[Guest Blogger] Proud to be an IT Professional

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Edward Letendre (Calgary, Alberta, IT Pro)

IT Professionalism

A week or so ago I posted a question on this blog as to why you are proud to be an IT professional.  I got this email from Edward and wanted to share it in it's entirety with you.

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Why I am proud to be an IT pro?

1. I get to work with a lot of cool technology (I am currently working as a contractor for a small 5 person company providing the full IT department support). I get to work with SQL Server (version 7 for now), access 2000 and office 2003. I support these products and I am able to use my training from the SAIT DBA program when I work with the Database related technologies.

2. I get to help the employees of SurveyAudit.com with their problems. Every day is a different day. I come to work and never know what to expect. I may be working on a connection problem with windows XP or windows 98 (there are some old clients used here still). I may have a server crash or a hard drive fail (thank god I can do backups at lease twice a week). I may be working with a limited budget, but I can get the job done and at the end of the day, I can say I have done a good job and the people are satisfied with my work.

3. I get to work with an unknown technology or program. There are days when I have to work with products such as an Access database. In this case, I may be updating a database that was never documented and I have to gain an understanding of how the tables were put together, the access VB code that was created with no documentation or even working with seismic data that I don't have a full understanding of. But by the end of the day, I hope that I can say I have a better understanding of say Access 2000 or the seismic data that I just updated, etc.

4. After I have attended a Microsoft event, I can take my new understanding of technology and try to apply it to the needs of SurveyAudit.com. I have been looking into implementing a newer version of SQL Server, namely the free version of SQL Server 2005. I think that I might be able to move some of the older database apps over. When I see a presentation at Microsoft, I learn how the new technology works and then I can try and implement the new technology at SurveyAudit.com. In this way, I can experiment with the new technology and see what can and cannot be implemented based on the budget of the company, which is usually very limited due to the size of the company and their interest in technology (which is somewhat limited at best).

And this is why I am proud to be an IT Pro.

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Edward Letendre is an IT Professional living in Calgary, Alberta.