Gazette story on local technology firms

The Charleston Gazette has an interesting profile of area technology firms. There are several in the valley. I've had to chance to work with or for a number of them over the past few years. It should be noted there are a number of solo practitioners that are not mentioned in the story, including my old friend Doug Payne. Last I heard, Doug was still doing some hardware work for TCS, but he does the majority of his work on his own. My last law frim IT job was outsourced to Quinn Technology.

I'm glad to see my old friend Richard Wilbur III of Advantage Technology is doing well. They just moved to new diggs on Quarrier St. Richie started his firm a few years ago and ran it out of an extra bedroom in his house for a while. There are some great pictures or Richie's new offices in the story.

I owned and operated my own computer consulting firm a couple of years ago, before folding the venture to go run mainframes for the federal government. I'm happy to be doing law firm IT again. These guys are alway knocking at the door, and there are a couple of things that we don't do in-house, such as printer hardware work.

The only problem I have with the story is the comments Staci Steele of NetSolutions at the end of the story. She says, "But everyone seems to hate their internal computer support people,” she added. “We’re not the normal computer people — we actually talk to you.” I think Staci's comments might have been taken out of context. The firm I work for has a long-standing relationship with Staci and NetSolutions, so I give her the benefit of the doubt.

For the record I talk to my users, and if you internal IT isn't talking to you or helping you with your problems, it might be time to look for new IT people, but please don't paint in-house IT staff with a broad brush.

Update: Staci responds in the comments. She was misquoted:

Sorry, it was taken out of context... It was prefaced by me saying that I had come from an internal IT department where everyone seemed to hate us... where Hate is actually too strong and misunderstood should have been used, I really believe anyone in an internal position can relate at least a little... I was mortified that of all my insightful comments, he chose my offhanded remark - live and learn -

I didn't mean to take a swipe at you Staci. As I former reports, I know it's all about the sound bite. As the subject of news coverage, I also know a lot of things can be taken out of context.

Tags: West Virginia, IT Firms