Ron Baker

• Mostly working only with his wife, Teresa, Ron built his family's home.
• He also built his 750-square-foot greenhouse, a backyard recording studio, and a freestanding workshop that includes a small video studio.
• Ron uses various IoT technologies to unobtrusively automate his home, music studio, and various aspects of the family's hobby farm/homestead, including several hydroponics systems and a plan for small-scale tilapia-raising.

Experience

Ron's career is a roadmap to the intersection of off-beat home construction, writing, technology, media, and creativity. Ron sold his first article to a national computer magazine around age 15. Soon thereafter, he was the news editor for the USC student newspaper. He then paused his writing career to wander all over the I.T. industry map, eventually running web services for a regional publisher. As a multimedia producer for a large staffing firm in the late nineties, he developed interactive media for national marketing campaigns and served on a small advisory panel for Adobe's Authorware platform. The focus on media continued during his brief ownership of an Atlanta-area media agency, and in 2001, he became the web services manager for Tillman Allen Greer, a metro Atlanta marketing firm. Returning to his writing roots, he later took the position of managing editor of Gwinnett Magazine, a regional print and online publication owned by Tillman Allen Greer. Pandemic layoffs led him to refocus on creativity, and he has hand-built his family's home to facilitate creativity in writing, data-oriented product evaluations, and audio engineering centered around his wife's singing talents and the needs of his church.

Education

Ron studied English at Furman University, then transferred to the University of South Carolina to focus more directly on journalism, completing the coursework in 1993.