Speaker: Alexander ‘Doc’ Docherty
Position: Infrastructure Solutions Group | ISG
Background: For about as long as I can remember, I’ve been taking things apart. I’m fascinated by how things actually function on their own, and as part of greater systems. To this day, I maintain this curiosity and eagerness to understand how things work. Being well-rounded and versatile are the qualities I value the most, and as I such, I do everything I can to embody those traits. Knowledge of a wide array of seemingly unrelated subjects gives me a better understanding of the Big Picture.
I've wanted to talk about computers and what they can do for a living ever since the day my mom won our first computer at a fundraiser. (For the record it was a regional white-label 486SX with 4 megs of RAM and a 100 meg hard drive). I'm now lucky enough to do just that, and about a thousand other things, on a daily basis. In the flurry of it all I still often find myself thinking: "Whoa, how cool is this?!?
Since you’re most likely here to meet me professionally, know that when asked in real life, I tell most that I “Work in tech sales for a big tech company, I do servers and the big machines you don’t really see that much of”. Before doing this for the last twelve years or so, I have had a ton of interesting jobs. These include customs officer at the Port of Montreal (I did cargo ships), a summer spent tying tiny radio trackers to insects (after much trying) at the Central Experimental farm in Ottawa, running a one-man pit crew at a refurb desktop shop (one hand on a cloner, the other on a shopvac), building props used by Astronaut Chris Hadfield on a reality show, installing rooftop microwave antennas in -20 weather, and a bunch of other gigs that saw me in all sorts of hilarious jams. I like getting my hands a bit dirty.
Back to the whole talking about computers thing, I figured that since I loved waxing poetic about technology and made all my spare cash flipping gear on the internet, IT solutions sales might just be my ticket. I’ve since focused on the channel and have had a number of sales and technical positions at a global partner, as well with Lenovo, for the past five-plus years. Outside of work my favorite things are tinkering, DIYing all the things, playing trivia, driving at the track, biking my brains out, non-fiction media, looking at maps, and, above all, without question, being the best dad possible.
