What do you do for a living?

Everyone gets this question a lot. I finally figured out that the best way for me to answer it is simply create. When I was a kid, we'd create backyard sports and basement casinos. At age 10, I started playing sax and got my first computer (an apple IIc clone). I typed in code from 321-Contact magazine so I could play video-games on my computer. I learned keyboards and sang in bands as I focused my college days on the emerging field of "information science," while minoring in psychology and chemistry. I spent over a decade in the professional software development field creating business applications and playing in bands. Then, I started doing things like Austin Silent Disco and meditating a lot... doing yoga... personal development... In time, the path has merged into things like writing meditation apps. As I became more open to the world instead of conditioned into a pre-determined goal and assumed path to it, I've come to enjoy life.
The path is open.
The path is open.
Pro SoftwarE Engineering

I am currently employed as a senior software engineer leading the apps team of a conscious media production company in the Boulder, Colorado area. I get to do some awesome full-stack work across the latest technologies, including consumer-facing mobile devices and smart tv's served by the bowels of Amazon AWS microservices I wrote on the back-end to deliver meaningful content to the world.
Synervoz

During my trip around the world that originated from a technical paper about Silent Disco and resulted in a couple travel books, I met a guy who had this brilliant idea to combine music and talking with a cell phone. After years of tinkering, we finally got our project funded, and a new company was born. We are currently building an app called "Switchboard" which is the consumer-facing application at the core. My role is as the lead cross-platform developer.
Guided Meditation Treks

Spawning out of the need to express a new musical genre that includes things like binaural beats (which require headphones, like those from Austin Silent Disco) as well as active listening. I started this project with an intention to help people (including myself) better see their world through focused intention, creative visualization, contemplation, optimism, and silence. I collaborated with others on some recent tracks, and this is project is heading towards an emerging musical genre. This project has collaborated with transformational resonance and brain wave fitness to integrate other things like sound tables, music therapy, and other sound healing modalities. Currently, I am working on a vipassana app.
Spin the World Around

After I got back from a solo trip around the world, I needed a way to share the magic of it. My trip started with a series of synchronicities which led me to present a paper in South Korea for my other projects. I blogged about it here for a bit until I realized I needed to write a book. Then, I ended up writing two books, and the second one is my travel memoir.
Freelance Writing

I have been writing all my life, but only recently have been setting intentions that my work is published through other channels so it can reach a larger audience. After traveling the world on a journey that started with a paper for an academic conference, I have written a memoir for it, which was published August 1, 2017.
Social Influencing

I've had some fun on different blogs and social media outlets, and besides an around the world Instagram sharing, I've been invited to cities and put in a hotel while spending several days capturing the moments through my smartphone and posting them online for the enjoyment of others and promotion of some cause.
Jamiroqueen

This band was created with multiple purposes in mind, none of which were to "make it" or "be famous" (perhaps infamous). Jamiroqueen was formulated with strict guidelines that included a focus on jazz voicings such as the minor 9, danceability, emphasis on keyboards and synthesizers, having a female lead singer, and playing everything like Jamiroquai would do it (including our own originals). This project is ongoing.
Stuff I used to Do
Brain Wave Fitness

Related to Guided Meditation Treks, but even more scientifically based and quantifiably measured, this project is one of the components to a wellness practice that incorporates things like intelligent sleep, transformational resonance, and what can only be described as "meditation technology."
Austin Silent Disco

This project formed out of Toast, LLC. We basically did our research and bought a bulk supply of wireless headphones to add another element to our musical productions. We are for hire, and our company is also on the cutting edge of productions utilizing wireless headphones such as the Headphone Concert, and Guided Meditation Treks.
ToasT and Toast, LLC

ToasT was a band from El Paso that moved to Austin in 2005. I moved to Austin in 2006, and while staying with a friend, he notified me that there was a band called ToasT down the street from him and they were practicing in the garage. We grabbed beers and headed over to check them out.
We arrived and the garage door was halfway down. Unhindered, I walked in to watch them jam. They had a drummer, bassist, guitarist, and an older keyboard player jamming who I assumed was their normal keyboard player. He took a smoke break and I asked to jam on his keys. With a weird energy, he obliged. I jammed a few open improvs with the guys and thought nothing of it. The next day, the bassist called me and said "We were auditioning that weird keyboard player off of craigslist, but we want you to play with us." The rest is history.
The band played many shows since 2006. We released (to date) the best studio album I've ever released, The Mad Science. It was recorded in a real studio with grammy-winning triple-platinum engineer Stuart Sullivan. We did a tour in 2009 to support the album, at which point I had a cosmic spiritual shift during my first reikki session in the Stratosphere of Las Vegas that I believe unlocked me to make many life-altering decisions that I feel brought me closer to alignment with my higher self... with noted bumps along the way.
Among other lessons I'd learned with this band is that it IS possible to trademark a name as generic as ToasT for music, so technically, nobody else could use the name Toast in reference to live shows or produced albums in this country, nor could anyone tell us not to. Right around 2010, our guitarist made the decision to move to El Paso to follow the dream of becoming an electrical engineer. We carried on with other guitarists since then, and I've played and toured extensively with bands such as Dimitri's Ascent and Funkotron. However, ToasT reamined close to my heart, and in 2013, we continue to evaluate our next steps in between starting side projects like Jamiroqueen. The band has always been focused on an eclectic fusion that goes beyond the term "jam band" but still, we loved to jam.
Toast, LLC was formed out of members of Toast to produce live music and entertainment events, as well as graphic design, online presence, promotion, and things like silent disco.
We arrived and the garage door was halfway down. Unhindered, I walked in to watch them jam. They had a drummer, bassist, guitarist, and an older keyboard player jamming who I assumed was their normal keyboard player. He took a smoke break and I asked to jam on his keys. With a weird energy, he obliged. I jammed a few open improvs with the guys and thought nothing of it. The next day, the bassist called me and said "We were auditioning that weird keyboard player off of craigslist, but we want you to play with us." The rest is history.
The band played many shows since 2006. We released (to date) the best studio album I've ever released, The Mad Science. It was recorded in a real studio with grammy-winning triple-platinum engineer Stuart Sullivan. We did a tour in 2009 to support the album, at which point I had a cosmic spiritual shift during my first reikki session in the Stratosphere of Las Vegas that I believe unlocked me to make many life-altering decisions that I feel brought me closer to alignment with my higher self... with noted bumps along the way.
Among other lessons I'd learned with this band is that it IS possible to trademark a name as generic as ToasT for music, so technically, nobody else could use the name Toast in reference to live shows or produced albums in this country, nor could anyone tell us not to. Right around 2010, our guitarist made the decision to move to El Paso to follow the dream of becoming an electrical engineer. We carried on with other guitarists since then, and I've played and toured extensively with bands such as Dimitri's Ascent and Funkotron. However, ToasT reamined close to my heart, and in 2013, we continue to evaluate our next steps in between starting side projects like Jamiroqueen. The band has always been focused on an eclectic fusion that goes beyond the term "jam band" but still, we loved to jam.
Toast, LLC was formed out of members of Toast to produce live music and entertainment events, as well as graphic design, online presence, promotion, and things like silent disco.
Copyright © 2019 Russell Eric Dobda