by Tara Penner

After four and a half years, the end of March marks the conclusion of my time with KRIC.

Over the years I’ve been part of a remarkable array of events, and, feeling a bit reflective as I get ready to embark on a new adventure, I have to say what I’m really going to miss are the people.

It’s been awesome to get to know so many of the entrepreneurs, community leaders and economic development professionals who are so passionate about innovation and small business in the Kootenays. It has been exceptionally fun and I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to get to know you all.

Entrepreneurship, I’ve learned, is infectious. Listening to so many brave and savvy entrepreneurs in the East Kootenay has spurred my desire to become one myself. So, in a matter of weeks, I will be going full-time into my consulting business, Pivot Data.

Thanks to KRIC, I’ve accessed a remarkable array of professional development opportunities, and with so many valuable lessons in my pocket, I feel excited to put them into practice.

I moved with my husband to Kimberley in 2008, as ‘just two more’ of the amenity migrants who settled in the area around that time. I’d been working for engineering companies, managing their Enterprise Content Management systems, and I assumed that living somewhere as amazing as the Kootenays would mean that I would never work in my field again. A fair compromise, it seemed.

So, like many people I’ve met along the way, I began collecting jobs; part-time jobs, and lots of them. I did my best to piece together a living out here, and was lucky to end up with KRIC for as long as I have been. I’ll admit, however, that I missed working directly with technology. In particular, I missed working with businesses to identify and support their processes with enterprise software. I missed working with databases.

Over time, I began to see where I might be able to repurpose my skills in a way that would allow me to build a consulting practice. I branched out in Open Source software, dabbled in SaaS and expanded into the world of ERP.

It was a broad array of work, but always revolving in some way around information management, enterprise software and project management.

I decided to officially hang a shingle as Pivot Data in May of 2013.

The work has grown to a point where I have to decide whether I’m growing a business or supplementing my income with contracting work 'on the side'.

As it’s the former, I’m leaving KRIC with a lot of enthusiasm. I’m going to miss a lot of things about this organization, but am excited to dive into the fray myself. The thing is that KRIC really does deliver an incredibly valuable service to small businesses in the Kootenays and I will continue to promote these services and hope to stay involved in our region’s economic development community in some way.

I leave you with an oldie-but-a-goodie; one of the strangest (and funniest?) ads I believe KRIC has ever run.

I wish you all the best,

Tara