User:Rhicaro

Rhicaro or "Stonemaster" are Wiki handles for "Rick Hicaro". Rick Hicaro began his design career working for Marvin Glass and Associates (1980-1984), world renown toy & game design studio, located in Chicago, Illinois (closed it doors in 1985). He joined Marvin Glass as an electronic technician, building circuits and interface boards for toy and game prototypes invented by the MG&A designers. He eventually began working on toy and game development as one of their designers.

His time there was during the height of the handheld electronic game boom of the early 80's, which all started with "Simon" which was jointly developed by Ralph Baer and Marvin Glass studios. It was also the early days of the arcade video game with games like "Pac Mac" leading the bunch. Mavin Glass teamed with Bally-Midway to develop video games and pinball machines. Rick was part of the game development team, creating interface boards and eventually using his musical talents to compose and play theme music and sounds for the games.

Rick worked on hundreds of projects during his career at MG&A, but many of those never saw light-of-day as is typical in any think-tank, invention development environment. One of the notable video games created there, "Tapper", has even gained a cult following of sorts, having found its way onto home gaming consoles and even the internet. Rick composed the music and created the sound effects for Tapper and other video games.

Rick went on to work as a product designer for Abbott Laboratories, located in North Chicago, Illinois (1984 to 1996). He joined Abbott's Diagnostics Division (ADD). Together with teams of scientists and engineers, he designed and developed medical diagnostic instruments specifically for the physician's office. Systems he worked on included "Vision" (blood analyzer), and "MATRIX" (allergy test system). He also worked on the design of disposable diagnostic devices, both for independent, single use and for diagnostic systems.

In 1996, he left Abbott to start an entrepreneurial venture, "Perfect World Technologies" (PWT) with its founder, David Sherman. PWT's mission was to license new, patented inventions and bring them to market. Inventions were mostly sourced from the US Patent and Trademark publications. As vice president of technology acquisition and product development, Rick researched potential products then took them through engineering and eventually to manufacturing. PWT financed all projects paying royalties and licensing fees to the inventors. After several unsuccessful projects, PWT closed its doors in 1999.

Rick went on to become a freelance designer for many years after PWT. He eventually turned his creativity to one of his life long passions, photography. He opened his own professional photography studio and school for photography in Chicago, "Chicago Digital Arts and Photography", in 2010. The studio specialized in portrait photography and event photography. He also teaches photography classes for beginners and advanced photographers. The studio closed in 2015 due to a new venture he joined.

In 2006, Rick and a fellow photographer, Rob Domaschuk, met at a photography event through Meetup.com. The meetup group itself was called, "The Chicagoland Digital Photography Meetup Group". Rick and Rob soon became good friends and when the original organizer of the meetup group decided to quit, he handed the reigns to Rick and Rob in the fall of 2006. At the time, there were only 45 members when they took over the group. To help out their fellow photographers, they decided to teach beginners' classes. Soon, their reputation spread and the group began to grow. By the end of the year, they had over 100 members. Their classes covered a range of photography topics from beginning courses, to studio photography, macro photography, flash photography, and even the business of photography.

By the end of 2007 they were adding over 100 members per month. They had built a team of a dozen assistant organizers as the membership grew beyond their ability to put on enough events on their own. They soon became, not only the largest photography meetup group in Chicago, but also the 2nd largest photography group in the entire Meetup.com network. They were also the largest meetup group overall, in Chicago for a number of years.

In March of 2018, they surpassed 10,000 members and had put on over 700 meetup events. They continue to grow at a constant 100-200 members per month rate. They run the group with the help of an ever changing team of assistant organizer who help put on photographer events across the Chicagoland area and neighboring states.