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Dan Desmond is uniquely wired

Portsmouth Herald - 6/13/2017

Dan Desmond is uniquely wired. And it just may make him a perfect business owner for a wired world. That's the gamble he and his family are putting on his talent with digital media. Diagnosed with autism when he was 2-years-old, the now 25-year-old Portsmouth man runs his own media company called, DesMedia.

Creating digitized versions of personal VHS tapes or photos, slides, or film negatives, Desmond transfers the data to DVDs or memory sticks and hand delivers them to his customers or downloads the files for them to DropBox. While it may have been slow out of the gate, his business is picking up as more people uncover dusty boxes of home video taken in the days when a once-common device was made to play them - something called a video-cassette recorder. Business may boom now that the last manufacturer of VCRs stopped making them last year.

By reaching into the analog past, the young entrepreneur hopes to create a digital future for himself that would buck a trend among young adults on the autism spectrum.

According to a 2017 report by Autism Speaks, "More than half of young adults with autism remain unemployed and unenrolled in higher education in the two years after high school. This is a lower rate than that of young adults in other disability categories, including learning disabilities, intellectual disability or speech-language impairment."

That Desmond might have a knack for a multi-media business became apparent when his creative edits of song and movie clips that he'd posted on YouTube garnered more than 18 million views. His own channel now has nearly 6,000 subscribers. The success might not be entirely unexpected given his avid interest in work as a staff photographer for his Bedford High School newspaper and yearbook. He followed that deep interest into the wired multimedia world as an intern at several Manchester-area marketing companies, including Hippo Press, Mann Advertising and Spectrum Marketing, where he learned and performed a variety of digital design and editing tasks. In that light, DesMedia was the next logical step for Desmond to take.

"The idea was to take something he was already interested in and make it work for him," said Dan Vorosmarty, a direct support provider with the One Sky Futures program. In addition to the unwavering support provided by his parents, Phil and Janette, Desmond has also had a personal connection through the Futures program with Vorosmarty, who has worked with Desmond since 2014. They are familiar enough with each other's ways that Desmond refers to himself and Vorosmarty as "the two Dans." Or as some people have come to call them: "Dan, Squared."

Among its services, the Futures program offers adult day and employment support services centered on an individual's needs and circumstances with a focus on expanding community participation, building social relationships, strengthening vocational skills and exploring individual competencies.

For Desmond, as with many others, the Futures' support model usually translates into a 1:1 collaborative relationship much like how "the two Dans" work together.

Their collaboration involves an ongoing effort to expand into new processes and formats and for Desmond to be as independent as possible in accomplishing the tasks. That effort has demanded that Desmond reach an even higher level of techno-know-how and for both of them to take on projects being largely self-taught about the technological and business processes required for the work.

Starting from scratch in choosing the right devices and learning to use them, DesMedia has stretched its expertise and services to include not only VHS but also VHS-C and mini-DV formats. For Desmond, it has meant stretching himself to learn the business end of operations, from equipment investment to pricing and billing.

"With every order, there was a new skill he had to learn," Vorosmarty said. "He had to learn through trial and error. He'd rather take the time to do it perfect. He's very particular and pays attention to detail."

Meticulous attention to detail has been one of Desmond's traits for as long as his parents can remember. In elementary school, his teachers would have Desmond proofread papers for his classmates. Nowadays that care and attention to detail mean Desmond won't handle a customer's photographs or slides before he dons cotton gloves to avoid putting his fingerprints on them. He then painstakingly dusts each one before scanning it. Desmond takes the work of reproducing someone's cherished memories very seriously and is proud of the results he produces. Some of the projects he's taken on include scanning photos of loved ones to create a multimedia slideshow for memorial events.

But while Desmond works diligently to create quality digital reproductions for his customers, he continues to strive just as hard on his own goal of being as independent as possible. And like DesMedia itself, there are numerous strategies and tools in the world of developmental services that can be used for introducing someone with a disability to more independence in their life. One such tool for Desmond was to sit down and, together with Vorosmarty, create sets of detailed tutorial documents that Desmond uses to complete a routine when Vorosmarty is not around to help with any one of the many processes involved in running the company.

For Desmond and his family and his Futures' support team, what may once have been only a possibility discussed in a meeting has become reality. It was a matter of finding the right tools and strategies and following a painstaking process that strove to create a bright future for Desmond. And the first step was to create a simple but daring picture of what it could be.

-For information about DesMedia, contact Desmediavhs@gmail.com.