Leo's place on the web!

husband, father, entrepreneur...

My latest venture (Neighborhood Nerds)

Shnerd

I first had a vision of Neighborhood Nerds in 2009 while helping friends with their technical issues.  I quickly noticed a common dissatisfaction with service providers. The common complaint, high cost of service and the low level of delivery (the client wanted more for less).  Many also complained about the ineffeciency of the technicians (the client had to spend time explaining the issues). Another complaint was poor service (the tech just couldn't fix the issue or they caused additional issues).  Being an entrepreneur, I saw an opportunity for a new business.

My love with technology started in High School where I was first introduced to a TRS-80 computer..and was immediately hooked.  From there, I worked on various machines programming in BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, Assembly, C, and a few others.  I entered UT Knoxville in 1987.  While at UT, I had the opportunity to work with the first IBM personal computers, VAX systems, Iris Workstations, SPARC Workstations, and the first Macintosh computers.

After graduating from UT Knoxville with a degree in Electrical Engineering, I went to work for Allen-Bradley where I engineered, programmed, and installed industrial control systems.  This allowed me to work with the latest technology in computers, communications, business systems, and gadgets of all sorts!

Later I diversified my portfolio while exercising my entrepreneurial spirit.  I launched Russell Knight Properties in 1995 as the family's real-estate investing company. In 2000 I launched DBR Systems, an Industrial Automation company. In 2006 I launched Bright Software a business incubator specializing in Software solutions.  In 2008 I launched Entrepreneurs of Knoxville to help others with their business startups.  In 2011 I launched Taking IT Home in Sequoyah Hills, a neighborhood in Knoxville, TN.

Neighborhood Nerds (NNerds) is a residential tech support company with a huge focus on the customer relationship. The nerds have a real empathy for their clients and their issues with Technology.  NNerds operates on a membership model where its competitors operate on a break-fix model. By setting up a shop in the middle of a neighborhood, using a membership model, and investing on the front-end, NNerds is able to bring a VERY affordable service to its members

 

Socialist Teachers?

My oldest just told me some interesting information about his honors math class.  His teacher has assigned everyone to a group, assigned numbers to each person in the group, and rolls dice to select a number.  The number of the dice selects the students whose homework grade will be used for all the students in the group.

My son is complaining that this only pulls down his grade since he's at the top of the class.  I agree!  The teachers goal is to get the groups to work together and pressure all the students to do their homework.  This system only helps the weaker students.

My son does all of his homework every night (doesn't need to...that's another blog post) but it doesn't help his team unless the roll of the dice select him.

I say, let the weaker fail, learn a trade, and make a living doing a job they can handle.

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo