I run IT for a living, build AI for small businesses, write books, and spend every season I can on Newton Lake, skiing across it barefoot or diving to the bottom of it.
I live in Carbondale with my wife, Tammy. I’m dad to Johnathan and Saylor, stepdad to Jordan, and grandpa to Jordan’s kids, Rosie and Will.
Scroll to descend. Breathe normally.
10 ftWork
Work
I learn and write code and books, and I’ve been doing it for more than forty years. I’ve written a complete BASIC interpreter in C++ from scratch, with its own lexer, parser and execution engine. And for thirty years I’ve built integrations: connecting new technology to the systems people already depend on, and making it work where it has to work. Hospitals first, then the businesses I run IT for, and now AI for small businesses.
40+Years writing code, starting on an Apple II in 1983
1994Studied neural networks, 28 years before ChatGPT
30+Hospital systems where I built the integrations for speech recognition, clinical dictation and HL7
1,500+Endpoints at the managed IT company I built from scratch and sold
I ran systems support for a voice recognition company before voice recognition worked. Now I build AI that answers the phone.
By day Director of Managed Services at a regional IT provider in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
My company
Applied AI Technology
Practical AI for small businesses · Scranton, PA
Most small businesses have tried ChatGPT or Copilot. Very few have it doing real work: answering customers, reading the paperwork, keeping the books current. I set AI up around the way a business already runs, train the people who’ll use it, and build what’s missing when nothing off the shelf fits.
A free Workflow Review, with a written answer in 48 hours
One pilot live in 30 days, at a fixed price
The owner approves everything that goes out
Small by design. The person you talk to is the person who builds it.
I write the brief, the articles and the books for people who run a small business and don’t have time to follow AI all day. No hype, no jargon, and nothing I wouldn’t tell a client.
A five-minute brief at 7:15, Monday to Saturday, with every source named and dated
The Week Ahead, Sunday evenings
Short courses, free tools, and starter packs by trade
Barefoot waterskiing is speed, noise, balance and reaction. Diving is slow, quiet and controlled. One happens on top of the water and the other underneath it, but they take me to the same place.
Three generations on the water
Barefooting runs in the family. My dad, John G. Martines, was barefooting in 1967. My son Johnathan was USA Water Ski’s 2012 Barefooting Athlete of the Year, Open Men’s national overall champion in 2012 and 2013, and skied for the U.S. Elite team at the 2014 World Championships. At the 2018 Eastern Regionals he won Open Pro Men, with his dad and his granddad on the river. My daughters, Saylor and Jordan, wakeboard on the lake.
I don’t own any of this. I get a turn.
On top · Barefoot waterskiing
1986My first Eastern Region tournament.
1980sFell on camera in Florida trying to ski on my knees, during the filming of Hot Rockin’ Feet II. It made the video.
1988First in Boys 3 tricks.
1990First in Men’s 1 tricks, jump and overall.
2008Back to competing, the same year Johnathan won his first Eastern Regional title.
2010Fourth in tricks at the U.S. Nationals.
2013Bronze in Men’s 3 slalom at the U.S. Nationals.
2026Still competing at the Eastern Regionals.
Some days you nail the trick. Some days you become the blooper in the video. Either way, you were there.
I was also the webmaster for barefoot.org, the American Barefoot Club, for a while.
Underneath · Scuba
I grew up on the lake watching my dad and my uncle dive, and always wondered what it was like down there.
SDI Rescue Diver, plus Deep, Nitrox, and Night, Limited Visibility and Navigation.
Night dives on the Antilla wreck in Aruba.
In Newton Lake I’ve found bottles from the early 1900s and a sunken wooden boat, and met some enormous bullheads at night.
I built Diver Down to keep my dive log, and mapped Newton Lake for it from a 1947 depth chart.
Between the last dive in October and the first barefoot run in April, there’s Elk Mountain. I learned to ski there, minutes from home, and later switched to snowboarding.
