we need, wouldn’t that make life a lot easier?
To be able to pull sets and everything, and not
have to make copies and print things out all
the time. So that in a nutshell was the idea for
OnSong, to be able to solve that pinpoint for
musicians, and I think even to this day that’s like
ninety-five percent of what our users use it for.
But we’ve found that there’s a whole number
of other needs on stage as well. For instance,
you can control OnSong hands free with a foot
pedal, you can connect it to your MIDI rig. I
just recently have gotten into playing pads on
our worship team using MainStage. So, I can
just hit a foot pedal, flip to the next song in the
set, and that set has all the information on the
patches I need for MainStage automatically. I
Jason Kichline
don’t have to remember what program or patch stuff is coming next year or two years from now today that company employs around fifty or
or anything, it just works. That allows a lot of or whatever. so people, building websites for Fortune 500
companies, healthcare, a lot of things out here
flexibility too, where our worship team doesn’t
necessarily have to practice our set over and So I got into marketing, which I think was a good on the East Coast and even beyond that. So
over again to make it absolutely perfect, we move as far as business and that type of thing that was kind of the first adventure starting a
can throw a song in and it still works. It gives goes. Then I actually met somebody at Messiah company and learning how to do these new
us the flexibility to follow wherever that worship College. In high school I did 3D modeling (think technologies and programming and things
may lead. Toy Story back in the day when you used to like that.
be able to generate things and essentially paint
[WM] Jason, let’s start at the beginning. pictures with computers in a 3D space) and one [WM] Many companies are the result of
Before you founded OnSong did you have any of my classmates needed to use my computer a watershed moment, if that’s the case for
background as a programmer or developer? program for that, and he came over with his OnSong, what was that moment?
buddy and they were doing something called
[Jason] Yeah, I’ve always been interested in ‘web pages’, which was a new thing. This was [Jason] So here I was, I was working for the
computers, my parents had an old TI 99 A, which back in 1995 or 1996, so it was right when company I founded out of college (it was 2008)
is probably one of the first computers you could web browsers came out and were available and I’d say it was through a spiritual awakening.
program with at home, very old school. So kind for people to download. Soon that student got I realized that I couldn’t be tied to business to
of did a bit of that and got into computer even busy with his senior projects or whatnot and I be free to do what Jesus wanted me to do,
early in high school, back in the mid 90’s. But said, “Maybe I can help you make some web what God wanted me to do. I didn’t know what
obviously any kind of programming like mobile pages…” This guy was literally going door to that was, but I felt as if working eighty hours a
programming and computer programming, door around the college getting businesses week in a business isn’t where I should be, if I
I didn’t do a whole lot of that, just more of a to pay a few hundred dollars a piece and we wanted to be free to do that. So, in 2008 I gave
general interest in computers. When I went to would design a web page for them. This is back up my partnership with this company.
college I didn’t know what I wanted to be when when web page design was a new thing, so I grew up, I went to Messiah College over here we were pretty much spearheading the idea of But I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I
in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania, and was going making web pages that looked good instead grew up, so I kind of hung around in the company
to go for engineering but realized that it takes of just being a document. And so out of that I and right then is when mobile applications
a lot of math, and I didn’t like math very much got into programming essentially, just with web came to light as far as programming. So I
so I went in undeclared. I ended up switching browsers and so forth. So after we graduated started working on that. Then in 2010, shortly
to be a marketing major, because I figured Messiah College in 1999 we decided, hey, why after Steve Jobs announced the original iPad, I
even though I wanted to do something with don’t we start a business while we’re at it. So was in a worship team meeting, and we were
computers, computers will probably always be we started a business doing web page design, sitting around and our worship leader said,
changing so why learn the old stuff if the new which turned into web application design, and “We’ve got to get organized, we’ve got to print
January 2019
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