I’m Kohlsen Burton. I live in Kansas City, where I design the future.

I’ve loved making things for as long as I can remember, and wrote my first program when I was 6 years old, just two weeks after my mom brought home the brand new iMac

Growing up I always had a passion for games. Board games, video games, sports games, you name it. I was always the one who wanted to play the game, not just watch it.

One day I stumbled on the now house hold game Minecraft. I was instantly hooked. I spent hours upon hours playing the game. But I kept asking myself, "How did they make this?" I wanted to know how to make games. Finally I decided to take the plunge and learn how. I started with Java, just the basics. But about 6 months of learning and playing around in Eclipse I had successfully made my first plugin for Minecraft. As I got older, I kept making plugins for Minecraft and private Minecraft servers.

Crazy how a game made of blocks can lead to a career in software development. Today, I am a software developer at a company called Ascendco Health where I work on a variety of projects. I still love to play games, but now I get to make software that is actually going to help people, who need it most.