My name is Mike Merola. I am the site administrator and moderator. I'd like to take a moment to introduce myself and give a little bit of background information on my career and experiences.

I have been working in the IT & development industry for over 10 years professionally now (because apparently anything before college graduation seems to not count), but have been working with computers with a passion since the mid 1990s. I was passionate about learning and fixing computers as far back as I can remember. I was the kid who people would call to help them out with computer issues when they wanted it fixed, but didn't want to pay anything. Taking every programming/computer course that my high school offered, I then took that passion into college, where I majored in Computer Science and graduated with a B.S. in Comp Sci from Florida Atlantic University in 2008.

Before I even finished college I had a job lined up with Lockheed Martin with their (then named) Information Systems & Geospatial Systems division in Gaithersburg, MD. My experience there was less development, more scripting and COTS software integration for a large contract. What I did not realize until after I left that job 4 years later that the experience I gained there was invaluable. Corporate experience, professional experience, personal experience, and industry experience. I took the time to try to deeply understand as many aspects of that job as I could while I was there and had absorbed many ideas and methodologies, that while not perfect, would serve as a basis for future development and improvement. After Lockheed, I went to a small sub-contracting company to work at what was effectively the operations side of the job I had just left. Lockheed was spent prepping software for integration, this job had me apply this.

I worked on a team of 4-6 very high level technical and truly gifted people serving an environment of over 4000 thick client machines over multiple networks in a building that housed 12000 employees that was also largely covered by a VDI infrastructure (over 14000 instances). This proved to be very challenging, fast-paced, exciting, and tiring. As time went on, the job got more demanding but our staff did not grow. We had to learn to work smarter AND harder. The experiences I gained from handling that job are ones that have led me and some former co-workers to come together and bring to life an idea that we held onto very closely at that job. Not only can you do a good job, you can do a GREAT job if you have the right tools, the right attitude, and the right mindset. Just because things tend to be done a certain way doesn't mean they HAVE to. Taking different disciplines in the IT and development world and blending them together to make more effective, more efficient, more scalable tools is not only possible, but it's the right thing to do. We very extensively used SCCM and repeatedly would hit 99%+ success rates within mere hours of complex software deployment across multiple thousands of machines.

I left that job (contract ending) a year ago now and have returned to South Florida to be closer to family after having a child. The company I work for now is quite large as well, but they are not an IT company. It is a construction company who has grown and requires IT to stay afloat. The company grew faster than their IT, so we are constantly playing catch up. My experiences at past jobs are proving invaluable to this one.

All in the mean time we are working to bring our experiences together with tools, knowledge, methodology, advice, and understanding to share to other IT professionals around the world to hopefully make a difference in both their lives AND through them, the industries that they support. This site is one side of the coin we are working on to provide tools to the industry. This site is geared towards the individuals with their hands on the keyboards doing the work. Learn from our experiences, share yours, ask a question, answer a question, share an idea or a common gripe.

I know this was long, but hopefully it gave you a slight insight into what the site and I are all about. Blog entries will be posted with more information, ideas, thoughts, and tips. Let us know a bit about you if you'd like. We'd love to welcome you to our new community!

BTW, this project is comprised of 3 people, not just myself. The others will likely introduce themselves later, but it is a very close friend of mine and my wife. We all worked together at both of my previous jobs and have shared many experiences and revelations together.

TL;DR - My name is Mike Merola. I run this site with 2 other people. I've been in the IT industry for over 10 years. Currently here to share my knowledge and foster a community where people share theirs too. Kthxbye