Not a lot of people can say they’ve provided decor for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or carried Call of Duty equipment in black boxes to hide it from the press. Patrick Keenan has done both. So how do you go from COD release parties to building fully customized web applications for federal clients? You follow that unrelenting itch to learn and build.

Q. You’re a Software Engineer at Urban Emu. What does a typical day look like for you?

A. I typically start my day by checking for updates on current projects. Our developers are spread out in different time zones, so updates often come in overnight. Most of the projects I work on are custom “from the ground up” web applications solving very specific problems for our clients. When we build applications like this, we often go through several iterations of a feature before dialing in on the final output that makes it onto the website, so the majority of my work revolves around research. I’ll spend hours googling topics I’m unfamiliar with, reading blog posts, and watching videos as a way to learn more about best practices or common patterns. If the research phase of a project is complete and I’m working on a specific task, I’ll usually put on a pair of headphones and start coding.

Q. How did you first get started in development work?

A. I used to run a vinyl wrapping business with my brother. We wrapped the inside of event spaces in New York with custom or branded designs. We were involved with some pretty cool events. Some notable installations included the windows for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the Ellen DeGeneres show, an offsite live performance for the Grammys, multiple album release parties, and a live tournament for a new Call Of Duty game where we had to sign NDAs and transport items in black boxes to prevent the details of the game to be leaked before the official announcement.

In the hopes of taking the business to the next level, I started to dabble in web development so we could offer our clients a live quote experience. It proved to be much harder than I expected. In 2020 we had to close our doors because all in-person events were indefinitely canceled. I immediately went into Real Estate since I had my real estate license and once again started to build a CRM tool for a senior real estate agent in my office. I eventually realized I loved building custom web applications and decided to dive deeper into learning as much as I could.

Q. I know a bit about real estate since I have family in that field. There’s a huge need for customization. What kind of CRM tool did you build?

A. It was basically a CRM for showing houses. It was common to have to show several houses back-to-back spread out all across the state. Planning the itinerary and handling showing statuses for each location took several hours. To solve the issue, I built a mapping tool that tracked and displayed all of the showings with their status and the best routes/estimated time to the next stop. I eventually launched the application as a product and had several beta users.

Q. It’s interesting how much of your journey comes down to self-motivation and building—managing a company and teaching yourself to code, getting your real estate license, building custom CRMs, and now building custom sites and apps at Urban Emu. Have you always been interested in building and development?

A. Without realizing it, I’ve always been interested in how things work. I love to take stuff apart and rebuild it as a way to get familiar with whatever it is I’m tinkering with. While I was in high school, I started a company called Silver Bay Longboards and built skateboards in my basement to sell online. When I graduated from college and moved into my first apartment, I no longer had the space to build but still craved the feeling of creating something from scratch. For some reason, I had a book on Python Programming and decided to give it a try. The first few chapters were all small tutorials for building simple programs and I immediately fell in love with the fact I can still build stuff, just in a different way.

Q. Another building business! Seems like you found a calling. Do you have a philosophy or process that you use for each new development project?

A. I try to follow the influential developers in the space when creating any new project. The development space changes so rapidly and everyone online has an opinion about how to best structure an application using a new framework or package. Instead of constantly jumping around to new technologies, I’ve learned to test things in my free time before introducing them to our client work. After a couple of years of playing around with new stuff, I’ve found processes that work for me, and I’m also always willing to try something new.

Q. What do you see as the future of development work?

A. I think developers will be forced to specialize in certain areas of concentration. I know a lot of people already specialize, but I think it will be mandatory to compete against AI in the future. As of now, I find AI tools to be very helpful for my day-to-day work, and usually lean on them to speed up repetitive work. I’m very excited about all of the new changes and have been diving deep into how AI can be applied to our client work.

Q. Speaking of learning and growing, I know you recently completed a 508 certification course. Can you tell me about that? What sparked your interest in 508 compliance?

A. I took the 508 course at the recommendation of my manager here at Urban Emu. It was one of the most eye-opening courses I’ve taken, and it really shed light on the importance of making a website accessible to everyone.

Q. What’s your favorite thing about working at Urban Emu? 

A. I like the challenges that come with day-to-day work. I’m a problem solver at heart and love to discuss issues and find solutions for our clients. I also love the broad range of projects we get to work on, from WordPress to custom AI applications. It’s exciting to work with the latest technologies.

We’re so grateful to have Patrick on our team to create custom web applications for our clients. Stay tuned for more teammate spotlights.