Guided by experience. Built to last.
The name reflects how I approach the work. A compass represents direction and sound judgment — understanding what a client actually needs before building anything. A forge represents craftsmanship and building something durable — custom work, not an assembled template. Together: determine where the client needs to go, then build the right system to get them there.
Long before "the cloud" was a marketing term, I ran an independent ISP and hosted websites, domains, and email on physical infrastructure I owned and operated myself. Before that, I ran bulletin board systems — including one called The Nexxus, and another called New Moon Rising. That era is where a lot of the habits behind this business come from: take direct responsibility for the infrastructure, understand it end to end, and don't hand-wave the parts that are inconvenient to explain.
Compass Forge picks that work back up, built on modern cloud infrastructure instead of a server rack in a closet — established cloud providers instead of hardware I have to drive to when it fails.
A lot of technology work isn't really about the technology — it's about figuring out what a client actually needs before building anything. That means understanding the real goal behind a request, and being honest when a simpler (or more complex) path is the right one, even if it isn't the one that was asked for.
Craftsmanship and building things that hold up under real use — that's also where the name draws on something outside of tech: more than 35 years in swordsmanship, historical reenactment, and staged combat, including many years at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Compass Forge isn't a sword or reenactment business, but the same values apply either way.
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