Welcome to the Calgary Business Technology blog!
Let me introduce myself - I'm Technology Guy (pretty clever handle, huh?). I work for a management consulting firm in Calgary specializing in accounting and operations systems for medium-to-large businesses. I have been a computer enthusiast for over 20 years, and have been a professional in the industry for the past twelve.
In the past two decades I have had many different experiences, all of which have in some way coloured my outlook on business, the computer industry, and life in general. Much of my background is in sales and consulting - learning both the similarities and stark differences between the two. I've also owned a number of small businesses, none of which ever progressed beyond the "hobby" stage, but all of which helped teach me some valuable (and often very hard) lessons. I've spent time as a disc jockey, a painter, a roughneck, a vacuum salesman, a paperboy, a dish washer, and a printing press operator.
Somewhere in there, I also became a student - twice. I had the unique experience of starting my post-secondary life at a time when the first great internet revolution was at its peak. The late 1990's. Cable companies were just starting to convince people that dial-up was on its way out, and broadband was here to stay. After that first year I took what was meant to be a year-off and that turned into a half-decade hiatus. By the time I re-started University, I had witnessed the rise and fall of Napster, the collapse of WorldCom and Enron, the revival of Apple, and, more locally, the slow demise of what had once been the largest and most respected computer retailer in Canada (and one of my first, real, full-time employers). All the examples and more helped serve as examples for my professors. At the end of it all, I came out with a business degree with a specialization in Operations, with a solid foundation in Accounting and Management Information Systems (including some Computing Science classes, for good measure).
Before all that, was regular-old-fashioned grade school. I was a pretty.. ahem.. mediocre student at best throughout Jr. High and High School, but that doesn't mean I didn't learn something. Among the usual Math and Science and English classes, I learned how to cook - quite well, in fact, and it remains one of my passions to this day. I also learned how to shoot a rifle (can you believe that there is a high-school in Edmonton with a shooting range in its basement?!), as well as other firearms. I learned how to survive in the wilderness if I ever got lost, how to fashion a heavy piece of metal into a paperweight shaped like the Stanley Cup, learned more than I ever wanted to about photography, and even some basics about Canadian law.
Of course, my K-12 journey also introduced me to a number of computer technologies. By the 10th grade I had been immersed in desktop publishing, graphic design, office productivity (chiefly Word Processing and Spreadsheets), and even programming (in both BASIC and Turbo Pascal). I had mainly worked on Apple machines (both Apple //e and Macintosh machines) in Jr. High, and had started to work in the wonderful world of DOS starting in High School. I was also introduced to a device that completely changed the way I looked at and used computers - the modem. Our family also got our first computer - a Magnavox 386-SX that ran at 20MHz, had 2MB of RAM, and an 80MB hard drive.
The rest, as they say, is history, (or more appropriately, subject of another blog post some other day).
I will end by addressing, up front, the need to leave my real name and place of employment off this blog. I am posting from personal experience, and a good portion of that experience will obviously come from observations made at work. In order to protect the confidentiality of my clients and co-workers, I will not reveal my name, my place of work, their name or anything confidential or proprietary.
