Hello! I'm Michael Niles, a graphic designer turned web consultant with more than 20 years of experience, currently based near Portland, Oregon.
I’ve had extensive experience working in developer operations, server management, server-side scripting, various web technologies, front-end development, user experience and interface design.
I’ve created high-traffic online contests for fortune 500 companies; scalable and performant public-directory applications akin to zillow; consumer-facing order management software that integrates with several 3rd parties such as FedEx, UPS, Salesforce, Netsuite & others; as well as a plethora of eCommerce and consumer facing websites.
I’ve written web software for Intel, Microsoft, fortune 500’s, a slew of web agencies and small business clients directly. I enjoy taking on unique challenges and helping businesses big and small build tools that meet their unique goals.
Before college scattered us in different directions, a few friends and I spent one last summer playing music around Yakima, WA. I was on bongos. One afternoon, posted up in front of a ROSS Dress for Less, one friend dumped out a box of ridiculous hats. I chose the oversized bucket hat and we started jamming.
Mid-song, a kid and his mom stopped to listen. I kept my head down, locked into the rhythm. A few minutes later, the kid dropped a crisp $20 bill into our guitar case!
We weren’t even playing for tips!
Afterward, my buddy told me what he’d overheard: the mom had whispered to her son that I was a blind man playing bongos.
And just like that, I was christened "Blind Mikey".
The nickname stuck. Years later, when it came time to name my web consulting business, I faced a harsh truth: I’m terrible at naming things. So I went with the one that already had a story, a little luck, and a lot of personality behind it :)