About
While my online alias is “duckygator” my real name is Tom Roberts. I call Columbus home - it’s where I grew up and where I live now, although I’ve lived in a few other states at various points in my life.
My background is pretty varied. I graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering. After college, I went to work at Mead Central Research as a Corrosion Engineer. The next 5 years of my life was spent investigation corrosion, performing failure analysis, non-destructive testing, materials recommendations, and a variety of other related tasks for the Mead Paper Company in its paper plants across North America.
From there, I went to Trane Engineering Technologies labs in beautiful LaCrosse, Wisconsin. At Trane, I spent more time analyzing failures, assisting with braze audits in Trane’s manufacturing plants, and recommending materials for use in Trane air conditioning systems.
While I really loved this work - analyzing failures, often working under microscopes and scanning electron microscopes (SEM), performing laboratory experiments - I found myself spending more and more time playing with computers and teaching myself to program. This was the mid to late 90’s and the web was exploding. I started developing web sites for friends, neighbors, and small organizations during this time, and learned application development within Lotus Notes and Domino. I found metallurgical engineering and application development could both tap into my drive of understanding how things worked on the micro scale and using that knowledge to produce the properties you wanted on the macro level. Application development produced instant feedback though, and that led to my career change into IT Consulting.
I spent the next 4 years working with a consulting firm and developing applications for a variety of clients in Central Ohio. One of these clients was Lifestyle Communities, a developer of condominium and apartment communities. After developing a couple applications for Lifestyle Communities, they offered me a position as their Director of Information Technology, and I accepted. That was 2003.
At Lifestyle Communities, I grew the IT Department from one person (me) to six and built an environment and department of which I’m very proud. Along the way, I was additionally given the responsibilities of managing the Warranty Department, and was named chair of the inaugral Brand Committee. I also managed web development initiatives along the way. In the summer of 2008, I stepped away from my responsibilities in IT, Warranty/Customer Support, and Branding, to take the Director of Marketing position at Lifestyle Communities.
My backgrounds in engineering, research, experimenting, application development, customer service, and branding strongly influence my approach and vision for Marketing. My biggest interests are in the areas of social media and conversational marketing.
So Why Duckygator?
Back in my corrosion engineering days, I developed the nickname “rusty” and used this name in various online bulletin boards and forums. As the name “rusty” was often taken, this expanded to “rusty gator” (influenced by my love for Michael Bedard’s artwork). As my career changed away from corrosion and metallurgical engineering, it didn’t feel right to keep the name “rusty” so it changed to “duckygator”. An intentional side effect of this is the whole aspect of finding me online. Search for “Tom Roberts” and you’ll have to find me in the mass of other people named Tom Roberts. Search for “duckygator” and you’re going to find me.
What Else Do I Do?
I’ve always loved music. I was part of a 2 person band during college named “Repeat Offenders.” I sequenced keyboards and drum machines, while my roommate and best friend played guitar and sang. We had a great deal of fun and were legends in our own minds. At Mead, I met a drummer, traded in one of my keyboards (an Ensoniq Mirage sampler) for a bass and taught myself to play it. That drummer, a guitarist and I formed the band “Irrational Exuberance” and released the CD “Spin The Moon” in 2002.
I’ve got a wonderful wife who works in child abuse prevention, and two awesome daughters. I love doing puzzles for relaxation, and wish I had more time to fly kites.
