Kerry Kulp, a founding partner at Velaspan, is one of our new delegates for Mobility Field Day 9. Speaking with Tom Hollingsworth, Kerry discusses his various roles in the company, including business leadership, business development, and consulting. He shares his journey into the IT industry, starting with computer training while studying criminal justice and sociology in college. Kerry reminisces about his early days in the wireless and mobility industry and the advancements that have taken place since then. He expresses excitement about attending the event, particularly to hear presentations from the companies on products he is both familiar and unfamiliar with in his day-to-day work. Kerry also talks about the challenges faced at Velaspan, such as searching for the right people with the depth of knowledge in wireless, networking, and security. When asked about his dream job, Kerry jokingly mentions cutting grass but expresses a continued interest in technology, particularly in the field of cybersecurity. Thanks Kerry for being a part of Mobility Field Day 9! You can catch all of the videos from Mobility Field Day on the Tech Field Day website or YouTube Channel.
Connect with Kerry
Kerry Kulp is a founding partner at Velaspan. You can connect with Kerry on Twitter or on LinkedIn and find out more about Velaspan on their website.
Transcript from the Interview
Kerry Kulp: I’m Kerry Kulp, founding member of Velaspan.
Tom Hollingsworth: And I am Tom Hollingsworth, event lead for Mobility Field Day. We’re here with Kerry, he is a brand new delegate to Mobility Field Day and we are very excited to meet you. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are. What’s your job role and what do you do?
Kerry: That’s a great question. I wear a lot of hats. As a founding partner of Velaspan I still have to fulfill some business leadership roles, business development roles, presale goals. I have a team of my own that I lead. Also still handle consulting, so some of the more technical side of things. It’s definitely the definition of a man with many hats.
Tom: How did you get into IT?
Kerry: So I started in IT doing computer training. I was actually in college for, of all things, criminal justice and sociology. Had every intention of going into the criminal justice field, planned to be a cop, maybe the FBI or Secret Service, something like that. I kind of always had a knack for IT and things like that and I had the opportunity to do some computer training, and I was good at it. From there I went into network engineering at a local ISP. From there, all the way back in 1998, is when I got my first job in the wireless and mobility industry.
Tom: That’s back in the day, that’s kind of around when it started.
Kerry: I was very much around when it started. That was still proprietary radio systems, we were doing a lot of prox and range LAN, deployments in hospitals. It was kind of crazy, we to deploy a proxem access point and put a proxem radio card in the device. Those were the days.
Tom: You’re taking me back. Now what are you most excited to see at the event this week?
Kerry: besides the people, because I’ve gotten to know, at least, a handful of the folks, the other delegates. I’ve known them for many years. Besides that I am just really excited to hear the presentations, learn more from, some of them that I know a lot about, like Cisco, Juniper, some of those. But maybe more importantly some that I don’t spend as much time with. I think those are going to be the really interesting ones, and that’s the Fortinets, the RUCKUSes (RUCKUS Networks), things like that that I just don’t spend that much time with on a daily basis.
Tom: That’s awesome. You’re in a very unique role in Velaspan, what are some of the challenges that you face regularly?
Kerry: Some of the challenges… We’re lucky. A couple of my partners that run our service delivery team have done a tremendous job of building a process for onboarding new resources so they have a tremendously successful process to bring in really green engineers, folks that might not have any experience in the industry and then build them very quickly into folks that can go out and do site surveys, do some basic design. Obviously some higher level leadership to guide them and mentor them, but they do a great job on that side. On my side, the kind of the consulting and managing services side, we really haven’t figured that part out as well yet. It’s a little bit harder to find the folks who have the depth of knowledge to kind of roll right in and start doing things meaningfully. So really its personnel, right now, and it’s trying to find folks that have enough experience on both the wireless side, networking side, security side, ranging across so many technology platforms and vendors, its just hard to find.
Tom: I like that approach because it cultivates the right mindset, it cultivates the right training set to someone to where they need to be in their career. It lends well to the fact that so many people speak highly of the work that you do. Putting yourself in a different set of shoes, If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing, what is your dream job?
Kerry: Wow that is a tough one. I tell people I cut grass, but I do that because if I tell them what I really do, they always have home network questions that they want answered so when I say I cut grass, nobody really has any questions. But that would probably rank pretty highly up there as something I would like to do. It’s kind of, it’s immediately rewarding. You take a messy grass field and turn it into something nice. But all kidding aside I would probably still do something in technology. We’re branching out a little bit into some cybersecurity stuff. We’ve always kind of done it for you know, probably about two thirds, three quarters of Velaspan’s history. We’ve been doing some cybersecurity stuff but not formally. We’re formalizing that now. It’s kind of got me excited. I’d probably still be doing a lot of the same things, just maybe with a cybersecurity focus. And that’s if I’m not cutting grass.
Tom: I appreciate the time today Kerry and thank you for teaching us a little bit about who you are and a little bit about what you do. For those of you out there that are interested, you can check out more of these Meet The Delegate interviews on our website at Gestalt IT dot com. If you want to learn more about the event that Kerry will be attending, check out Tech Field Day dot com and search for Mobility Field Day and we’d love to see you online.
