We often get asked from clients about the people who take your calls, emails, letters and pigeon-carried memos and in turn, assist you friendly and fast. This interesting bunch is by far the best and brightest in their fields (not to brag) and they also are truly ‘unique’ individuals on their own (as if working here wasn’t enough). Every other month, we’ll be introducing you to one such unique Contegian.

You’ll learn about their role within Contegix and what they do when they aren’t here making our clients happy. We’ll cover everyone from the late-night Engineers to the CTO, the Sales Maverick and even the Ambassador of First Impressions. Each of them plays a vital part to keeping Contegix up and running smoothly, and outside of our offices, making the world way more exciting for them being here. Enjoy!

Q: What’s Your Name?

A: John Klockenkemper or, “Klock,” as everyone calls me.

Q: What’s Your Role?

John:

I am the everyman. I do provisioning for managed and colocation customers, I run all the cable, set up new cabinets, take care of the hardware – whatever else I can pitch in on and do. I keep the engineers doing support and not having to worry about setting stuff up for customers.

Q: What Brought You Here?

John:

The way I got my job here was a little different than most everyone else.

I was a lot younger, working at a golf course. One day, I took a guy’s golf bag to his car so I could go home. He told me he did all the IT work for the golf course. We got to talking and I gave him my resume. He shot it out and another IT firm got it, then passed it along to the Contegix Co-founders since they deal in Linux. I was brought in by Matthew and Craig (the Co-founders) and they interviewed me and, here I am. That was several years ago. I was a giant nerd, and Linux was a hobby and has been since I was about 12-it was an exciting opportunity for me, so I took it.

Q: Tell Us About Yourself.

John:

In short: I am a fire performer. I am a Mozilla and Ubuntu volunteer. I am a huge Star Wars nerd and I play a ton of video games.

Q: How did you get into fire performing? Why do you volunteer for Mozilla and Ubuntu?

We’ve also heard that you are also restoring a bike – tell us about that.

John:

I went to a festival my first year in college, found myself outside a fire spinning circle, fell in LOVE. When I got back to school it was practice every day after that. That was 3 years ago today, actually. Holy cow.

I volunteer for Mozilla because I have been using Firefox for years now, and I figure that I should help out with it. Same thing goes for Ubuntu.

I restored a bike. It was a no-name bike from the early 80′s. I had it for quite a while and figured since it’s summertime I should go ahead and get it in working order. I did not understand the undertaking I was about to embark on. Stripping the paint, repainting, cleaning/replacing thirty-year old parts, figuring out the archaic shifting system, dealing with crappy parts I bought – after about two months of on and off work, it’s fixed. I learned a lot of lessons, and I am about to start bike number two. Now with twelve coats of paint, instead of four!

Q: What Do You Like Most About Working Here?

John:

There are a lot of reasons I like working here. Stuff is always interesting, I get to work with very smart people, I feel like I have an impact on what’s going on around here. I can’t really define a favorite. All of them are shoulder to shoulder.

Q: Well, if you had to pick one to pass along to people…

John:

Contegix is a fascinating place – everyone here is constantly learning. There is little stagnation and I like that.