Eric Evans was born in January of 1977 to Alice and Arvid Evans in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the United States. Even during his earliest years, technology fascinated him and he was constantly asking questions and watching as his father worked on computers and electronics. By age 5, Eric had studied his father's use of their Ohio Scientific computer enough that he one day snuck off when his parents weren't watching, powered the computer on, and had it up and ready to use only to find out he had to learn to read before he could do more...and so his computer journey began. By age 6, Eric had self-taught himself the BASIC programming language and was eager to learn more. Over the next few years, he taught himself C and Pascal, built his own IBM PC/XT computer and soon after his 286 and then 386, hacked the password for his father's account on his AT&T UNIX PC and dove headlong into learning UNIX and, more importantly, the entire POSIX standard. Through that AT&T UNIX PC's modem, Eric discovered the ability to dial out across the phone system to other computers and soon dove into the world of bulletin board systems (BBSs) and explored the capabilities of UUCP to link disparate computer systems into something greater than they could be by themselves. Within a few years, Eric had created a BBS of his own that quickly grew both in popularity and in capability. At it's peak, Eric's BBS had 2 dial in lines that were in use 24/7, was a hub on 6 different international FidoNet style networks, served thousands of files, had hundreds of games, had both incoming and outgoing TeleNet access, and was so popular that its users asked Eric to please let them give him money to keep it growing.
Eric's fascination with computers continued to grow and, as he often tells his fellow programmers, he learned and forgot more programming languages than most programmers will ever learn. He filled hard drive after hard drive with reams of code as he pursued each new grand idea. Whether it was developing his own operating system, creating a human-like artificial intelligence, or simply building libraries of functions to add to his programming toolbox, Eric was constantly working toward his next big programming idea.
At age 18, Eric fell in love for the first time and that motivated him to get his first job, rent a small apartment, and move out of his parents' home for the first time. His disorganized drive to randomly create whatever new bit of technology caught his attention began to change and become focused as he decided that the people around him who he cared about needed him to step up and make their lives better. That first love came and went but his desire to build something greater to help others continued to grow. Eric began to latch onto other programmers and tech enthusiasts who weren't as far down the path as he was and nurture their drive both through a genuine desire to help those who might be struggling as he had, and in a desperate desire to know any others who could converse with him on his level and possibly even help him create some of the grand things he had in his mind. Eric can still be found today on Facebook and WhatsApp sharing his knowledge and mentoring other programmers freely and he plans to continue doing so for the rest of his life.
Eric's first programming job was a short term contract to write a telephone billing program for internal use at VISA Corporation. Over one weekend, Eric taught himself the TCL programming language, decoded and wrote a parser for VISA's PBX logs, and wrote a program for them that would email callers, their superiors, and others in the company specific information about every call (whether allowed or in violation of the company's policies).
A few years later, Eric became a systems engineer at the first startup he worked for...Global NavComm Technology in San Jose, California. During his time with that company, he helped design GPS and radio-based asset tracking devices, wrote a server to collect and track device positions, helped write a GUI map to provide a easy user interface not just to track devices but to allow users to plan rubber banded routes for vehicles, display and log additional metrics from the tracked devices, and even began work on reverse communication from the mapping app to the devices for store and forward messaging to delivery drivers. The company's reputation grew enough that Pyramid GPS and Garmin both offered to buy them. Unfortunately, the company's president embezzled money and, as often happens with startups, the company went out of business before even making its first sale.
Over the next few decades, Eric worked for a variety of companies ranging from local hardware stores to Fortune 500 companies like Safeway/Albertsons in capacities ranging from field service technician all the way up to being one of 3 IT managers for Safeway's NorCal division where he ran teams of technicians in roughtly 100 stores in several states. After Safeway was merged into the Albertson's family of companies, the company tried to tighten their proverbial belts and cut down the 3 managers running all of IT for NorCal to 2. As Eric's role in the company had grown far beyond his job's official responsibilities to include helping to design new software for internal use, working as a go between for managers in various other technical parts of the company, diagnosing and improving the function of corporate servers, teaching technicians and managers in other divisions, and a myriad of other tasks, during the interview to decide which of the 3 managers would be let go, Eric made a plea for his superiors to please help him move into a job position where he could better use his skills to aid the company as a whole. Rather than help Eric realize the potential of what he could do to help the company, his boss decided that Eric was unhappy in his role and terminated his employment. Eric took his generous severance package and moved his family to Prescott Valley, Arizona where he told everyone he was retired and began working toward starting several companies of his own (Thinkers Journal Incorporated, and Evans Laboratories Incorporated).
Thinkers Journal Incorporated is a non-profit corporation founded by Eric Evans to provide tooling and services to enable thinkers (currently mainly programmers) everywhere. The corporation owns ThinkersJournal.com (currently parked via DynaDot and unused) and Thinkers Journal Incorporated is building the software infrastructure from scratch to set up multi-cloud servers around the world to host ThinkersJournal's offerings on. If you would like to know more, please see our ThinkersJournal Facebook group or ask Eric directly on Facebook.
Evans Laboratories Incorporated is Eric's own development laboratory where he works on all manner of new hardware and software for fun and profit. Currently, most of the work at Evans Laboratories Incorporated has been paused while Eric devotes his time to ThinkersJournal.