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Apr
My work history
From service through to project manager and writer
In 1996 I began working in a computer retailer and I took advantage of every training program offered by the manufacturers and repair companies available, thus giving me a good grounding in computer repair from a variety of sources.
But sitting in a cold room staring at screens all day wasn’t where my heart was. To me technology is only as good as its ability to help people and this is done when it is easy to use. I couldn’t see the humour in the statements of other technicians that the problem was always the user: to me that was a cop-out for us not teaching them well, which I saw as our responsibility as a computer store.
I decided to talk to local businesses near the store where I worked and found that without exception, they were frustrated by the lack of stock on hand at the store where I worked. Oh they bought their computers from us, but it was the consumables like the printer cartridges they needed on a regular basis that simply weren’t on the store shelves. Some of them were only a 2 minute walk from the store, yet they purchased cartridges from a store 15 minutes drive away!
I approached the management of my store about an idea to create a register of the local businesses, where their weekly and monthly needs would be placed on their individual system card in a filing system. By knowing their needs, we could order in bulk and pass the savings on to the local businesses. Everyone won!
The stone wall I was met with was my first incling of how much we all hold onto rules at the risk of good reason. The answer was an unyielding NO.
I started my small business from home two months later. We bought our first shop eight months later and expanded from there.
The Internet
In our first year in our first store at Banksia, the Internet was an expensive system that was only good for sending emails and maintaining an online business card. Domain names were $500 and access was lmited to a few hours for $20 each month. But withing two years it came to the fore. Competition from local ISPs brought pricing down and we started reselling website hosting and hired a website designer.
more to come…
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