I’m Vincent Stout, CTO at EFK Group, past CTO and co-owner at From the Future digital agency, an obsessive website speed fanatic/web developer, and one of the 2% of certified WordPress experts on Codeable. I started programming during high school back in 1999 with an interest in developing video games. Life led me down a slightly different path and I ended up in the world of web development.
I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Penn State University in 2007 after which I started working at my first digital agency. After accumulating many years of experience, I quit my job there to pursue my own career as a freelancer. I eventually met up with some fellow entrepreneurs and we started up a new digital agency in 2014 called “I’m From the Future” (later changed to just “From the Future”), which has proven to be quite successful and is still going strong today with a focal point on SEO.
In 2019, I went through the extreme vetting process of Codeable to get my WordPress expert certification (see below). This was an intensive 3 months of proving my skills in WordPress through test projects and a live coding test, but the reward of getting certified was well worth the effort.
I’m now able to focus my attention on areas of web development that I am most interested in. My favorite area by far is website speed enhancement and I aim to share my years of experience and expertise in this, SEO, agency and ownership life, various side hustles, and more for others to learn and benefit from. I recently developed a game called “Jive Blocks” using React and Typescript as a fun side project and to achieve a childhood dream. That is now playable on the website, jiveblocks.com, and on the Google play store.
Fun Facts About Me
- Played Table Tennis for Penn State University and was Vice President of the PSU Table Tennis Club
- Was once drug test escort for the NA Olympic Trials for Table Tennis
- Ran sub 5-minute miles
- Raced in the USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships and didn’t get last
- Grew up on Nintendo and currently play on the Nintendo Switch
- Found out that I developed a severe fish allergy after almost being killed by a delicious salmon dinner
- Once programmed a Roulette simulator just to test various gambling strategies for success and as expected, the house always wins
- Family pets growing up include dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, birds, turtles, fish, and chickens
- Currently have 2 cats and 2 guinea pigs
- I’ve trained one of the cats to sit and jump through hoops
