - where do you live now?

I was born and raised in Lake George, NY and presently live in East Falmouth, MA.

PC or Mac?

Completely PC. If Adobe products would run well on Linux I would probably be on Ubuntu by now, but alas…

Where did you go to school?

SUNY New Paltz, Bachelor of Fine arts in Metal Smithing though I am primarily a painter. I happened to accidentally find web design because I wanted to have a site for my paintings. I do have a Certificate Of Internet Technologies that I earned by taking some course through NorthEastern Online, but I am predominantly self taught.

What Social Networks are you on?

MySpace
FaceBook
LinkedIN
Twitter
Orcut
Flickr
Picasa

Greatest invention ever?

Though technically not an invention in the mechanical sense, I would have to say language. Without language, ideas would be lost.

Person you believe has contributed most to the world of technology?

Nikola Tesla. Edison gets a lot of credit but in my opinion Tesla really did more for an extremely wide range of things from electricity to radio to energy transfer. If Edison had his way we might still be on DC current which would have had an extremely limiting affect of the development of the world as we know it today. If Tesla understood how important a patent was there might have never been a Marconi point either.

Where have you traveled in your life?

The only places out side of the US that I have gone are Bermuda & Canada. In the US though I have been a lot of places. 9 years ago my wife and I took a 2 month, 13K mile excursion across the country hitting 27 states and 2 Canadian provinces.

Why set up shop on Cape Cod?

I am a wash ashore sort. I moved to the Cape just after the aforementioned 2 month cross country trek. The Cape has been part of my wife’s life since the beginning and she introduced me to it. We decided that we wanted to live here, but had no good plan to make that work. We have made a good life for ourselves.

I think that the Cape is a very beautiful and dynamic place to be. The tech community is diverse and I am coming to learn that there are more of us out there than I had expected. Someone looking to be in a high pressure NYC style environment might not like it but for developing my business and raising my family it has been incredible.

5 Websites you go to every day?

Yankees.com/mlb.com
Twitter.com
Cnn.com
OSNews.com
HomeStarRunner.com (well, maybe not everyday but at least once a week)

What’s on your iPod right now?

I don’t own an iPod, though My wife does. My walkman phone has a variety though with Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Tool, Spoon, Korn, Floyd, U2 and Duran Duran.

What is on your desktop/screensaver right now?

A pack of Badass Little Girls with my daughter in the middle sporting a nasty black eye from a moon bounce collision, temporary tattoos, and no front teeth.

You are on a deserted island - do you bring a laptop or book?

Sketchbook, the batteries never die and I can write my own stories if I need to read.

Phone call or text message?

Phone call, too much emotion lost and too easily misunderstood without inflections.

Feel free to tell us anything else….?

I am an ardent Yankees fan. I wake up happy about this fact even with the title drought. I wake up with the knowledge that in my lifetime the Yankees have won more championships than most other teams in sports. And that number isn’t even half of the total championships since 1923. Sorry, Fravel asked.

Thank you for your time, Milo!

Thank you for inviting me to answer these questions!