Font AwesomeMeet Trevor Chase, the Real Human™ behind Font Awesome Pro technical support. Trevor lets us in on the most common tech support questions he gets, why he made a career change from Middle school principal to the world of tech and a little about his coffee roasting obsession.
What’s your professional background, and what’s your role at Font Awesome?
My first career was in education. I taught high school business for a couple of years before changing to physical education and coaching. I did that for 3 years while getting my Education Specialist degree in administration. I then became an Assistant Principal and did that for 8 year. So in all, I was in education for 13 years before making the switch to Font Awesome. Being an Assistant Principal was definitely the crappiest job I’ve had. I basically dealt with everyone else’s crap 100% of the time. Thus the career shift.
Why the change from education to tech?
I quickly realized I did not want to become a Principal. I really wanted to get away from a position that dealt with so much negativity. As an Assistant Principal, I was in charge of all student discipline and attendance issues. My job was basically dealing with everything negative the majority of the time.
What are the most common support questions you get?
We receive a lot of licensing questions from customers making sure they are using our product correctly. We also get questions that help us fix/clarify our documentation to make Font Awesome even easier to use and understand.
Our Support page may already hold the answers to your most burning-est questions.
Ongoing education is a core value at Font Awesome. When you’re not answering customer questions, what do you work on learning?
I am definitely trying to learn as much as I can about coding, especially regarding using Font Awesome.
As a person newer to tech, what’s been piquing your interest lately?
I’m interested in learning more about quality assurance, which pairs nicely with customer success. For that, I am reading and learning more about coding and will hopefully be able to help when releasing new products for our customers.
What icon or icon pack should make it into the Font Awesome canon?
We already have a food and beverage category, but I think that can definitely be expanded in the future.
Do you have any favorite Font Awesome icons?
I love coffee, so mug, coffee-bean, and coffee-pot are my favorites.
Black as midnight on a moonless night
What do you really nerd out about these days?
Roasting coffee for sure. We adopted our youngest child from Ethiopia 10 years ago. While there, we were able to experience coffee ceremonies where they would roast coffee right in front of us. This was so fascinating that I took it up as a hobby. I started roasting coffee using a popcorn popper. My parents really enjoyed this too and decided to start a small roasting business in their retirement. They purchased a larger roaster to use and sell the beans locally. I absolutely love the process and experimenting with different beans from around the world.
So far, I have roasted coffee from different parts of Africa, South America, Central America, and Asia. Each region brings about different flavor profiles, and it’s very interesting to try out new ones. I find the whole process calming and delicious! I’m partial to Ethiopian coffee for obvious reasons, like trying coffees from other parts of the world as well.
Where’s a good starting point for learning more about coffee roasting?
If somebody’s interested in the process of roasting, Mill City Roasters has some great videos on YouTube. They talk through the process of roasting coffee and the different stages throughout the roast.
