237 - Devon Hillard

Devon Hillard is a Senior Cloud Application Architect at Amazon Web Services.  Previously he founded several companies including Black Magic Consulting, and the Oracle Commerce managed hosting company Sparkred (now Pivotree).

With much of his 24 year career focused on enterprise eCommerce, application development, architecture, and infrastructure, he enjoys designing, building, and deploying applications of all sizes and complexities.  He has presented at many conferences, open sourced many tools and projects, and mentored several startups.

With the opportunity to setup his home office in his new home however he liked, he indulged his long time love of Cyberpunk and Tron Legacy design aesthetics.  The room is mostly gloss white, with LED lighting, and a relatively clean and minimalist environment.

Equipment:

• Apple MacBook Pro M1 Max 16” (64 GB, 4TB)
• CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 Dock
• Topping D90SE DAC
• AudioEngine A5 Speakers and S8 Subwoofer
• WooAudio Fireflies WA7 Headphone Tube Amplifier
• Beyerdynamic DT 880 600 ohm headphones
• Stream Deck
• 3 BenQ PD3220U 32” 4K Displays on Erogton arms providing almost 25 million pixels
• Nanoleaf and Hue LED lighting through the room, with programmed scenes
• Apple Magic Trackpad
• Vissles LP85 Keyboard
• Logitech Brio Webcam
• Gunnar Computer Glasses
• Amazon Echo Dot
• Herman Miller Aeron Chair
• Desk Terra 2s Standing Desk
• 1955 Curata Type 1 Calculator
  

Tools:

• VSCode
• Craft
• Slack
• OmniFocus
• Tidal/Apple Music
• LucidChart
• AWS
• SpringBoot
• Micronaut
• NodeJS
• Docker
  

What is your favorite item in your workspace?

Ignoring the amazing core engine of the MacBookPro, I’d have to say either the Curta calculator, which is a fascinating piece of history, and gives me something to fiddle with while I’m on calls or just thinking, or the AudioEngine speakers which provide an absolutely amazing music experience while I work.‍

How do you spark creativity?

While my office is perfect for me to focus and get into a Flow state, a lot of my creative and problem solving process happens while walking around the ranch with my dog, or sitting on the deck watching the prairie.  I feel very lucky to live in such a beautiful place as Colorado, and to be able to work from home.

How do you manage work-life balance?

In the past, while growing my old company Sparkred, I was VERY bad at this.  I’ve learned a good lesson from the downstream impacts of letting the work take over, so I am careful to ensure that I’m getting plenty of time with my wonderful and supportive wife, and time to recharge myself.  Generally I like what I do, so it’s easy to lose track of time on a project.  But I also have a rich life outside of work, and a ever present todo list around the ranch, so I think I have a pretty good balance worked out.  The actually time ebbs and flows, but over the long run I think I am in a healthy and happy place.