MAM's New Database and its Mastermind: Greg Dember
Over the past few months, MAM has been doing some major internal shifting -- namely implementing our brand new database!
MAM’s resounding consensus: “The database is awesome!”
MAM’s been working on getting a new database up and running for the past year, and now that it’s here, we can’t get enough of it. MAM has even catapulted into the possibility for “unlimited capacity” to serve our clients and MAM-family that we promised in our vision statement.
MAM will forever be grateful for the wizard behind the curtain of our beautiful new database. Huge thanks to mastermind Greg Dember, who has been the brains and brawn behind this operation, building the database from scratch.
Greg’s take on unlimited capacity:
“Software should do everything that’s kind of beneath the dignity of a human,” says Greg. “If software takes care of all the grunt work, then the human users have more of an opportunity to be creative and visionary.”
“My goal for systems I create for any company is to free up the people who work there to use the higher parts of their minds.
”He studied psychology and computer sciences at Yale University. After migrating around and landing in Seattle, he went on to study acupuncture at Bastyr University.
Greg's also been an avid musician all his life.
After practicing acupuncture for six years, he shifted back toward his passion for music. Greg felt that being a health practitioner, he had the responsibility to create an open space for his clients.
“It was hard for me to have an identity that combined being a healing arts practitioner and also a performing – you know, somewhat narcissistic – musician in the same person,” recalls Greg. “To be an acupuncturist, or a counselor or a psychotherapist, a medical doctor … you have to have a certain kind of reserve, decorum. You’re supposed to step to the side and create a space for the patients to express themselves.”
This space created conflict in his identity: it didn’t leave him with enough room to express himself.
Fortunately, programing databases did! Greg has been operating his database design business out of his home in the Pacific Northwest for the past 15 years. His day job leaves him with more than enough room to concentrate his attention towards his music.
Since starting his current business in 2000, Greg has recorded six albums. The first two with bands, and the last four under his own name.
Greg is a self-described “arty indie pop singer-songwriter” Despite starting piano formal lessons at age seven, he remembers making up songs way back as a toddler.
“It may sound like a cliche, but it’s just inside me -- I hear new music in my head, and so … what I hear in my head, I want to hear in the world,” says Greg. “I have music inside me, and put it in the world because I don’t want to be the only person who’s listening to that music.”
Greg plays piano with a few bands, as well as continuing his solo work. In his free time, when he’s not playing ping pong (he's quite the enthusiast), Greg edits online magazine Artocratic and cultural blog What is Metamodern?