Hi! We are Fastspot.

Tracey Halvorsen is a consultant, designer, painter, author, and speaker. Her background in visual art and computer-based technology and her hands-on style of leadership has helped Fastspot consistently create award-winning and industry recognized websites, applications and marketing campaigns.

Tracey has been a speaker and presenter at numerous industry events and conferences. Her speaking career started with the groundbreaking premiere of the interactive project "Memoire" at NYC's 2001 Flash Forward conference, which went on to win the coveted Flash Film Festival award in Amsterdam. She was a panelist on one of 2010 SXSW’s most talked about presentations entitled, “We F*cked Up.  Now What?  Exploring Failure with Happy Cog and Friends” and spoke at the 2010 NYC Case Summit for Advancement Leaders.

Halvorsen, known for her innovative thinking and creative problem solving, is never short on opinions or ways to make things better, and she shares these observations in her blog, Think Design Interact. She is also currently an active board member with the Greater Baltimore Tech Council, seeking to enhance Baltimore's national visibility and attraction as a technology and cultural hub.

Tracey keeps her focus on big-picture trends and how business is evolving and transforming within the interactive marketing arena. She ensures Fastspot engages with the "right" clients and works to inspire her team and colleagues to deliver outstanding results.

A native of Bethesda, Maryland, Tracey earned a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. She also spent time studying painting and sculpture in Lacoste, France, but her French is limited to "I'd like a beer, please."

@traceyhalvorsen
linkedin.com/in/traceyhalvorsen

As one of Fastspot's senior developers and software engineers, Tim oversees Fastspot's award-winning content management system, BigTree. Tim has more than fourteen years of technology development experience for a range of high- profile companies and clients.

At Fastspot, Tim has conceived and developed a wide range of Websites and applications. He is skilled in programming languages and platforms including PHP, SQL, MySQL, JavaScript, VB6, VB.Net, ASP, ColdFusion, C, Objective-C, HTML / XHTML / XML and CSS. His programming career began during the field’s early emergence, starting with developing websites in HTML and then moving on to programming Texas Instruments calculators, 16 years ago. Tim progressed to learning Z80 assembly after TI-BASIC and then PHP, SQL and JavaScript. He developed and maintained an early TI development site, TI-News, sharing programming knowledge with the fast evolving community centered around TI devices. Tim also became skilled in VB6 and .Net and developed custom side scrolling games similar to the Mario-type games popular at the time. He combined these skill sets with ASP to develop eLister Pro, a software package allowing users to list and track their eBay auctions along with invoicing their clients and tracking profits in the same familiar eBay-like environment.

Tim joined Fastspot in 2007 and immediately began advancing the core foundation of BigTree CMS. He has been the lead BigTree engineer since 2007, as well as creating the popular web commenting program, Denote. Tim also provides support to client projects which require advanced programming solutions. Tim’s hands on experience and direct interaction with Fastspot’s client base ensures his big picture goals for BigTree and other applications and software products are grounded in user requirements and emerging industry trends. He is a proponent of the open source community and ideals, and is a frequent contributor to the BigTree developer forums and evolving documentation and change logs.

An avid gamer and musician, Tim plays guitar, bass, and keyboards.

@timbuckingham

Kim manages all aspects of a project, from inception to launch to long-term support and maintenance. She draws on organizational and workflow strategies that she developed while working in the mortgage industry; she also applies her extensive experience in sales and marketing to her work. She's skillfully shepherded such projects as Woodberry Kitchen, HistoryMiami, and the Walters Art Museum's Works of Art site. Her attention to detail and grasp of usability empower her to make sure that Fastspot's projects evolve on schedule and within scope, as well as achieve the high level of quality that Fastspot is known for delivering.

A native of Ohio, Kim played basketball for much of her life, including at Ashland University, where she earned a BA in communications and business. In her work at Fastspot, she's a true team player, always willing to share knowledge and expertise.

Calea possesses a fluent knowledge of multiple visual languages: information graphics, photography, identity, print, book and experience design.  Her command of color, typography, and information organization is refreshingly original yet accessible and functional.  Calea establishes the visual tone of interactive projects through design comps, visual explorations, and art production.  In addition to graphic design, she also has a strong interest in photography and spent a semester studying in Paris.  Calea is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Graphic Design.

Calea has applied her skills to such projects as Woodberry Kitchen, College of Notre Dame, and Baltimore Fishbowl. Her talent for working collaboratively and delivering just what our clients need is invaluable, as are her sense of humor and easygoing nature.

@ckevlin

Matt Hisamoto grew up on the Bay in Southern Maryland, before moving to North Carolina. He learned 3D modeling/animation in high school, alongside some basic HTML. He attended NC State's College of Design, starting out pursuing animation and then shifting to a focus on Flash and ActionScript programming. Like most seasoned web professionals, he picked up most of his real-world web skills working on the side—mastering CSS in a summer redesigning the NCSU lacrosse team website. An internship and a job later, Matt was designing and building websites, games and applications in Flash, with PHP and MySQL, while also continuing to hone his skills in HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Matt spent two years at McKinney, an ad agency in Durham, where he worked on the acclaimed interactive piece "SPENT," the startup Dognition, and picked up some Ruby on Rails skills while he was at it.

Matt is a developer at Fastspot, but his focus doesn't begin and end with code. Matt brings a high level of skill in user experience design to everything he builds, and his combined appreciation for code and design made him an instant perfect fit for Fastspot. Matt is passionate about how things work, and ensuring things are done the best way possible. A craftsman at heart, he is always a champion of the user experience and the quality of the build when building interactive projects at Fastspot.

A few things about Matt:

He played lacrosse in high school and college, and hockey recreationally.
Matt has always had a huge affinity for Maryland, and he's thrilled to be back in his home state.
He's never left the country, but this will change soon!
He's got one of the coolest last names around, and it's really fun to say out loud. It's Japanese. He promises.

Stella makes frequent visits to the office, always checking in with each of us to say hello … and see what snacks we might have. While we still can't get her to program Websites or send invoices, she does provide soothing background noise (aka snoring) while we're working.