About Michael Kupietz, Certified FileMaker Pro Developer, supporting businesses both locally in the San Francisco area and nationwide
Michael Kupietz has been a computer programmer for over 35 years, and has offered FileMaker Pro app development, server support, and web development to clients onsite locally in the San Francisco area and nationwide via remote work since 1996. Detailed past project experience, CV & employment history is available on the Michael Kupietz, Certified FileMaker Pro Developer home page.
Michael has received rave and 5-star Google business reviews from clients in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, Marin County and elsewhere for his clear communication skills with nontechnical users, ability to quickly and easily solve problems, and dedication to providing a level of value, flexibility, and highly personalized attention to every client’s needs that clients formerly used to dealing with agencies or less-experienced consultants say they’ve never received anything close to. Clients served have spanned all sizes and budgets from sole proprietors, family businesses and 501(c)(3) nonprofits, up through F500 corporations.
Other skills and professional experience include expertise in full-stack web development (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, PERL, XML/XSLT, and SEO search engine optimization, in various degrees), many years of MacOS and Linux platform administration and troubleshooting, general TCP/IP networking expertise, and years of general IT support and user training experience.
Current professional certifications held:
- Certified Expert Claris FileMaker Pro App Developer. Verification: https://www.credly.com/badges/4946b237-c15f-44f7-a5bf-81763e61d506/public_url
- Certified Associate Claris FileMaker Pro Server Administrator (Note: “Associate” is currently the most advanced FileMaker Server certification offered.) Verification: https://www.credly.com/badges/2f913976-6607-4877-b2b4-ef3caeafc28a/public_url
- Certified Javascript Algorithms And Data Structures Developer. Verification: https://www.freecodecamp.org/certification/Kupietz/javascript-algorithms-and-data-structures-v8
Away from the mouse & keyboard, Mike secretly plays a mean guitar, has an album of avant-garde electronic music perpetually nearing completion, dabbles in writing and visual art, and, resolutely determined to find a way to maintain his aura of relentless cool despite the onset of tragically unhip middle age, has, lately, become an aspiring saxophonist. He also maintains a website showcasing his personal art, music, and writing hobbies at Michael Kupietz Arts + Code, which, along with this present site and a few others, he self-hosts at home on a Debian 12 web server running a LAMP stack and WordPress.
A Personal Note: Why I’m a FileMaker Pro Developer
Greetings from beautiful San Francisco! Hello! Thanks for browsing around my site, and taking a moment to acquaint yourself with me and my FileMaker Pro development, IT consulting, and full-stack web development services.
I’ve loved computer programming since my folks had the foresight to enroll me in computer classes as a kid and got me my first computer in sixth grade, all the way back in the 1970s — an 8k Commodore PET (the “old ROMs” version with the gray screen, built-in cassette tape drive and tiny “chicklet” keyboard, not that newfangled “new ROMs” version with the full-sized keyboard and slick green CRT!) I was literally the first kid on my block to have a personal computer… by about 5 years. It wasn’t like today. Back then, to get to a computer store, we had to walk seven miles in the snow, uphill both ways. And we didn’t have an iPod loaded up with Frank Ocean MP3s on it to keep us entertained along the way… we had to drag Kool & The Gang along, in person… you kids don’t know how easy you have it.
I started working with FileMaker Pro in 1994, helping the manager of the building I lived in get his accounting in order, and writing a small database to help his front desk clerks close out their shifts. I moved to San Francisco a few years later, and not long after, I joined the Berkeley Macintosh User Group‘s FileMaker Special Interest Group, which met every couple of weeks to discuss FMP development. As it turned out, by that time I was one of the more experienced FileMaker users there, and I wound up leading a lot of discussions and answering a lot of Q&A. That soon led to offers of freelance projects, which led to more word-of-mouth, and before I knew it, a nerdy hobby had become my chief source of income for the next 20+ years (and counting.) Talk about lucky. I posted my resume on Craigslist every few weeks, followed a few years later by posting it on the front page of this website where you still see it, almost 20 years later, still nearly unchanged since then, except for a growing list of completed projects.
I love my work. I love to solve problems. I love to help people figure out how the complicated parts of their jobs could be made easier. I love showing them where they’re doing unnecessary duplicate work, and how we can avoid that. And once the problems are defined, of course I love the technical challenges and creativity of programming. And I definitely love the variety of different businesses and people I get to work with.
And, simply put, I really love that my job, when all is said and done, is to make other people’s jobs easier. My clients are grateful. I know there’s a lot of thankless jobs out there, and I lucked into the opposite of that. It’s really rewarding.
I’m not a marketer, I’m a programmer — take a look at this website, there’s not much by way of advertising copy anywhere on here, mostly just straight facts — so this isn’t hype, it’s just the truth.
FileMaker Pro has been, for me, the ideal thing to specialize in. While FileMaker has certainly grown more complex & powerful over the years, it’s still kept a certain ease of rapid development that makes it sometimes feel more like a creative tool than a technical one. I noticed early on that, of all the different IT areas I’m familiar with, for some reason FileMaker Pro development seems to be the one that attracts the most creative people — folks who, in their off hours, also happened to be musicians like myself, painters, writers, etc. There’s just more of an immediate functional payoff with FileMaker, in terms of seeing your ideas realized more easily, with far fewer abstract technical concerns to distract from what you want to accomplish, than with most comparable tools. That makes it a very natural tool for people who enjoy creative challenges. It’s very easy to develop in and experiment with.
I think a lot of businesses like it for that reason, too, since whoever in their organization has the most contact with their database often easily picks up the skill to make minor changes themselves, which is a nice plus.
…Ok, you got me, maybe I’m being a *bit* of a marketer here. It’s all true, though.
Thanks again for visiting my website, please drop me a line if there’s anything I can help you out with.
Michael E. Kupietz, Certified FileMaker Pro Consultant & Full-Stack Web Developer
Custom FileMaker Pro applications & web development, training, & support for large and small businesses, individuals, and nonprofits · based in San Francisco, CA, and serving clients nationwide since 1998
Telephone: (415) 545-8743
Email: [email protected]
