Griffin is from Williamsport, Pennsylvania where he joined the United States Army as a Signal Support Specialist. He learned many aspects of the Technology field during his six years of service. With two tours overseas, Griffin was able to perfect his craft in installations and in radio communications. Upon returning home, Griffin went to college to learn more about technology. He recently graduated with his first degree in Mobile Applications Development, and did not stop there. He is currently finishing from his second degree in Networking.

I wanted to learn as much as I could possibly learn, but the only way to gain a craft such as this is hands on experience. I was given a flyer for a job at Turnkey Internet. I was very excited to get an opportunity to work for the company. There is so much knowledge within Turnkey Internet. I love the people that I work with. It is a very personal work experience, and I have been able to learn so much from the employees. I did not go out and find myself a job, but instead I found myself a home with Turnkey Internet.

Randi comes to us from the snow making capital of the world, Hunter Mountain, NY. Randi has always had a strong fascination with electronics and how everything works. What makes it go from point A to point B. What happens if we modify the algorithm?

Unlike most children, Randi’s least favorite Holiday growing up was Christmas. Randi’s brother always received electronic toys. Powerized car and trucks, flying helicopters, a hover board. Randi was left with Barbies and play sets.

Randi’s brother would get bored with the electronic toy and go play with another. At this point, Randi would take the toy into her room to try and figure out how it worked. The toys always ended up in a hundred pieces on her floor. She had to figure out how the toy worked. Never being able to put it back together, she was grounded by dinner each year. Randi didn’t want to be a doctor, no need to take Barbie apart.

Knowing Randi’s strong desire to understand how things work and her love for electronics, it was only natural her parents pushed her to attend a technical school. Randi studied at the Withlacoochee Technical Institute in Florida. Then continued on to attend Mildred Elley and the Sage Colleges of Albany her in NY. Randi graduated at the top of her class with a degree in information technology.

Our CEO and President, Adam Wills, was recently featured in this month’s Capital Magazine! Adam discussed the beginnings of TurnKey Internet and how with a small team here at our green data center, we’ve been able to work with over 13,000 clients in over 100 different countries. Starting in 1999, TurnKey has gone through multiple phases to reach where we are today. And if you have been keeping up with us here, on Facebook, or on Twitter, you will know that we show no signs of slowing down!

“High-speed Internet back in the early to mid-2000’s wasn’t really ubiquitous everywhere, and it’s not what what we understand what it is today. Especially with the concept of mobile-devices that we have now. The iPhones, and a few years later the Droid, had been invented, meaning that people could communicate anywhere on the go. They needed a centralized place, and they needed a centralized communication channel and have that data stored. We saw the opportunity on the horizon.”

Check out the rest of the article here to read what else Adam had to say!

People of the World Wide Web:

My name is Dylan Youngs, as you may have predicted from the title “Meet Dylan Youngs.” As TurnKey Internet’s newest member, I am here to introduce myself and to tell you some things that you probably don’t know about me!

I recently graduated from SUNY Oneonta with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communications. Along with spending my four years of college in Oneonta, I also spent the first 18 years of my life there. The “City of the Hills” is known for its cold cheese pizza, the legendary “Squirrelman”, and Brook’s Barbeque—where Hillary Clinton once stopped in for a finger lickin’ good time.

At SUNY Oneonta, I had the opportunity to study abroad in London, England, and also to gain some professional experience in Burlington, VT. I now like to think of myself as an International Man of Mystery (although I am the only one who has ever actually used that title for myself). In Vermont, I worked as a Marketing and Promotions Intern for a Minor League Baseball team affiliated with the Oakland A’s. There, I got to meet Billy Beane of Moneyball and Mini Kiss—for all you baseball and little Gene Simmons fans out there. I also put my Speedo on and dipped my toes in the great sea of Marketing, and realized that I would like to swim with the great white sharks of the biz one day (from now on, I am referring to myself as a blacktip reef shark, which is approximately six feet in length, as am I).

TurnKey hired me to take on a new position, Direct Marketing Ambassador, and I am thrilled to be here! This is a great opportunity to get my foot in the door at a company that is rapidly growing, and in an industry that that is developing just as fast. I have found that everyone who works here has their own awesome, unique personalities, which—amazingly—somehow blend into a big, happy ball of high-fives and “hip-hip hoorays”. Now I am here to bring chest-bumps and The Wave to this TurnKey Stadium.

Well, that is all for now. Signing off!

 Read more about Dylan…

Join us in welcoming Alan Rosenberg, Strategic Account Manager, to the TurnKey team!

 
“I came to the grand opening of TurnKey a few months ago and remember being very impressed with the direction Adam was going. His operation is remarkable. I possess my own sustainability concerns, so I was glad to see the green initiatives that TurnKey is taking. I have known Adam since his days at Global when I sold them beepers—I hope that does not give away my age.

“Besides Adam, I knew Tim and David before joining TurnKey. I knew of their work, and knew Adam has a good staff. I was thrilled to see that they were looking for an outside sales person, and again when I was hired to focus on growing the Channel Partner Program and handle Enterprise accounts.

“TurnKey has the solutions for your IT needs. Please stop in for a tour, or visit our web site www.turnkeyinternet.net. I can be reached at 518-618-0999 ext 109 or arosenberg@turnkeyinternet.net.

“I am looking forward to contributing to the TurnKey blog. Keep an eye out every month for ‘Alan’s Cloud Tip of the Month,’ and other articles.”

 
Read more about Alan…

Howdy do, Turnkey Lovers?

How are you feeling this week? I’m only asking because I’m not sure how to begin this topic. Let’s see, not too long ago, one of my co-workers mentioned that some of our competitors were writing blog entries on what it’s like to be an “IT Professional”. This has actually been something that I’m curious about myself.

What makes an IT Professional? I mean, IT (Information Technology) is such a large umbrella. So I did what I always do when I need to know something: Google. You would be surprised—well, you might not be—about the number of articles out there that deal with this very topic. Hundreds of “IT Professionals” all list their own explanations of what an IT Professional does.

Rather than bore you with yet another article on what an IT Professional does in general, I would prefer to take you into the world of a “TurnKey Professional”. These are probably one in the same, as a common denominator through all of the articles on IT professionals was this idea of wearing multiple hats; metaphorical hats, in this case. This could be anything from fixing a certain type of software, to providing customer service to a local client. If you’re really lucky, you may even get to work with a businessman or salesman.

In no place did I see this idea chiseled deeper into stone then at TurnKey Internet. On some days, I’m just your friendly, neighborhood slayer of tickets. This extends from any support issue as small as resetting a password on a locked out cPanel account, to deploying a major upgrade to new technology. On other days, I might be working on LiveChat, attempting to sell one of our many services—everything from dedicated servers, to colocation, to domain registration.

A TurnKey Professional is a jack of all trades, if you will. We each have skills that we must call on in a moment’s notice, to best service the needs of our customers. Isn’t that what an IT Professional is supposed to do? I’m not 100% on that, but I know here at TurnKey Internet, that’s what we do.

Having team members who each possess different skills, leads to a diverse, all-encompassing set of solutions to common issues that any IT Professional may run into. You know, that’s why I love working here. There are always multiple ways to solve an issue, and here at TurnKey, we usually end up employing many of them—if not all of them—to solve our clients’ needs. It’s quite refreshing.

Well, that’s just another little bit of information I wanted to share with you. It’s another way to show you Turnkey-lovers that I love what I do; another piece of information to share and bond over.

Until next time…

Howdy do Turnkey Lovers,

It’s Jeremy here again. I had a bit of a brain block when writing this post. I wasn’t exactly sure what to share with guys.

We’ve chatted about everything from cPanel hosting to reseller hosting and even if the Internet will die. However, I have to apologize. Me being from the deep south, Georgia to be exact, we have this little thing called Southern Hospitality.

For those of you who do not know what that is, lets just call it manners. That guy who passes you on the streets and says, “Hey, how you doing?” to the guy who holds the door for you when you’re entering a venue.

That leads me to my apology as I’ve never introduced myself. I’m Jeremy Walker, slayer of tickets and women hearts. Born and raised in this little town twenty minutes out of Atlanta called Inman Georgia. Now, I won’t bore you with telling my life story here as this isn’t the venue – but it leads to the core of where I speak from, and always keep a customer is always right attitude to assist people.

I wanted to actually share more about my love for Turnkey and technology. I began working at Turnkey in the summer of 2010. I was year removed from my junior year of RPI(Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.) I had a taken a year off and needed to find some work. I tried my hands at Staples, and other retail shop opportunities – but never found the right fit that challenged and excited me.

I had grown up in technology and knew that items they wanted me to sell, but found it rather unrewarding to put politely (I am after all a southern gentlemen, so i’ll simply say that!).  One day, I felt I was wasting my potential. I had went through 3 years at RPIand I didn’t want to just be selling things I didn’t believe in. Enter, TurnKey –  I’m cruising craigslist for potential opportunities and stumble across this aid for a computer technician.

One email later, one phone call, and an interview later and Turnkey had its new Hosting Evangelist, neither of us knew it yet though at the time! Now, I worked before in my  life, but I wasn’t in such a  professional environment where you weren’t face to face with a client all the time when helping them.  This was new territory for me. I was actually working in my chosen career choice with a Tech company that was rapidly growing. Cloud, Shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS(virtual private server), DNS etc. were all new things for me – but logical tie ins with my technical experience.

My education up to this point was more theoretical based then hands on. Sure, I had dual booted my machine at home and built web sites and facebook pages at RPI and even had an internship as a systems engineer my freshman year at RPI, but none like Turnkey.

It’s been a fun, stressful, awesome, rewarding, education and any other adjective you want to use.  The key here was I was part of something, and really got to interact with you (the clients, and potential clients) to see new challenges, opportunities and ways of using technology every day.  For someone invested in technology their entire life, and career / education path – the diversity of technology uses, and challenges can be one of the biggest perks to the job.

I’ve grown the most at this company by learning more about offering Hosting, ISP(Internet service provider) collocation, green energy datacenter services – all have added to my knowledge of this beautiful creature of the Internet. Seeing the industry from this side has been quite a rewarding experience.  And the best part, over the last years I’ve moved through the customer service ranks, to the engineering ranks and now after learning more and more about the technology and working with clients to see all the different challenges that come with it, I get to write to you guys about great ways to leverage the technology.  I get teased as our Hosting Evangelist – out there on forums, and our blog – but that’s ok.

Now, we’ve been properly introduced. I hope you’ve enjoyed this encounter as much as I did providing it.

Until next week Turnkey Lovers

Meet the latest member of the TurnKey Team, here to help assist you 24 x 7!

My name is Kyle Sponable, I am a graduate of Hudson Valley Community College with an Associate’s Degree in Computer Science specializing in Systems Administration.  I have been working at TurnKey Internet for about a month now.

Technology has been my passion for many years be it computers, rockets, aircraft, even antique engines. When I am not at Turnkey, my days vary from reenacting the days of old steam at shows and fairs, to launching rockets, to building DIY projects in my garage. When I am not building something or another I like to hunt and fish, watch movies, and travel.

Today I would like to tell you about my experiences here and maybe give you a taste of what it is like to be a tech here at TurnKey Internet.

I have been on all sides of the IT field from programming, to field work, consulting, to now datacenter. While I have been fortunate to have worked with many great people, working with the TurnKey team has far been the most enjoyable experience I have had so far. The atmosphere here is great; we have a team here that actually works together to solve problems and you can easily bounce problems off one another.  I think one of my biggest un-expected moments the first week was the friday barbecue – where the company sets up in the back parking lot and grills up chicken, burgers, or kabobs and everyone takes a break together to just chat and share a meal.   Its not something I’ve seen at other jobs before that I have had.

My first job was working as an automation programmer for a local Industrial Automation company; I have seen many green solutions for heating, cooling, and power generation.  Here, we have a radical design to cool our servers and cut our usage of power drastically. The heart of our datacenter is composed of state of the art servers, and they run the same as in any other data center I have been in or worked around. The only difference being is the sheer amount of energy saved by this new approach. Every day I am excited to come to work to get a chance to learn more about how this unique “bleeding edge technology” operates.

In closing, I am really enjoying working here, I feel as if I am growing not only my career as an IT professional but personally as an individual. I remember when I came in for my interview, Dave, one of my interviewers asked what I was looking for. My answer was “Meaningful employment”, and I am happy to say I have found it. It is great to be a part of building my community while saving the environment, and working at TurnKey has allowed me to do all of that.

Nick is our Sales Manager and that’s not all. He’s a smooth talking spitfire. He’s my friend and yours. As the consummate salesman and all around jokester, Nick keeps things lively here at TurnKey while providing the world-class customer service and salesmanship you’ve come to expect.

What attracted you to the hosting business?

I have always loved and succeeded in sales. It has always been a dream of mine to grow with an upcoming company.

How did you find TurnKey?

Brian Ellwood. Turnkey is down the street from my previous employer.

What aspect of your job brings out the best in you?

Customer Service

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

Other than working (yes in my free time)…. Golf

Do you have any good party tricks?

Let’s party and we can find out!!!!

Sounds like a plan, Nick! Stay tuned for more staff interviews coming soon.

As the newest guy on the team, Network Engineer Brian has already become a much-loved member of the TurnKey family. Hilarious, industrious and great at what he does, we’re all so glad to have him. Welcome, Brian!

What attracted you to the hosting business?

As a programmer by nature I found myself constantly setting up environments on which to develop. Having experience in both Windows and Nix gives me an edge in supporting and
running hosting environments. Being able to bring and constantly refine these skill-sets to a higher level is a challenge that I enjoy.

How did you find TurnKey?

Through a colleague, by happenstance.

What aspect of your job brings out the best in you?

Working in a dynamic and versatile environment allows me to shine as a Jack-of-all-trades.

Do you have any hobbies?

In the Winter I enjoy snowmobiling in the Adirondack’s and during the Summer I like to work in the yard.

Tell me something interesting about yourself…

My left arm is longer than my right arm.

What hardware/software do you use on your home computer?

Windows 7 x64, Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS