About Nate Haskins
Hi, I’m Nate.
I’ve spent my career being the person people call when something technical needs to be figured out.
I’m a technology generalist with deep experience in AI, automation, and systems integration. The through-line is ownership: take the problem, figure out what needs to happen, implement a lot of it directly, and coordinate specialists when needed.
That path has run from computer tech and IT into websites and infrastructure, then business systems, automation, and AI—always with the same habit of connecting tools so people can actually use them.
Early years
It started with trying to play a game.
I was interested in computers and video games when I was a kid. One of my first real lessons came from trying to play Space Quest on my friend’s older brother’s computer.
He didn’t want us playing it, so I had to figure out how to boot the game from scratch by myself. Eventually we got it working. Then he would make it a little more difficult for us the next time, which meant I had to learn a little more about how the computer worked.
That pattern stuck: find something I wanted to do, run into an obstacle, and learn enough about the machine to get past it. So began a lot of what came afterward.
It started with the part after the purchase.
I count the beginning of my professional career as 2000, when I worked in electronics at Staples. I sold computers and served as the store’s lead tech, which meant the computer problems ultimately ended up with me. I also kept hearing from new computer owners who were excited about the purchase but worried about setting it up at home.
I began helping with those setups outside my store hours. That grew into mobile computer repair and installation work, then broader technical support, and eventually websites. Each step widened the range of technology problems I was willing to own. I wrote down that beginning here.
In 2002, I built one of my first professional websites.
It was for a pediatrics practice. Before the build, I had the privilege of attending a board meeting at South County Hospital in Rhode Island, where I advised the practice on domain names and web hosting.
That meant the work included the decisions around the site—where it would live, how the domain would work, and what the organization needed—not only assembling the pages.
College brought networking and new media together.
I attended the Community College of Rhode Island, where I studied computer networking through its Cisco CCNA program alongside new media art. I earned an associate degree in art, then transferred to the University of Rhode Island.
At URI, I worked as an assistant network administrator, a student teaching assistant, and a scientific animator. I moved between campus networking, computer labs, faculty support, web development, and scientific visualization.
I moved from Rhode Island to St. Louis in 2006.
That was my first move to St. Louis. In 2007 I started working with Studio 2108 and rebuilt its website-production process. I replaced a largely one-off Dreamweaver workflow with a repeatable WordPress model that covered development, hosting, client updates, and ongoing support. That model became the basis of the production system the company still uses today.
The results became visible over time. In 2021, the St. Louis Business Journal ranked Studio 2108 fifth among local web-design firms by websites designed in 2020. Studio 2108 reported that the same survey data placed it second when sorted by websites hosted.
In 2011, I moved to Vermont and formally registered Haskins IT.
I registered Haskins Information Technology LLC in Vermont that year and worked from my office at Office Squared Vermont. Website development and graphic-design production became the main business.
I handled the whole process: meeting with clients, figuring out what they needed, building the system, putting it into production, and supporting it afterward. The work included more than 100 paid projects and, at its busiest, roughly 60 managed client environments.
I returned to St. Louis in 2014.
I left Vermont in 2014, spent a brief period back in Rhode Island, and then returned to St. Louis. I’ve lived in St. Louis County since, continuing Haskins IT while becoming more involved in the local technology, game-development, and business communities.
BunnyGun gave the experimental work a home.
From 2015 through 2021 I ran BunnyGun Games, a small self-funded studio built around Unity, games, and early consumer VR. I learned the tools, built a multidisciplinary team, shipped projects, automated releases, demoed VR in public, and documented the things that were difficult to figure out.
In 2017, BunnyGun was selected for Oculus Launch Pad and received funding for Danciverse. The program gave me the chance to work alongside some of the brightest people building early VR experiences. I was invited back in 2018 as a paid mentor for the next group of creators.
That is where a large part of my tutorial archive came from, but the same habit shows up throughout my career: learn the tool, find the rough edges, and show somebody else the path through them. The surviving tutorials and project records in the selected work archive begin in 2008.
In 2019, Allison and I got married.
Allison and I met while we were both working at Studio 2108. We married in 2019, and she later joined Haskins IT as art director. She still helps me run the business today.
We also worked together to launch her kawaii-themed brand, PinkSprinkleMagic. Allison created the brand and artwork, and I helped turn that work into the online store and production system behind it.
I became more involved in the local business community.
I joined the Southwest Area Chamber of Commerce and became a member of its board of directors in 2025. This photo is me with the rest of the 2025 board.
Through the Business Builders Committee, I help organize professional speaking events and practical programs for local business owners. I also advise the board on IT issues and help where my technical background is useful.
In 2025, I was named New Chamber Member of the Year.
The chamber presented me with the award during my first year as a member. This photo is from the award presentation.
Now I’m looking toward what comes next.
AI changed the economics of website production, graphic design, and software development more broadly. Work that once supported a service business—from custom websites to applications—became faster and cheaper to produce, and the margins compressed with it, so I closed that productized web-services side of Haskins IT. What stayed was the through-line I’ve had since 2000: own the technical problem, choose the right tools, connect the systems, and make the result useful for people.
AI and automation are where I go especially deep right now—organizing n8n meetups, teaching workshops, building practical workflow systems, and writing Thinking with AI, a short guide to using AI as a thinking partner instead of treating it like an answer machine. Teaching, speaking, and community work still matter to me; they’re how I keep proving ideas in public.
I’m interested in roles and partnerships where breadth is an asset: someone who can take ownership across IT, systems, integrations, and modern AI tooling, implement a lot of it directly, and bring specialists in when the problem calls for it.
After building hundreds of projects manually over the years, I’m glad to be building this one with AI. It’s a new way of working, and I’m enjoying finding out what it makes possible.