Web head: Internet businessman, writer of code, and yeah, that's him on the scooter

Tracey Drury - Business First of Buffalo

To say Adrian Roselli is a pretty laid back guy is an understatement.

If his Hawaiian shirt doesn't give it away, try the scooter he keeps in his office for zipping down the hall to "far away" offices -- you know, the ones 40 or 50 feet away. Then of course there's the beanbag chair in his office.

Roselli, 28, is co-founder and a partner at Algonquin Studios, a downtown Web design and application development company. He's typical of IT professionals in many ways, including his carefree manner. But that doesn't qualify him as a slacker by any means.

In addition to his daily duties at the office, Roselli sits on the board of Brainstorm, the Buffalo chapter of the American Advertising Federation, and is a co-chair of IDEA, a new special interest group for Brainstorm focusing on the web and multimedia.

He is a founder of evolt.org, a Web site he describes as a resource for Web developers run by web developers, with no banner ads or sponsors and no parent corporations.

"Most people who do Web work do it as one guy in a larger company that has nothing to do with the Web -- no peers, no interacting with other developers," Roselli said. "We started evolt as a worldwide community for Web developers to get together and share their experiences and chat. When we started, it was small. Now it's one of the largest ones out there, in members and services and traffic. We have 3,200 members on the list and some 700 users submit unsolicited articles for the site."

Learning from each other

The goal of the site is to help members learn new and useful tools for Web development, as well as share their frustrations, experiences and skills. Involvement in the site keeps Roselli pretty busy, but he gains a lot out of it as well.

"I don't ask questions on that group, mostly answer questions. But my first exposure to cold fusion was on the list," he said. "Just by reading the posts, I understand enough about it that I can code cold fusion. I benefit from everyone else's conversations."

A frequent contributor to trade journals, books and Web sites, he also recently published a chapter for the new Glasshaus book Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself. The book examines a handful of highly trafficked sites on the Web -- including evolt.org -- and details their usability and interface design goals and outcomes.

"They had the idea they wanted to do a book on usability that was case study-oriented," he said. "With all the experts out there, it was sort of a reaction against them. Their sites are ugly, but are treated like demigods and everyone believes everything they say without consideration for real-world situations."

The evolt site shares space in the book with such sites as BBC News, Economist.com, eBay, SynFonts and MetaFilter.

"They wanted to find ones that had a lot of users and lot of response from users. They found evolt and came to us," Roselli said. "Not only did they give me the opportunity, they let me write it, didn't edit it and they published it and it has gotten five-star reviews at Amazon."

Finding the right niche

A Western New York native, Roselli grew up in Kenmore and went to the University at Buffalo with the intention of studying architecture, a field he thought would combine his interests in art and technical. After his first year, and after talking to some firms and friends who were pursuing the field, he changed his mind and began hunting for a new major.

Eventually, Roselli happened upon a film production class, which led to the media study program. After dabbling in film and video, he began working in digital arts, doing everything from theater design to photography illustration and graphic design.

On campus, Roselli worked for the UUAB, the university activities board that plans special events, doing graphic design for flyers, t-shirts and posters and eventually on the department Web site. Those activities led to an internship in the university's publications department in e-media.

"It was a good opportunity to have real tasks to work on. I got to create something, a design, a function, or make up a way it should work and not be stuck with what the guidebook says," he said.

In the midst of his academic years, Roselli switched to part-time studies to begin his career as a Web designer at the Research Institute on Addictions, then went on to what was then Softbank Services Group where he moved into e-commerce and Web page interface. About a year later, he and two co-workers broke off and formed Algonquin.

Today, his responsibilities include managing day to day activities, writing code and staying on top of all the changes in technology. His goals for the company have changed somewhat over the years.

"I've lots of different goals, some of them very noble -- like I wanted to be the only one responsible for our mistakes -- some not so noble: We wanted to make a lot of money and retire early if possible," he said.

Future goals

Seriously, he wants to see the company continue to grow. In five years, the company has grown from its three founders to 15 employees while revenues have doubled. At the same time, Roselli's responsibilities with evolt.org have increased as has his opportunities to write.

"With evolt, we've been growing that as well. I don't know when it's going to reach its limit," he said. "I may have to back away from it, it's such a time commitment. I really enjoy the writing, and I'd like to do more speaking and writing."

He's also working on another book on professional Web graphics for non-designers, for which he's writing an introduction and chapters on typography and software tools.

"It's targeted toward people like me, people who work in the industry, in this case programmers who want to maintain a Web site," he said.

Another aspiration Roselli feels strongly about is helping other technology entrepreneurs get off the ground. When Algonquin started up, the founders worked from their respective living rooms before working onsite at client locations. Eventually the company moved to the Brisbane Building to a small office, and has since expanded twice to its current capacity of 4,500 square feet.

The offices contain extra space which Algonquin offers as incubator space to other companies. Currently, Enlightened Media and GoldenHire are tenants.

"When we first started the business, we thought, where do we work from? We looked around at some business incubators and the rent for most business incubators is more than we'd be paying here," Roselli said. "We felt if someone needs the kind of help we did we're going to help them out."

Living off-line

After he goes home for the day, Roselli connects his home computer to the Internet and downloads sometimes hundreds of messages from evolt members, and answers them while he eats dinner and watches television. He calls it his free training time for the day.

Though he first experienced the Internet as a fourth grader, surfing bulletin boards on a Commodore 64, Roselli says he really doesn't like computers much, but considers them a necessary tool for everything he does. Unlike some techies, Roselli likes to spend time away from the computer and spends most nights at Capoeira class, studying Brazilian martial arts.

"A friend of mine who owns a coffee shop has an employee who was doing it. I was in the shop getting frustrated by my sedentary lifestyle and saw a flyer. I've been hooked," Roselli said. "Now, three or four nights a week, I'm finding muscles I didn't even know I had. It's more cardiovascular, with two hours a night of exercises and then practice. I'm not doing it to learn to fight, I just enjoy the workout, the activity. It keeps me away from my computer."