Bio
Andy is energetic, daring, and skilled. He’s a business owner and entrepreneur.
Internet company founder, blogger, podcaster, emergency responder and dispatcher, organization founder amongst other things.
Always busy, Andy is well traveled, culturally versed and has many, varied skills, interests and functions in life and lives past. Including (but not limited to):
- Emergency Services Dispatcher (Police, Fire, Ambulance etc)
- Red Cross Basic First Aid Instructor
- Scout Recon and Sniper Certifications
- Juggles, balloon models and blows fire (knows a few little magic tricks too)
- Has flown a plane, SCUBA Dived, Sky Dived, Bungee Jumped
- Worked as a part of a high-line recovery team at Ground Zero (Oct. 2001)
- Has consulted with a variety of businesses leading them to success.
- Dabbled in some photography and apparently gotten a few good shots
Andy was born on the Isle of Man in 1979 and did a rather uneventful schooling thing (Onchan Primary and St. Ninian’s High) until the age of 16.
Compulsory education in the UK (or on the Island at least) finishes at 16, students have the option then to stay on at school and go into ’6th form’ and on to University or go elsewhere. Andy did the latter and took a full time job offer as a computer tech for a Manx firm called Datacentre.
During his time at Datacentre Andy was part of a team that sold, built, supported and trained users in all things computer related. Training and support varied from home users to fortune 500 companies.
In 1998 Andy moved to the USA after he was offered a position at a Camp and Conference Center in North Eastern Pennsylvania.
Also in 1998 Andy founded Tubu Internet Solutions, a company created to provide cost effective, customer friendly, understandable computer and Internet Services.
In 2001 Andy moved to Pittsburgh and took up a position in a computer lab, designing classes, curriculums and teaching students varying from pre-teenagers to older adults in their 80′s.
In 2004 Andy became the IT Coordinator in a large, multi-national non-profit organization. He oversaw al aspects of IT within the Western Pennsylvania region of the entity (50+ locations, 500+ users). From server, account and backup administration to user training and equipment roll-out, all bases wer covered.
Software was updated and computers were remotely administered, firewalls were deployed, a WAN was grown, standards were developed, training programs were developed, users were trained to a core curriculum.
In 2002 Andy became a Volunteer Forefighter in Munhall, just outside of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where he has reached EMT-B, Firefighter 1, HAZMAT and many other certified levels.
In 2007 Andy moved out of the office to focus more on Tubu Internet Solutions and other pursuits such as blogging and social media also the TechBurgh.com blog, Producing and Hosting the TechBurgh.com Video Podcast and being an active part of the PodCamp Pittsburgh Organizational team.
Andy founded ITPittsburgh, a Pittsburgh based IT Networking organization designed to bring together the IT greatness that the Pittsburgh region has to offer.
