Portfolio --> Brendan O'Connor

About

I am from the blue mountains of the Shenandoah Valley, in VA, and have a deep-running love for American and Irish folk music, solidarity politics, breakfasts of all kinds, and economix (i.e., economics done differently, like in employee-owned businesses). When I lived in Nashville, TN and built relationships with other Southerners, I increasingly felt a sense of place and purpose in the South.

In 2016, I made a home in Selma, AL, where there are good folks and there's good work to be done. While there, I began exploring the intersection of technology and cooperative economics (more on that journey in the Backstory section below). I moved to Durham in Nov. of 2021 with a new AL puppy, Inis, to start a next season closer to some family and friends.

Soon after, I applied and was accepted into Code the Dream, where I began learning JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, etc. I finished an advanced React.js course at CTD in March of 2023, followed soon after by a CTD Practicum, where I was a part of a team of 8 who met twice weekly for eight weeks, using principles of Agile development, CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment), and GitHub version control to build a game called "Phrazel" with WebSockets (see more on Phrazel and my other development work in the Projects section below.

After some attempts to make my way into the tech cooperative world--and many job applications--I felt I was hitting a dead-end (call it age, AI, and/or fate 🤷🏻). My dream had always been to help develop some kind of local, grassroots setting--likely a co-op--that builds neighborhood cohesion for the sake of a more democratic society. So I returned to some of my roots, heading back to graduate school in 2024 at UNC Charlotte to build on my master's in community psychology. I'm working to earn a PhD in the field, focusing on understanding and developing practices, interventions, and settings that support social cohesion, sense of community, and both political and economic democracy. You can see my UNCC profile here for more context.

Given that, as noted above, I won't be updating this site much if any more, so please check out my LinkedIn account to see the latest.

Experience

See below for my work experience by topic area, or check out my LinkedIn profile to see where I've worked over the years and some of the trainings and education that have helped shape me.

Ongoing & Past work

Community Psychologist + Writer: From a master's & PhD-in-progress in community psych to various forms of research & writing for the sake of grassroots action. Focuses include:

Participatory action research
Popular & academic publications & a broad range of poetry
Research for public life & democracy (both political & economic)

Co-op Developer + Cultural Organizer: Over a decade of community organizing experience, focused on racial equity & building a more democractic economy & political system, with a strong cultural organizing bent; helped raise over $5 million to put back into local community & economic development. Focuses include:

Economic organizing & cooperative business development
Cultural organizing
Racial equity work & training

Food Worker + Social Entrepreneur: Years working in & learning food systems, from growing & preparing food to helping forge new ways ahead for our democracy over the dinner table--especially in ways that mash-up food & culture, while avoiding watering down our differences OR overstating them. Focuses include:

Pop-up food + culture events
Community farming
Restaurant work

Emerging work

Research + Cultural Organizing + New Economies: What this will be, only time will tell. I hope to continue working in applied research & action, public policy, &/or other avenues helping develop models for new forms of social / cultural infrastructure, co-ops, & democratic praxis.

Skills

Projects

As noted above, please see LinkedIn for the latest!

--> Global.coop Directory: See a beta site for a user-generated, global directory of cooperatives deployed here (note you will need to follow README instructions here to deploy the full project & submit new co-ops). The full working project utilizes a SQLite database, Node.js, & Express.

--> Phrazel WebSockets Game: Learn all about Phrazel, a multi-player word game, here on the deployed site & here on GitHub. The project utilizes WebSockets (Socket.io), React, Node.js, Express, & various APIs.

--> Other Programming: See my GitHub repos here for more on these & other projects--from a beta food delivery app (see related repos here & an overview of the project here) & a React project to-do list, to a React news filter & the portfolio website you are on now (built with Javascript, CSS & HTML, etc.).

--> Creative Projects: See some creative projects of mine, from programming to woodworking and beyond, here on Behance, and below for some P5.js & related design tinkering:

Some Backstory

I was new to coding one I started on this process a few years back, though I have always been intrigued by technology. My first formal involvement in tech-related work came through the cooperative sector--specifically through something called "platform cooperatives," where workers and/or users have an ownership stake in tech companies. I took a class through The New School and Mondgragon University in 2020 called "Platform Cooperatives Now."

This led me into a volunteer project seeking to develop a co-op food delivery app. I was more involved in coordinating the volunteer software developers among us, but it gave me a taste for the grounded quality of building code and the role coding can play in a modern economy. I then applied and was accepted into Code the Dream (CTD), as noted above. Circle back up to the About section above to see the rest of the story from there...

Connect

Find me online at:

Brendan O'Connor