Shedding the Geek Stigma

By Graham Haworth, SLO City News

It’s probably safe to say we’ve all encountered an IT person—that’s Information Technology, for the luddites out there—who, despite fixing your computer problems, probably wasn’t the most socially oriented soul. But a San Luis Obispo company is working to shed the socially awkward geek stereotype. And by doing so, they’ve managed to stay afloat and even expand in this economic downturn.

TekTegrity offers IT strategies and management for a variety of companies, including engineering, accounting and manufacturing firms.
Basically, they set up and maintain a company’s computer network.

But what really sets TekTegrity apart, according to CEO Russ Levanway and Vice President Jeremy Koellish, is their ability to communicate with their customers and with each other. To that end, the company’s employees and leadership attended and recently graduated from a Dale Carnegie Training program. Every Thursday since February, the workers headed to the Embassy Suites for a three-hour session in communications.

“In tough economic times, a company needs to look internally to become more efficient,” Levanway says. “We want our employees to not only be good techs, but good communicators as well. The training has enabled our techs to be more confident, and that lets them address customer service issues before they happen.” TekTegrity is located in a 6,750square-foot building on Suburban Rd. that houses 19 employees (and a ping-pong table to keep the atmosphere loose.) They have a satellite office in Bakersfield, as well as one in Costa Rica. The Costa Rica office is essentially TekTegrity’s IT office. Since they’re so busy conducting IT work for other companies, their Costa Rica office acts to keep their own servers, e-mail and Web site running.

When asked about how the company is adapting to counteract tough economic times, Koellish says it’s not the economic times that can hurt a business so much as the stagnation that can occur internally. He says the company’s focus is on looking for opportunities that come with tough economic times.

“We look for doors that are open to us now that weren’t necessarily open to us in smooth economic times,” Koellish says. “For example, if a school has to slash its budget, they want to keep their teachers before anyone else. So they may have to cut some IT positions. Same thing with an engineering firm. Their focus is on engineering, so they want to keep their quality engineers around while looking elsewhere to cut. That’s where we might be able to step in and help.”