I'm Michael Liendo aka Focus Otter 🦦

You might be wondering where the "Focus Otter" name came from. Well, the short story is that I've always been that person giving lunch-and-learn sessions. I would come up with fun demos, and interesting ways of making complex concepts easy to understand. This was my way to help developers focus on their tasks. As for the otter, well what animal is best known for being playful, curious, and a bit quirky 🦦

It wasn't always a fun loving journey however. After flunking out of college in 2007--how was I supposed to know you couldn't major in partying and track and field 😜 --I signed a modeling contract in Chicago. This was my first taste at putting myself out there and getting a thick skin for feedback. I got comfortable in front of a camera and speaking in front of others.

When my daughter was born, I knew I had to change my lifestyle. So I permanently borrowed a book from Barnes and Nobles on programming in Java. I still have nightmares about

public static void main()

I tried and failed at Java programming. So I borrowed-without-permission, another book on this funky language called Objective-C. I tried and failed once more. What I didn't realize at the time was every failure was simply a new chance to apply what I learned previously. When I got to JavaScript, I had a solid baseline for programming basics.

Now after a decade in code, a fortunate career path and an established brand, I like to spend my time building, advocating for developers, and creating content. In particular, I specialize in fullstack development using React (NextJS), AWS serverless, and Stripe.