In September 2019, Saturn brought Michael Spredemann, a new web site and app developer on board. It will come as no surprise that Michael, who possesses an easy-going personality and the ability to move seamlessly from extreme concentration to light-hearted tomfoolery, has a captivating career trajectory. For starters, he’s gone from graphic arts student to accomplished bartender to creator/owner of a social event community called Mile High Adventures that garnered over 5,000 memberships. At Mile High Adventures, Michael organized over 700 events, taking members on exciting outings like sky diving excursions, spelunking and snorkeling adventures and even a trip to Fiji.
After seven years of running the social community, Michael says membership interest started to wind down. Never afraid of trying new things, Michael began tinkering with the group’s web site to see if he could give it new life. Membership stayed flat, but a business owner who liked the site’s changes perked up. He asked Michael for web assistance, and soon Michael opened Web Geek Café, a venture in which he helped business owners understand the sites they had bought.
From there, Michael worked as a freelance developer and at web shops, continuing to build his web development knowledge in a wide variety of content management platforms as well as custom stand-alone applications. Michael then moved to the agency world and ultimately the Saturn Lounge where he leans on his good graphic sense, his strong development background and his passion to stay current with programming trends to build beautiful web sites for Saturn’s broad client base. Michael admits the mix of unique B2C and B2B clients that Saturn draws in is a plus. “There’s always new content and always a new challenge,” he says, “and that’s something I love.”
After Michael told me his story, we had time for a few questions:
Q: Obviously, you love traveling. Where did you go on your last trip?
A: My wife is from Peru, and her brother, a Peruvian diplomat, lives in South Korea. Last August we had the opportunity to visit her brother in Seoul for four weeks.
Q: What’s the craziest thing you’ve eaten on a trip?
A: I tried fried Palm Weevil larvae in Peru. It tasted like greasy pork.
Q: What’s the hardest web project you’ve ever worked on?
A: It was a medical app that had to hold medical information securely every step of the way. It was a security nightmare.
Q: What’s the biggest trend you see in site development?
A: People are now extremely conscious of speed, layout, and accessibility of the mobile experience because so many people access content only through their phones.
Q: What trends are you excited about on the horizon?
A: I’m very intrigued by portable web apps, which are web sites and applications that can be installed on any device, both mobile and desktop, using the same code base.