Blackboot Technology

1984

Bryan first started working on computers at 9 years old when his father purchased one of the original Apple Macintosh computers (with 128K of memory and 1 floppy drive). He took it apart at 10, upgraded multiple times, mixing and matching parts, crashing it, breaking it and fixing it, and by 12 he was fixing other people’s computers. He hasn’t stopped since!

1989

He was 14 when his mother started a graphic design firm and that led to supporting and working with other designers, printers and publishers in the Augusta, Georgia area for the next 6 years, building networks, servers, backup systems, high-end workstations for graphic design and print production, and prepress workflow. He worked in print production at Claffey Printing, helped start and operate a graphic arts service bureau, managed a night shift crew of prepress production technicians and ran out of challenges.

1995

At 20 he began working with Agfa as a field service representative in North Carolina, based out of Greensboro. He supported commercial printers, newspaper production plans, screen printers and many more all over North Carolina as well as many throughout the Southeast states, companies with high-pressure production environments that lost money every minute their equipment was offline. He installed, configured, maintained and helped integrate complex prepress production workflows and equipment including servers, RIPs, film setters and prepress software workflows.

1996

At 21, he was offered a position in prepress systems administration with Classic Graphics, the award-winning commercial printer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. After helping standardize and document their workflow, he went on to help lead the effort to win ISO 9001 certification for the company and in 1997 became involved in developing custom database-backed, web-based applications for managing the burgeoning data tracking needs for compliance with the ISO 9001 quality standard. Subsequently he helped select and implement the current prepress workflow, servers and workstations at Classic Graphics, now deployed to a second facility in Durham, North Carolina and totaling over 24 terabytes (20,000G) of files online. These systems are in heavy use 24 hours a day, 6-7 days a week and have consistently maintained 3-5 9’s of uptime (online 99.9 - 99.999% of the time, year after year).

1997

Through contact with Classic Graphics vendors and clients, Bryan Stalcup started receiving requests for support in the Charlotte area and started Blackboot Technology to provide solutions accessible to small businesses. Through word-of-mouth, he has steadily added additional clients through the present, helping them with servers, desktops and laptops, technology recommendations, offsite backups, training, website and web application development and much more.

2001

Bryan assumed responsibility for the IT department at Classic Graphics as IT Manager and proceeded to consolidate a large pile of tower servers into a set of rackmount servers running VMware ESX Server, significantly improving uptime, utilization, disaster recovery, offsite replication and manageability. He led a major infrastructure rollup, revamping the network, implementing significant network security upgrades and standardizing systems, processes and equipment throughout the company.

2003

Bryan leveraged 6 years of experience writing complex web-based, database-backed applications for Classic Graphics’ internal needs including quality systems, intranet functionality and process automation to help begin offering custom software development to Classic Graphics clients. He is now involved in multiple projects helping automate print and graphics-related business processes for Classic Graphics clients with custom web applications tied to templating, data warehouses and marketing campaigns.

He developed a proprietary web framework in use for certain Classic Graphics-hosted applications as well as invested heavily in mastering and using Drupal, one of the leading open-source content management systems with custom additional modules, where appropriate. Many of these projects have involved multiple programmers and budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Present

Bryan continues to help Classic Graphics press forward with custom solutions crafted to fit customer needs and is heavily involved in all areas of technology both at Classic Graphics and with multiple small/medium businesses at Blackboot Technology. He has a depth of experience in graphic arts, systems integration and administration, software development, intranet/extranet hosted applications, web solutions and IT project management that allows him to bring a unique and valuable perspective to any technology project.