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This is Eric Caron's digital center.

Welcome to the central repository for [most] things that Eric wants to talk about. Minnesota, coffee, APIs, products, recruiting, open source, and probably my family.

Who I Am

I'm a technologist in Minnesota. I love my family and strongly believe in giving back to the community. I've worked in startups and big corporations (Best Buy). I'm currently Sr. Director of Customer Applications at Caribou Coffee, where I'm responsible for making sure every customer has a fantastic digital experience.

At the core of it all, I love demystifying technology and making it approachable to everyone. I've been lucky enough to keep having jobs where I get to learn about the business, listen to the customer, and imagine ways to serve both.

Why This Site

There are a lot of places on the internet where I have content, and I wanted to organize them. From public talks about product management, to open source projects, to bookmarks about my favorite tools for recruiting, I wanted to consolidate that material so it would always be easy to find.

What I'll Cover

Things that I'll talk about (in no particular order and certainly not all-inclusive): Programming, managing, food, Eden Prairie, open source, hiring, WordPress, email, Minnesota, APIs, family, Hacker News. I probably won't talk about politics or religion, but you're always welcome to ask.

Headshot of Eric Caron

My Current Projects

Smart Nightlight Manager

I wrote this application to power the nightlight in my son's bedroom. It now powers a dozen lights throughout my house, and it uses a Raspberry Pi and Philips Hue, to turn on/off the lights & set colors. Features include a web-interface to control time-of-day colors, activity log, and timer for auto shut-off.

WaterRower Game

This is a simple NodeJS application that connects to a WaterRower (with the S4 module) and creates charts & games that can be accessed by any web browser.

My Recent Articles & Talks

[Podcast] APIs: Oofda! with Eric Caron of Caribou Coffee

In May 2022 I spoke again with the Constant Variables podcast. We leaned heavy into the land of APIs, but with the goal of making sure everyone knew they were approachable. Although it did get a bit nerdy, we kept returning to empowering anyone to feel comfortable understanding how APIs should be a part of their business.

[Podcast] Startup Mentality, API Management, and Corporate Apps

In October 2021 I spoke with the Constant Variables podcast. I covered a lot of my passions, from what it means to have a startup mentality in a corporate environment & why it is vital to think of your digital products the same way you think of the physical assets you own.

How Caribou Coffee uses reCAPTCHA

In August 2021 I wrote with the Google Cloud Blog. Stopping bad actors isn't a fun topic, but it is vital to do it right. Here I highlight a solution we implemented that made customers happy & hackers angry!

Five Reasons Your Waterfall Team Can't Go Agile

In December 2019 I wrote again for CIOReview. This time I weighed in on the nuances of taking a team using waterfall methologies & enabling them to benefit from the Agile - without having to swap methods altogether.

Is Your App Sparking Joy?

In May 2019 I wrote an article for CIOReview. I took this opportunity to remind technology leaders that nobody has to have a mobile app, and if they aren't proud of it then they should sunset it.

About

My Articles & Talks Side Projects Code Powering This Site Contact Me

Interests

Minnesota Tech Scene Minnesota Food Scene Recruiting & People Management Open Source & Programming Product Management & APIs

Thanks For Visiting

ericcaron.com typically redirected to either my GitHub, Twitter or LinkedIn profiles. When I recognized my digital presence was continuing to fragment, I threw this together to organize the chaos.

Have suggestions for how I can further improve this site? Please contact me.