Why I named our company Knowledge Architecture.

I moved to Point Reyes Station with my wife three years ago. Denise and I had always wanted to live in a small town, and at 350 people, Point Reyes Station certainly qualified. Plus it was about an hour away from San Francisco, which meant that commuting was possible, at least in theory.

I grew up in suburbs all over the country, moving every two years or so for my dad’s job as an FBI agent. Denise spent her childhood in Chicago, her teens in Arizona, and then moved back to Chicago after college, which is where I found her a little over a decade ago.

Is it true that watching old seasons of Northern Exposure from Netflix was a motivating factor in our move? Yes. We longed to be part of a community, closer to nature, and living at a slower pace. I’ll admit that we both romanticized small towns, perhaps a bit blindly, but that’s a story for another day. After a year in the country, we moved back to San Francisco in 2009 so that I could start Knowledge Architecture.

We’re in Point Reyes Station now, renting a cottage for a few weeks. It is great to be back. There’s nothing like taking a hike at lunch or walking through the wetlands with your morning coffee. Don’t get me wrong, I love San Francisco. Living in San Francisco is amazing. Our dream has always been to split our time between the two places, partly because we believe the diversity of our living and working experiences makes us more interesting people.

One of the reasons I started Knowledge Architecture was to be free to choose where and when I would work. I wanted the same thing for our employees, which is funny, because it turned out that I’m the guy that goes into the office every day while Chad, Paul, Susan, and Brian work from home full or part-time.

I came up with the name of our firm by accident. I was in my home office in Point Reyes Station, brainstorming the qualities of my dream job on a whiteboard. It was clear that I wanted to focus on knowledge sharing, technology, and stay in the architecture and engineering industry. I thought the answer was to join a mega-firm. I wanted to become a “knowledge architect,” a role which didn’t seem to exist. Clearly, I was aware of information architects, but I wanted to push the role a step further, to enter the messy and tangled jungle of knowledge management with a machete and bring some order to it.

I pitched the role of knowledge architect to a couple of mega-firms. They were interested, but the timing was tough. It was the fall of 2008 and the world was changing quickly. The fact that I was very direct about my requirements for telecommuting probably didn’t help much. I was walking home from the office, in the city, feeling a bit dejected, when I figured it out—I didn’t want to be a knowledge architect at a mega-firm, I wanted to start a company and call it Knowledge Architecture. I sat down on the nearest step, pulled out an index card, a red and black pen, and mocked up the business card below to show Denise.

I share this story for two reasons. I’ve been reflecting on the summer that I decided to start our company. I feel vindicated in taking the risk. It turned out that I had to create the world I wanted to live in, it didn’t already exist. Through amazing colleagues, clients, friends, perseverance, luck, and of course, Denise, Knowledge Architecture is alive and thriving. This is a chance to say thank you to them for helping to make our company possible.

The second reason I share this story is that I think creation stories are important. I wanted to capture ours. We’re about to hire a new employee, the first employee who wasn’t there at the beginning, when we didn’t have a product, or a conference, or a 401k plan. I’m guessing we’ll hire a few more over the next year and I want them to understand where we came from, and that includes our name.