Jack Parkinson

Skills

Data Science and AI/ML

Coding and IT Support

Media and Office Systems

I'm familiar with videography, photography, and graphic design and I can write and edit text for the eye or the ear.

I have used LibreOffice extensively for personal work - organizing projects, writing stories and blogs, and sharing documents online. I'm also a Microsoft Office Specialist in Word and Excel.


Work History

Education and Early Career

I went to college for journalism because I enjoyed learning about new things and I wanted to write without being a starving artist. In hindsight, this was not a smart idea - but I still learned to interview people, write many different types of articles, and create/edit content for the college newspaper, website, and radio station.

I got an internship at the magazine Alternatives Journal, and after that I nearly scored a good job at an agricultural magazine - but there is no room for new blood in the magazine industry.

I went back to college to switch my skills into computer programming, graduating from a software engineering program in 2020. Obviously the pandemic made it hard to find work, and it took me 2 years of job searching before I got anything concrete.

I worked at a company called Conexiom as a "Connection Developer", which meant I told a computer system how to read information from PDFs and text files, then send the output to a vendor's inventory system. This required a lot of high-order logical thinking to recognize patterns [address, city, state] rather than getting hung up on literals [123 Main St W, New York, New York].

It was a good place and I learned a lot - collaborating with remote teams, working with extremely specialized proprietary software, solving problems while meeting quotas - but the company underwent multiple waves of layoffs in late 2022-2023.


Data Science and Continued Growth

However, an entrepreneurship/networking group I was in introduced me to the Shaolin AI AI/ML course, which was very promising. After 24 weeks I emerged with a working knowledge of many topics that had been totally arcane to me before.

Shaolin isn't a typical boot camp - the pace of learning is much faster, and we don't do rote exercises from a book. I was exposed to the entire spectrum of AI/ML theory and history, and I did practical work on every part of it.

Have a look at my Projects to see what I've accomplished.


Hobbies

I love to read and write, and some of my favorite novels are Watership Down, The Hobbit, and Brian Jacques's Redwall adventures.

I'm an avid gamer as well, especially tabletop RPGs. I got my start playing Dungeons & Dragons like many people, but my favorite systems are Feng Shui and Shadows Over Sol. If you know either system, you are a true connoisseur and you have my respect.

Of course I play video games too, mostly fighting games like old Guilty Gear for hardcore style and action, and newer indie games for novel experiences. I actually enjoy contributing to wiki pages for games I play frequently - there's an entire community of people who enjoy documenting every little detail.

I also have a YouTube channel where you can find reviews, analysis, and other topics which strike my interest. Check that out on the Media page.