About Us
Established in 2005, Whitespark builds beautiful and functional websites that are search engine optimized. We develop custom e-commerce systems and custom content management systems for our clients because we know that off-the-shelf, ready-made systems are slow and difficult to use. We LOVE search engine optimization. It keeps us up at night dreaming up new and creative ways to get our clients’ websites to the top of Google’s search engine rankings.
Rad Dudes
Darren Shaw
Founder/SEO/Developer
Darren has over fourteen years of experience in project management, web programming, e-commerce, content management systems, custom web applications, design, and search engine marketing. A liberal arts graduate from the UofA with a minor in Computing Science, he brings a unique combination of technical skills and critical thinking to solving problems using web based technologies to meet the needs of his clients.
Darren is currently obsessed with all things Local SEO and loves few things more than getting #1 local rankings for Whitespark's clients.
Keith Silgard
Primo Developer
Keith has been making websites since 1999 (and good ones since 2004). A graduate of NAIT's DIMD program, Keith has taken that foundation and built continually upon it, expanding further into design, usability, and programming. He can often be found with a thick textbook on things like Ruby on Rails, design patterns, or object oriented analysis and design (mothers hide your daughters). You're probably picturing a giant geek right now, and while true, you might be surprised to learn that he's also a friendly dude who's happy to chat with you about non-geeky stuff as well (just not sports).
Jeff Gordon
Über Developer
Jeff wrote his first piece of HTML in 1996. Since those humble beginnings, he has become a graduate of NAIT's Digital and Interactive Media Design program and has accumulated six years of profession web development experience. Jeff contributes not only the necessary technical skills to the team, but also a strong sense of aesthetics and user experience design.
Jeff is in no way affiliated with that Jeff Gordon, though he does appreciate when you point out that there's a race car driver with the same name.
Brent Housen
Gnarly Developer
Brent sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber, and pipes red hot knowledge directly into his brain. This makes him great at programming, but he occasionally soils himself. It's an acceptable sacrifice for greatness.
He was also supposed to supply us with a bio prior to launching this website, but he decided to form his beard into a brilliant topiary instead. He has no regrets.