Features Region: Southeast

As festivals go, this one won’t conjure up memories of Woodstock, Live Aid or Coachella. No one gets inundated by storms causing seas of mud, no rock stars take jets to play multiple venues in a day, and the setting is south central Virginia, not the California desert. But John Collins has very high hopes […]

It’s a term the Grateful Dead used to explain their longevity: misfit power. C. Chris Meystrik nods approvingly when asked whether it’s in the secret sauce of his infotech division at Jewelry Television (JTV). “I like it,” he answers. “At another company, a manager might roll his eyes and say, ‘that guy’s really out there’ […]

Some IT professionals have a college course or video game that inspired them to pursue a career in technology. Richard Maxwell? He had a bad back.  Maxwell was in his 20s when he severely injured his back while working construction jobs in Alabama. A doctor gave him two options: stop working construction or get major […]

When the first Hooters restaurant opened in Clearwater, Florida, in 1983, the company branded itself as “delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.” Servers in low-cut shirts and short orange skirts served basic fare like chicken wings, burgers and beer. Nearly 40 years later, those staples remain, but behind the scenes, technology infrastructure provides modern conveniences that serve […]

When asked about his successes at Nashville State Community College, Rob Tudor points to the young and middle-aged adults who’ve started or restarted their careers.   There’s the former hairdresser whose income had maxed while her family responsibilities grew. She’d been working at least six days a week and owned her own salon, but capable as […]

While some people move to Madison County, Alabama, for the temperate weather, others choose it for its largest city—Huntsville, better known as Rocket City. Home to the largest space museum in the world, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville is where the first rockets that went to the moon were built. Many scientists continue […]

The National Hurricane Center calls it the “cone of uncertainty”—the projected track of a hurricane for five days measured from its current position. New Orleans—and Loyola University—were in the cone of uncertainty eight times in 2020 as three tropical storms and two hurricanes struck Louisiana. That vulnerability to storms, as well as a 45-year-old IBM […]

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a gigabit city. Lots of complexities must be satisfied when laying down a fiber-optic network with its nearly unlimited bandwidth and speed-of-light data transmission. All things considered, the four years-plus that it took to wire Lexington, Kentucky, went about as smoothly as could be expected, says […]

Now the president and CEO of T. Johnson & Associates Consulting Group, Travis Johnson says his experience in technology has led him to this moment—and the many challenges and opportunities to come. “I’ve been leading technology in higher ed since 2005, and I’ve worked my way up,” Johnson says. “My IT vision for higher ed […]

Often when school bus drivers communicate with each other, they speak in code in case their radio channels are intercepted. Doing so helps protect information about students, such as their names and addresses, from being exploited by people who shouldn’t be listening in. Last year, Drew Taylor began exploring a more secure option. After gathering […]