About Me

My name is John Brock, the owner of Edge of X Web Designs.

I live in Pinehurst, NC. I grew up in this county, the son of two educators. I was a good student but most of my interest were outside of school. I was heavily involved in scouting, I got my Eagle Scout Honor when I was 14. I later became even more involved with the Order of the Arrow, a service organization within scouting. When I was 17, I was awarded the Vigil Honor, a recognition given to only 2% of the lodge each year.

I had an Apple Computer IIc when I was a teen, and I tinkered in languages like apple basic and some Pascal. But computers were just a small hobby for me. When I graduated High School I had no idea what I wanted to be. I went to Sandhills Community College. My sophomore year I became interested in psychology, so I transferred to UNC at Chapel Hill to see what I could make of it. My senior year I realized that psychology was just not for me, but I still had no idea what I wanted to be. To be fair, Al Gore "invented" the Internet my senior year, so its not like Web Designer was an option.

I spent the next eight years doing jobs along side people who did not have a Bachelors degree. I worked in a couple of pizza places and at the Pinehurst Country Club. While working at Pinehurst, I discovered two things that changed my life, the Internet and a girl from Arkansas who would later become my wife.

I went back to Sandhills part-time to get my A.A.S. in Computer Engineering, but soon the number of classes I could take at night was becoming an issue. I started to take Internet Technologies classes and I kind of slid into that degree in a very out-of-order style. I quickly became noticed by my instructors for my programming skills, and before I graduated I was teaching several classes for the curriculum, mainly Web Programming (Coldfusion) and Internet Multimedia (Flash).

I got a part-time Internship for Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) doing 5 websites for commercial clients. About this time is when I formed Edge of X. I was doing a web site for a local Band called Tobacco Trailer Blues, but a co-worker at CTC also hired me to make a series of small e-commerce sites to sell things like cable boxes, patio furniture and even some historical dolls.

CTC was a non-profit that dealt in government contracts, and the contract that kept them in the state expired, so our office closed. For a while I was still employed but eventually I stopped my employment.

Through an instructor at the college I got a job as a web programmer at a small company called Paradynamic Shift LLC. The second week I was there we changed the name to PDS LLC. We were a tech company with one client called Net Results Inc. We built software to import wireline telecom data from different carriers into a uniformed platform to assist clients in paying their bills and analyzing their cost. We were an outsourced telecom bill-paying department.

Over the next 14 years, PDS LLC was purchased by Net Results Inc. We went through a series of mergers and we became one of the more recognized names in the Telecom Expense Management (TEM) Industry. We evolved with the industry, especially as wireless technology emerged. I spent most of my time as the lead web developer of Foresight™, a Internet application that our clients used to manage and procure wireless services in a way that was tailored to thier companies business rules. One of my most rewarding experiences was working proactively with the client to find solutions that met their business rules.