About

What lives here

Most pieces on this site started as a question I wanted answered for myself. How does the school district’s budget actually work? Are the voter rolls right? What is the cheapest way to keep my own email private?

The recurring subjects are civic data, local government, education, digital privacy, and whatever I’m building. Some posts are long-form analyses of public records. Some are technical notes I want to find again later. Some are field reports from things I attended in person. If a piece is useful, send it to someone. If a piece is wrong, send it to me.

If you want to know when something new shows up, the Atom feed is the simplest path. No tracking, no newsletter ceremony.

A little background

I was born at Coliseum Medical Center in Macon and raised in Crawford County, but Macon was where life happened: parades, the Cherry Blossom Festival, Saturdays at Olympia Skating Rink, hot dogs at Nu-Way with my mom. I moved here in 2007. My wife and I are raising our three children downtown.

I was a special education student growing up, with an IEP that mattered. Today I’m the parent of children with similar diagnoses who also receive special education services. Sitting on both sides of that table has shaped how I think about schools and about what “individualized” actually has to mean in practice.

I serve as a Noncommissioned Officer in the Georgia State Defense Force. That work has taken me through hurricane shelters, COVID-era nursing home and food bank support across South Georgia, and Youth Challenge Academy ceremonies. I also volunteer with the Macon-Bibb Emergency Management Agency and stay active at Alexander II through the PTA.

My career started in high school by being the kid teachers called when a printer wouldn’t work. That turned into public-safety technology for Georgia law enforcement, then a Network Engineer role with the City of Macon, where I helped build the new consolidated Macon-Bibb government’s systems. I’m now a Lead Software Engineer at Cox Automotive, where I work on tools used by thousands of developers around the world. The instinct that runs through all of it: listen carefully to the people closest to the problem, and don’t accept “that’s just how it is” as an answer.

Outside of work and service, I run a small 3D-printing shop, build strange contraptions with my kids, and keep the house full of half-finished LEGO projects.

Saying hello

Email is the best path: kerry@kerryhatcher.com. I read everything, I respond to most things, and I take a few days to do it.