We are starting where we feature amazing individuals in the Tech and Innovation space locally. We will use this space to share their stories and share advice that they might have for anyone who might be interested in being in this space.

Our 1st featured guest is Terry Armstrong. He is the founder and president of Mobile Media Plus, LLC, an app and website company. Their primary objective is to design (or help design) professionally engaging and effective website solutions and apps that generate leads that help business owners build a profitable online and mobile solution with a responsive active customer database.
Mobile Media Plus has been in operation since August 24, 2012. They are currently working with over 175 clients around the world. They build and design digital business cards (their newest service), websites, web-native applications, and other software development. They do quite a bit. They are in the final stages of finishing their new location in Downtown Macon, bringing their entire team into this location (for those that want to move to) Macon, GA.
Terry is a native of South Bend, Indiana. After graduating high school, he went to play football at the University of Northern Iowa where he studied Marketing and Computer Information Systems. While in college, he was always thinking about his future and applied for a job at Carleton Financial Computations. Back then computers were a bit different. Computers were huge mainframes and you worked in raw code, unlike today's pretty WYSIWYG. He worked for Carleton for 2 years and came home during the summer, Christmas, and spring breaks which gave him a big leg up. By the second year, he was programming. It wasn’t what he thought it would be, according to him: "It was boring and “Pocket Protectors” were earned and not given and everyone had a “Pocket Protector” except me. I was just a paid college intern. Never-the-less I still felt out of place."
Life After College
After college, computer jobs didn’t pay much and no one had home computers because they were too expensive. So in 1988, he landed a job at the South Bend Tribune where he worked for a year and a day before being offered a job at the Tribune Company with the Chicago Tribune. After a year in Circulation, he was finally promoted and the fun began! He started his position in Marketing and worked with computers in design and management. After a couple of years, he went to work for Knight Ridder Newspapers in a variety of positions: Circulation, Marketing, and the IT Department, which is what brought him and his family to Macon, Georgia.
After Knight Ridder Newspapers was sold to McClatchy Publishing and declining a new position to move to Colorado, he went back to studying computer programming and holding down a job in Automotive IT. He wanted to build mobile websites for local businesses because he learned mobile was the future. As he learned more about mobile he also started thinking about apps, as they were gaining popularity. He already knew HTML and C+, he figured Java was the next thing. So he studied and learned Java and Swift, Apple's native application language.
Over the last eight (8) years he immersed himself in many types of programming languages to be well rounded and knowledgeable for his potential customer's needs. However, over the last couple of years, he has been niching down to focus on Web App and Native Application Development. The needs are more specific with consistent, reoccurring income that is much higher.
He feels that his relationship with both Apple and Google has grown over the last few years with direct contacts in both companies, which is why he plans to focus in this area for a long time to come.
"App Development (for me is) fun and it allows you to be creative and always (and I do mean always) place a little bit of yourself in every app that you develop or design."
Terry mentions that when he was growing up it wasn’t cool to be a “Computer Geek” but TODAY it is so much different because you can have the coolest and most expensive toys in your computer rig.
He builds applications for many different industries from Music to Non-Profit Organizations, Universities, Restaurant Chains and Local Retailers just to name a few. "Today, you can build your life with tech and make a living with it, without ever having to get a stage or a field or a court."
His Closing thoughts
Math and Sciences are the key to the future and for Young Black Tech Students all you need to know and succeed is right in front of you while sitting in front of your computer. College has a purpose (many of you won’t know what it is until after you've attended). While for some it may be to grow up; for others it will be getting in a different environment and for the rest of us, like me, it was learning to become what I thought I could become: The Owner of a Tech Company.
For more information on Mobile Media Plus LLC, visit www.mobilemediaplus.com
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