Darren.
You can rely on bright people to contribute to your projects, and to help out when asked.
Why did you join Epic?
My background was healthcare and I was looking for a growth opportunity in the field. Most jobs were research based and funded by grant money. Epic was a growing company, and I thought if it didn't work out, there were lots of healthcare and high tech jobs in Madison and the Midwest. Almost 10 years later, I'm still here!
What do you enjoy most about working at Epic?
The best part of Epic is having autonomy in what you do and the people you get to work with. Projects are yours to own and you have a lot of latitude in how you get the job done. You can rely on bright people to contribute to your projects when needed, and people will always help out when asked.
What are the projects you've worked on in your career thus far?
My career started out at Epic like most people in Technical Services: I was assigned to a couple customers for application support, working on new features, bug fixes, and upgrades. Shortly after I started, we needed to develop a new scalability product and I became the technical implementation lead for that project. It was immense, implementing a brand new technical solution to support our largest customer ever. I was able to straddle the technical and implementation realms by leading a number of projects and people for the install. It was by far the biggest project I had ever worked on, and I was given a lot of leeway and responsibility at a very early point in my career at Epic. This is true of many people working at Epic.
After that project, I became the technical lead for implementing the same scalability solution to many of our other large customers, which in turn led to working with international customers, including one in my hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, and one in the Netherlands.
What's been your biggest accomplishment?
I'm most proud of being a member of the team that took something from an idea to a live solution for our largest customer ever. There were challenges no one even thought to consider that a group of smart, dedicated people were able to solve and produce something that had never been done before. The skills learned during that implementation have allowed me to help dozens more customers navigate challenging technical obstacles.
What are your goals for your career at Epic?
Our team is constantly working on improving the technical install process, and we have made great strides in developing tools and methodologies to make the technical components of the install faster, more efficient, and simpler for our customers. To meet the needs of our latest crop of customers, I'd like to continue to work on further refining that so customers can implement Epic with less cost and complexity on the technical side. I also enjoy managing great team members and mentoring newer staff and it is very rewarding to see them turn into managers themselves and continue to build Epic.
What are you passionate about?
I love to travel and my role at Epic has allowed me to travel to over 40 different cities across 3 countries on 2 continents. In addition the sabbatical program allowed me to enjoy a month in Thailand playing many of Asia's best golf courses. I'm looking forward to traveling for my 10 year sabbatical soon, most likely an extended golf vacation in Scotland to once again combine two of the things I love.
What does your typical week look like?
My typical week is working with groups from Sales, to Server Systems, Windows Systems, Application Technical Services and Implementation Services jointly with customers to develop technical strategies and timelines to meet their application needs. This involves calls with hardware vendors, other software vendors, and project technical and application directors as we map out their goals, needs and timelines and how Epic's best practices intersect with all of that. I'll also make trips out to customers to cover strategies around business continuity, disaster recovery, and hardware deployment just to name a few.
