Staff Highlight: Sean

Would you tell us a little about your role at IRES?

I work behind the scenes, I rarely directly contribute to the MLS itself.  I keep the systems that run the MLS software components up and running, so I’m providing the scaffolding that enable the MLS and ColoProperty to do their thing.  My title is Senior System Administrator, which involves all things related to the networking and operating system, plus supporting applications.  I got my start doing sysadmin back in the ’80s, and it has been my career since 1993.

What led you to work with IRES?

Back in the late ’90s I was doing sysadmin consulting, and one of my regular clients was an ISP.    The owner there had his fingers in a lot of pies, and at one point he started working with IRES.  He recommended me to Lauren, and for a while I was maintaining some networking and firewalling at the down-town Loveland IRES office.  When they started talking about how to modernize the MLS, they asked me to take a look at the data and see what I could do with it, so I did some initial, very basic, data massaging to feel out how possible it would be to computerize it.  That was the very beginnings of what is now iresis.com.

Over the decade or so after that, I did a couple small jobs for the MLS…  In 2013 I decided I wanted to move to a new job, and took a look at craigslist, and found a job post there looking for a sysadmin for the MLS.  I sent an e-mail to Colby, the CTO at RealGo.  The sysadmin position was vacant, and Colby had been covering for it, but he was leaving for a week of vacation in a couple of days.  We had lunch the next day, and I offered “we can figure out details after you get back, I’ve got you covered while you’re out”.  I familiarized myself with the documentation that night, and came into the office to get the lay of the land the next day or two.  I officially started my job a couple weeks later, and just recently celebrated 10 years at RealGo.

What is your favorite part of your role?

It’s hard to explain why, but system administration is something that I’ve always had a passion for.  It has a lot of diversity in it, some days I do a little programming, some days I do data analysis, some I set up new applications, some I work on networking and operating system installation…

At the end it results in producing something of value for the end users of IRES MLS.  I get out of bed in the morning to help the users of IRES MLS do their jobs a little easier, a little faster, a little more smoothly.

Tell me something about you that most people wouldn’t expect?

I’ve done the bulk of the work remodeling my kitchen and one of the bathrooms in my house, down to the studs, including electrical, plumbing, drywall and flooring.  I have even gotten some praise on my work from the local building inspectors, though I also get the sense that they are happy when a DIYer pulls a permit for work, and they do everything they can to encourage it.

Do you have any favorite hobbies or pastimes?

DIYing is one of my biggest hobbies.  I’m also kind of a car nut, though these days that is mostly unrealized due to having too many irons in the fire.

What is your favorite food?

My wife and I are both good cooks, so I have a lot of diversity in my favorites.  I enjoy smoking meat on my Kamado grill, the turkey over Thanksgiving was widely praised for how juicy it was.

Tell us the best part about living in Northern Colorado:

I’m a native, so in some ways I’ve come to take NoCo for granted.  I really enjoy that Fort Collins has two distinct feels to it: A little quieter in the summer and the vibrancy of the students during the school year.  It keeps me feeling young.

What small thing do you do to try to make the world a better place?

One of our family mottos is: “A little better every day.”  I try to just focus on improving in achievable ways, and “be the change you want to see in the world.”