“Stop chasing the external definition of success. Ask yourself — are you having fun? Are you loving it?”
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SELF-LABELLED misfit, Lane Merrifield is a visionary techie who helped create a virtual world where children can play safely together in Club Penguin, and another world called FreshGrade, where teachers, students and parents can connect on a whole new level. Lane is the youngest of four children. His three older siblings, Karine, Renee and Lance all had 4.0+ GPAs and were amazing students. Lane knew he wasn’t like them. “I would go into class and they’d have taught one or all of my siblings,” Lane recalled. “I could always tell in the school year when they realized I was not like my siblings. By week four they figured out I was less focussed and not engaged. My brother was great in sports and school, and he received two scholarships. Then I came along. I was into music and theatre and art. The joke was I was that I was really good at the electives.”
The tech industry was in its infancy as Lane was growing up. “I brought myself into the tech world because I was fascinated with computers. When I was in high school, I got lower marks because of bad handwriting and believe me, I needed every point I could get,” he said. “One day my parents brought home a Commodore 64 computer. I thought if I could type out my work instead of hand-writing it, I might get better marks. It worked and — I got extra credit for it. Even at that young age I saw the advantage to being native to that world. The more you get into it, the more you discover and the more you get to see the progression as it is happening.” Lane had a knack for getting around problems with inventive solutions. He was also an entrepreneur (like the rest of his family) from an early age. “I learned how to figure things out on my own. I had a lawn cutting business, but it took forever to haul everything around. boulevardmagazines.com |
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