Sean Feeney
IT Technician
Sean is a firefighter at TMWA. A better description of his job is a fire-preventer, but when he has to, he puts out "virtual" fires for TMWA and its water treatment and hydroelectric generation plants.
He never puts out actual fires of course, but solves Information Services (IS) crises when they occur. Luckily, there are never very many fires at TMWA, but when a problem does arise, Sean and the rest of TMWA's IS department are there to help.
"Our department is working hard to ensure that the customer service people at TMWA are always available and have the data they need to do their jobs," Sean said. "When that data is available, our water systems are working to their full potential."
The other major part of Sean's job is "a whole lot of checking." After he checks for fires needing to be put out, he checks some more:
"I check to see that all our systems are in working order and make the rounds," Sean said, "which includes checking the help desk system, the network and our backup system."
Sean is now a full-time employee at TMWA, but started part time five years ago working under Shawn Stoddard, Senior Water Resource Planner, setting up TMWA's initial network.
"He asked if I was interested in helping out and naturally, as a poor college student in need of money, I said ‘yeah of course.'" He's not as poor now, but is still balancing classes at the University of Nevada, Reno while working at TMWA. He is on course to graduate in a year and a half in Information Systems.
"I have always been interested in computers and techno-nerd stuff, so when I had computer problems I worked it out myself and it continued from there," he said. His dream "techno-nerd" job would be to work in virtualization, a consolidation of computer servers on the rise in the techno world.
TMWA has started to incorporate this technology in their system, so Sean may be able to realize his dream at the company in which he got his start.
"It's great here," he said of working at TMWA. "I really enjoy coming here every day and I think everyone here is really great to work with."
When he isn't working at TMWA or busy with school, Sean enjoys the outdoors and mountain biking. Once he is less consumed with school, he would like to use that time for travel.
"Since I've been working full time and going to school there just hasn't been an opportunity to really go anywhere for any length of time. That's why when I'm done with school I'm just anxious to go somewhere new," he said. He plans to spend a lot of time on the road, driving up the Pacific Northwest all the way to Alaska.