Once you learn a bit about Cameron Jones, it’s hard to pin him down. He’s a hands-on system architect who can untangle the most complex challenges, yet he’s just as at ease tending his garden, carving through fresh powder on his snowboard, painting an art piece, or playing one of his eight or nine instruments. At Camptivities, he’s our Chief Technology Officer and a co-founder. He prefers to remain behind the scenes, but today he is our employee highlight.
The Beginning of Camptivities
Cameron’s journey with Camptivities began when fellow co-founder and kickball teammate Ryan Rosen faced a challenge. The woman who had been making his camp’s schedule for many years was about to retire. Her process took days, and no one else knew how to replicate it. Ryan wondered if software could solve the problem, as long as it was built specifically for camps.
When Ryan approached Cameron with the idea, Cam remembers thinking, “I thought it was definitely possible, and probably easy. How wrong I was.”
That was back in 2013. That first summer, they managed to build something that worked. As Cam recalls, “It took about 47 minutes for the autoscheduler to run that first summer, now it takes 14 seconds.” Early on, he and Ryan leaned heavily on feedback from other camps. They quickly realized they’d need features like camper-specific scheduling and the ability to assign staff to activities. That feedback helped catapult Camptivities toward what camps really needed from an autoscheduler.
“Camp staff have a higher value and higher rewards than sitting in front of an excel sheet.”
A Philosophy Built on Experience
His customer-first mindset comes from a long career in tech, beginning with an internship in 1999. From his experience, “often engineers don’t realize until they are at the executive level that it’s not important if the customer doesn’t care.”
That perspective is what he passes on to new engineers at Camptivities and at his consulting firm, 23 Limes. “The most important thing for them to understand is the program domain.” Cam wants them to ask what the problem is that they are trying to solve and to see the features they create through the customer’s eyes. As Cam explains, “so much software gets shelved after a year because engineers don’t know what they are building.”
The Creative Process
The best part of Cameron’s workday is when he gets a stretch of uninterrupted time to solve a problem. Before rewriting the Camptivities autoscheduler, he cleared his schedule for weeks to allow time for deep thinking.
“I just stared at my white-board for days. I would write, go for a walk, look at my garden until I had an insight moment.”
From the outside, it may have looked like Cam was doing nothing; he was actually making “chess-moves” in his head, fitting every feature into an algorithmic model. Once the breakthrough came, everything clicked. “the coding went fast, it just flows. Once the problem has been solved it’s such a different feeling”
“ #1 Understand the domain.
#2 Remember—it’s just code.”
Advice to Live By
When asked if he had a bit of advice for others, true to form, Cam paused to think carefully. “Find any activity—whether it’s working or a hobby—that is something that really satisfies you.”
He likened this feeling to when a key fits into a lock and all the pins fall perfectly. “I felt this recently playing drums and the beat went perfect with the music.” Just as he experiences a flow state with coding, his encouragement is universal: “Try to follow that feeling and you will build and do better stuff. You’ll have fun with it.”
What Cameron's Co-Workers Say
We asked some of Cam’s co-workers to share their thoughts, here’s what they had to say:
“I’ve learned from Cam that there is always a solution to a problem, that you can’t give up on the answer.”
“Cam is always patient and takes the time to make sure you understand not only how to do things, but why things are done a certain way.”
“Cam always starts with what will that do for end user? He wants the end-user have an impactful experience while using Camptivities.”
“If you ask a question he'll patiently explain things to you without making you feel less than for not knowing.”
“Whether it’s about computers, programming, his passion for gardening, music, or snowboarding, he wants to help others learn and achieve.”
“When he knows it’s the right solution, there’s no stopping him.”
