Datanet Christmas Party
Datanet prides itself on being a good employer and looking after its staff as much as it looks after its customers. So much so that last year (2017) we saw Julia Neal, our Operations Manager, celebrate her 20 year anniversary working at Datanet. She has almost been with Datanet since its birth in 1996.
This year (2018) Kay Goodchild, our Finance Manager and David Smith, our Facilities & Support Manager celebrate their 10th anniversary with Datanet so I thought it would be interesting to put the spot light on these three amazing people.
Julia Neal: Julia started working at Datanet in 1997. She was, in fact, the third employee of Datanet so has seen the business grow from a traditional ISP to a thriving hosting & connectivity provider owning its own data centre. Julia, who is now the operations Manager, is the person to come to if you need to know anything about Datanet as she knows all the nuances and history of Datanet. She is like a walking encyclopaedia of Datanet. It’s not all about Datanet for Julia though – she is an avid rugby fan and so to celebrate her 20 year anniversary Datanet sent her along for a hospitality day at Twickenham to watch the England rugby team play. She was also treated to a night at Penny Hill Park Hotel where the England rugby team stay. Julia also loves live music, especially Take That and Nik Kershaw (a bit of a blast from the past!)
Kay Goodchild: Kay came to work for Datanet when the first phase of the data centre was being built. She spent the first year streamlining the accounts team and looking after the cashflow for Datanet. As Finance Manager she has the billing processes completely under control. In her spare time, Kay loves a round of golf or two and plays for the ladies’ team at her club. She has also been seen entertaining the golf club for charity dressed up as Scary Spice (way to go Kay). Here is what Kay had to say about her time here at Datanet:
“The last ten years at Datanet have gone in a flash, I was lucky to start at Datanet during phase one of building the data centre and it has been wonderful seeing the place grow into the state of the art data centre it is today. We are a small team who work well together and that helps us feel involved in everything Datanet does.”
David Smith: Dave Joined Datanet 10 years ago and helped to build the data centre. Conleth and Dave had previously worked together and when Conleth needed a good facilities engineer he thought of Dave (remembering him as an exceptional engineer). As head of Facilities & Support, Dave looks after the Aspen House data centre facility. If you want a demo on how the generators are fired up then Dave’s your man. We don’t see Dave much on a Wednesday, however, as he has the morning off to indulge in his passion, which is golf – Dave plays off a handicap of 11 which is very impressive. He is also a loyal Arsenal fan which can cause a fair amount of banter in the office between him and Conleth (a seasoned Chelsea supporter).
