November 30, 2022
Meet Mapcon Mondays - Featuring Ethan Gunnels
Welcome to another edition of Meet Mapcon Mondays, a monthly interview series starring one of Mapcon's illustrious employees. This time we're sitting down with Ethan Gunnels to hear about his tenure here at Mapcon Technologies, Inc.
Q: Introduce yourself.
A: Greetings! My name is Ethan Gunnels and I am currently the Director of IT Services for Mapcon Technologies. I usually wind up helping in a lot of different areas at Mapcon, such as right now where I'm helping prepare the new office building's network and IT setup for our upcoming move which sometimes involves running cabling firsthand. As a good overall summary of my duties, I help handle monitoring anything and everything related to the software and hardware that we use as a company to support both ourselves and those who use the program or services of Mapcon.
Q: Without revealing a deep, dark secret (unless you want to), tell us something about yourself most people don't know.
A: Shortly before winding up at Mapcon, there were multiple times I almost gave up on my job search in the US with plans on moving to South Korea or Japan to teach English. I had spent a little over a year during college studying in South Korea which got me interested in the language and culture there, and I had already put some effort into studying Japanese before that. I'm a huge fan of languages/linguistics and when I felt like things weren't taking off for me in the IT world as I had dreamed, I considered making a hard pivot into the teaching world and diving into that side of my studies instead.
Q: Tell us about your Mapcon experience.
A: I've been employed at Mapcon for somewhere around 9 years currently. Originally the role I was hired for at Mapcon was as a trainer, specifically with a focus on the online training services, which naturally involved doing a lot of learning about the software and its users as well. Since then I've been involved in a little bit of almost everything Mapcon at some point or another. Everything from training groups of users on-site, to helping roll out the web-based version of the software, and sometimes just making sure phones, computers, and email around the office are all doing what they're supposed to. The small size of the company really helps make it possible to be involved in more than just one area because you get a chance to see, hear, and work with everyone on a daily basis.
Q: Outside of work, tell us what you enjoy.
A: As you might expect my hobbies involve lots of the usual nerdy things: Computers, Video Games, Dungeons & Dragons, etc... That said I'm also a huge sports fan and love watching and discussing just about any sport that's out there. My usual favorites are College Football, Soccer, and Basketball. Though... unfortunately I am not nearly as good at actually finding the time to get out and do those kinds of sports in person.
Q: What is one aspect about Mapcon you would like customers and future customers to know?
A: The way that every single piece of Mapcon is invested in our customers. The advantage of a smaller company is that people who can help make changes tend to hear about everything. When we get feedback or criticism, we all hear it and it's something that we take to heart and try to help us to guide the future of the product and the services around it. That's why we love to hear from our customers. It might take us a little bit to get around to every single feature we want to implement, but the more you talk to anyone at Mapcon about what the program does right or what it's missing, the more we're talking about it and figuring out what to change and what to keep consistent.
Ethan is a valued member of the Mapcon team, and we can't wait to see what other innovations he'll forge in the future! Join us again next month to get to know another member of the Mapcon family.