In this month’s user spotlight blog, we’re talking to Brent Read (brent_read), Solutions Architect for the Modernization team here at Nintex.

What is your current role and some career background?
I’m the Solutions Architect for the Modernization team and I’ve been at Nintex for 9 years in May. I started here as a support Engineer and held several titles between then and now. Before that I was an Infantryman in the US Army for 8 years. While I was in College, I worked in a heart disease research lab.
Which Nintex Product are you most passionate about and why?
Right now, Nintex Automation Cloud since it’s the biggest part of what I do, but I’m leaning heavily into Nintex Apps to be able to work with both together since I think it provides a ton of capability that Automation Cloud needed. The ability to build custom pages for automation is a huge addition to the product stack.
What do you enjoy most about answering Community questions?
Community questions give my mind a bit of a break when I’m working on something challenging and let me come back with a fresh perspective. It's useful when you get to a blocking point to get a quick reset. You also get to see a quick outcome as opposed to some of the projects we work on which can take months to complete.
Is there any advice you would give to users learning Nintex?
Try to start by working on a medium-complexity project. With low-complexity projects you don't learn as much and high-complexity projects have the potential to run you into issues you’ve never seen before that can demoralize you. In that medium space you should be running into something challenging but not so many things that you’re overwhelmed.
What's one thing — either industry-related or not — you learned in the last month?
I frequently listen to History podcasts while I’m not on calls. The past month, I’ve been listening to discussions of ancient Roman history, so the thing that comes to mind most is that the Romans, when they went to War against Carthage, didn’t have very effective naval designs. They redesigned their ships after reverse engineering the wreckage of Carthaginian ships to be able to compete on the naval side.
What's something about you (a fun fact) that not many people know?
My kids started playing hockey last year. Since then my wife and I also picked it up and we’re going to play in the summer draft league this year.