Fellow Members and Guests,
Discoverer, architect, author, designer, father, founder, initiator, innovator, inventor, maker, mastermind, pioneer, producer, begetter.
My name is Joseph Evans and I consider myself an originator.
Originally from Redwood Falls, I grew up with my mother and 3 siblings which I was the youngest of.
I spent my time as a child riding bike through Ramsey Park to the pool.
Without a lot of friends, I typically resorted to returning home for some time on my Super Nintendo.
To entertain myself I developed a lot of hobbies over the years including the habit of destroying and fixing everything I could get my hands on.
What started with Legos, turned into bikes, computers, skateboards, cars, as well as my very own life.
This self-destructive behavior seems to have begun at about the age of twelve.
By age fourteen I was in my first institute for “behavioral issues” and highly medicated.
In 2006 I earned my first Felony conviction.
Being institutionalized throughout the school year I dropped out and obtained my GED.
Eventually being released and allowed to remain on house arrest for the duration of my trial, I was contacted by a National Guard recruiter.
Returning to court they had agreed to drop the felony in Lou of my joining the military, as a combat engineer, specializing in explosives and building bridges.
I returned from Fort Lost in the Woods Missouri with a certificate of completion for training, along with a Reenlistment Code of 4 from a failed drug test.
I continued a miniature reign of terror on my own life by receiving a felony drug conviction for the sales of ecstasy in large quantities.
I spent my first stay as an adult in a real jail cell commuting to Minnesota West’s Granite Falls Campus for the computer support and repair program.
Having begun this prior to my stay at the county motel, it was a serious challenge to keep up, considering most of my work was either online or on a computer.
After my stay at the Redwood County Jail I began working with my father who had contacted me after seeing me in the newspaper.
I developed 52 websites targeting every avenue of the Industrial Bakery Equipment Market.
This was my first step back into a creative world.
The time came to an end with my father’s company and I moved on to Marshall.
Commuting to jonti-craft to make a living I needed to do something with my life.
I saw an ad in the newspaper for a registration deadline at the university and enrolled that week.
I opted into the Graphic design program being the closest thing to web development.
I had been writing code since I was 16 and in my first 3 years of college I never saw a bit of it.
However, I had gained a new perception on life, my definition of beauty, and an aesthetics in general.
Between the clubs I’d been involved in, to the startup tech company that failed fast, I constantly added new endeavors to my plate.
Collecting experiences had become my new hobby.