Skip to main content

About

Twenty-five years of shipping software, and one stretch that broke all the records.

Founder of Renkara Media Group. I write about what AI actually changes in engineering practice — and I keep the receipts.

Charles Sieg

The Journey

This website is stored in a Git repository at Github, generated with the Narrative CMS, copied to an S3 bucket, and is served by a CloudFront distribution in the AWS cloud. The site currently contains 52 long-form architecture articles, 522 blog posts spanning 2003 to 2026, and over 480,000 published words.

The "I never lose. Either I win, or I learn" quote on the home page is attributed to Nelson Mandela.

Core Values

Measure it

A claim without a number is an opinion. Every figure on this site is recorded when the work happens.

Ship it

Nothing ships dark and nothing waits for perfect. Shipped and corrected beats planned and pristine.

Own it

When it breaks, say so plainly, fix it, and write down what the failure taught.

The Timeline

High SchoolComputer Services & Custom PCs
Performed computer services and built custom PCs for friends and family.
1997Project Manager → Practice Manager
Hired as a Project Manager at Whittman-Hart. Headhunted to Practice Manager for New Resources Corporation.

Notable clients

1999Managing Architect, Proxicom
Hired as a Project Manager at Modern Business Technologies in Schaumburg, Illinois. Headhunted to Managing Architect at Proxicom.

Notable clients

2000Self-Employed
Went independent.

Notable clients

2004First Mac
A MacBook Pro on which I installed Boot Camp. Windows by day, macOS by night.
2008AccelaStudy & Renkara Media Group
Delivered the first language education apps to the App Store: AccelaStudy. Renkara Media Group was born.
2010iOS Consulting — and Remote for Good
Started building iOS apps for clients. Last year I ever commuted to an office — remote since 2010!

Notable clients

2012AWS Cloud Infrastructure
Started working with AWS cloud infrastructure.

Notable clients

2016AWS Solution Architect
First consulting work as AWS Solution Architect.

Notable clients

2025First Patent
The first AVIAN patent application was filed — Introducing AVIAN: The Next Frontier in Adaptive Learning.
2026AVIAN Realized
AVIAN realized as AccelaStudy AI.

Personality

I've taken the Meyers-Briggs personality test many times and am, invariably, an INTJ, also known as the Architect personality.

My IQ has been formally estimated by the Stanford-Binet test several times to be between 150 and 165. In high school, my Otis–Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT) score was in the 99.99% percentile and was used for admission to Mensa.

As an adult, I have been clinically assessed as having low latent inhibition, which sounds disturbing but is actually advantageous and pretty awesome.

Remote Work

I am a strong proponent of remote work and am the editor of the Remote Technologist publication on Medium. I've exclusively worked from home in a well-furnished office since 2010. When the COVID pandemic happened, it had zero effect on my work.

Popular Posts

The most popular posts on this blog are My Coding Experience, The 10-Year Hoodie, On Telecommuting, and My Life as a Bodybuilder. The Christmas card made with my sons when they first moved to Texas is still a favorite.