Ben Gagnon Email & Phone Number

I'm Ben! Hello.I'm primarily driven by three desires: 1. I want to foster collaboration and community. 2. I want to continue to move through life with empathy and humility while encouraging others to do to the same. 3. I want to make stuff, fix stuff, and build solutions. I've been fortunate in that I've been able to do a lot of all three of those things.Community is important to me because in my experience, it makes us social creatures happy, and I think we're at our best when we can teach, learn from, and lean on each other. I also think communities are most easily sustained when their members lead with their humanity instead of their hubris. I'm proud of the work I've done, but I also realize I have a lot still to learn.I just think making and fixing stuff is neat, and I like doing it. Coming up with neat solutions to complicated problems is rewarding to me, and I like doing that too.Professionally, I have worked in the Managed Services Provider space for about a decade, and have about 20 years of IT experience. I specialize in working with RMM and PSA tools and reporting, but you can really feed me just about anything. I tend to be quick to network with other professionals to share and collaborate on common problems and solutions across the industry. I tend not to seek management roles, but I don't shy away from them either. I also worked on a vegetable farm between IT jobs and learned how to weld steel and fix tractors; they're fun and very dangerous and tend to smell bad.Prior to COVID-19, I also ran a traveling repair cafe (based loosely on the Netherlands model) that showed up in various locations with tools and enthusiastic volunteers, fixing small brokenthings for fun and beer money. COVID shut that down, but I'm actively working to reestablish a network of repair operations in my geographic area as a passion project. Don't call it a business; we ain't in it for the money.Personally, I'm a somewhat-resourceful, softly-shaped goofball who may spend too much time with his bench vise for social norms. My mayor is a friend of mine and I fixed her lamp once. I love making practical or impractical objects, repairing the same, and sharing maker-type skills with others. I like the slower things. I prefer bicycles to motorcycles and kayaks to power boats. I love stomping around mountains and collecting candles that smell like conifers.Go on, say hello.

Listed skills include Active Directory, Computer Hardware, Troubleshooting, Windows Server, and 16 others.

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  University Of Massachusetts, Amherst

  Green Building