New faces, New lives, hellos and goodbyes...

Sometimes I need to take a breath and look at how far we’ve come. The list of names here at Simplex-IT seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. You’ll see a couple of new faces (and a returning one) in the eNewsletter for this month. But there are a couple other ones we decided to save until next month.Here’s a list of the folks currently here at Simplex-IT: Alec, Alex, Angus, Bob, Cyndee, Donna, Doug, Heather, Jeff, Jessica, Joel, Kevin, Kevin (yup, there are 2), Korrey, Kurt, Michelle, Patti and Rob.Now keep in mind, several of these folks are part-time. A couple are working summer intern positions. And other names are replacing folks who moved on to other opportunities (we said goodbye and best wishes to Alaa and Kayla).Still, I remember when it was myself and Sam Hays.There’s one more position to be filled (hopefully in June), and then I’m hoping that we’ll be done with all the interviewing and hiring for a while.On a more important personnel matter, we had a different addition to the Simplex-IT crew. Senior Tech Kurt Ketcham welcomed Kinsley Ketcham back in late April.On other fronts there are exciting things afoot here at Simplex-IT. Kevin Dutkiewicz (Tech Director) and I were attending the annual Sophos Partner conference a week ago. Kris Hagerman, the CEO of Sophos joined Kevin and I (and a couple other folks) for breakfast one morning. Had a great discussion about (among other things) Co-Managed IT services. Of course, I also gave him a book. He’s an Ohio boy, born and bred down in Athens.Are you using Office 365? We’re going to show you in our webinar this month how the bad guys are getting access to your Office 365 data. And how all the spam and AV protection won’t completely protect you. This is one that all 365 users should see. More info on that here.And there are a couple of potential new customers we’re talking to that are really on the cool side of things. Hopefully more on them as they progress in the next month or so.Our next seminar is shaping up for July 11th, where we’ll be co-presenting with our Sophos partners once again. More information on that here.On the marketing side, we’ll be sponsoring the beverage cart at our very first golf outing later this month. It seems that nobody here at Simplex-IT has the foggiest idea how to golf. This could be…interesting/disastrous/curious/embarrassing /blackmailable/hilarious. It’s the Stow-Munroe Falls Chamber of Commerce Annual Golf Outing.To close on a sad note. Last month we said goodbye to personal hero (and friend) Jim Evans. Jim was very well known both locally and nationally in the PC User Group community. Always leaving a room better than he found it, Jim was relentless in helping others and forgoing taking any easy shortcuts for himself. One of the strongest and bravest guys I’ve ever known.Next month I hit the big 60. Two weeks ago, I was ziplining with 3 of our grandkids down in Hocking Hills. Later tonight I’m playing soccer.