Jon Thomas Stokkeland

Born in Norway, Moved to USA in 1999, lived in Western NY, PA, and New England Area, now based in Florida while travelling the US living on the road, and have concrete plans to move back to Western NY area. I have a degree in what was then (1993) called "Automation and Mechanics", but has later been named Mechatronics, and traditionally speaking is a form of Electrical Engineering.
30 Years of Professional experience, starting in electrical engineering (Automation/controls/robotics), and 24 years in IT Engineering, projects and management.

In the world of IT i've done the whole Geordi La Forge, from Netware to Kubernetes so to speak. The last few years very focused on Cloud, migrations and IAAS initially, and now successfully running SAAS operations deployed with Automation/DevOps. I am still maintaining my hands on skills and being the SME in many subjects, such as VOIP and Load Balancing, variety and challenges is what keeps IT fun...

I started in industrial process and production integration and monitoring, then moved into infrastructure and systems, then into software development and implementation in healthcare.

On the industrial/controls side I have worked on Anything from PLC/HMI projects with a few I/O, to larger distributed systems and production lines, from Relays to EtherIP, from DCS to NRT, and so forth. I do not anticipate going back to these roots, but my background experience in this area can be very useful in many situations.

I Believe my strength is the ability to see the overall picture and staying focused on the right details, troubleshooting and problem solving, and finding the balanace between path of least resistance versus the by-the-vendor-book solution. Understanding the business and applicable technology, a certain degree of overkill is needed to assure future ability and longviety, but you don't need a V8 to run a Mini Cooper - if you think the Mini will need to be replaced before it's capital depreciation period, then lease it.

I am a bit of a geek, but not the complete a-social nerd that some may think of when they hear the word. My diplomatic/people skills, combined with my technical abilities, logical sense, and management experience, I know I could take on nearly any position within IT management. I do however have some requierements of my own; challinging, involve technology, some Linux/UNIX, general sense of humor amongst staff, and I need some hands on time. I don't want to get stuck producing and reading reports all day - variety is always a good thing, so medium to small environments usually suits me well.