Daniel Wittenberg - President/Chief Technology Officer

As President and co-founder of The Starken Group, Dan Wittenberg's drive, intelligence and highly advanced technical abilities have been the key to the organization's growth. Dan's intense desire to make technology stable and productive, along with his innate ability to connect discrete technology components into a total solution, regularly offers our clients the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of technology with minimal client management. Dan's down-to-earth attitude and willingness to educate both clients and other employees offers The Starken Group and its client's access to a special and highly unusual resource.

Dan is Iowa's first Red Hat Linux Certified Engineer, with years of Linux experience as a senior analyst for The University of Iowa. During this time, Dan has continued to develop his expertise with Internet and network security, along with years of experience in supporting Linux and the best Windows and Apple technologies.

Prior to Starken, Dan spent three years as the Coe College Webmaster and network administrator for all UNIX and Macintosh systems. In this position, he bore primary responsibility for the wide variety of web-based, UNIX and Linux services offered to 1,600 users of the college network. The 25% pay raise offered in an effort to retain his services speaks well to the quality of his work performance during this time. Earlier employers include APAC, where Dan provided 3COM networking hardware support and National Computer Systems (NCS), providing telecommunications support services.

Formal training consists of receipt of the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) certification during Red Hat's 3rd national class, making Dan, at a minimum, one of the first thirty-six people nationally to be certified. This certification is one of the toughest in the industry, requiring the successful candidate to use a list of goals to construct their own Linux server, document the configuration and justify all configuration decisions made during the process. Only after many days of satisfactory review of the "final examination project" by the Red Hat staff is the candidate informed of the results (only 75% of the twelve people in each class typically passes the RHCE exam). Dan has also earned the IBM Certified Specialist designation, after successfully completing study in the areas of IBM's AIX support, troubleshooting, networking, and system administration. In addition, Dan has been certified by Hewlett-Packard as an HP-UX administrator. Other areas of training include various IBM/Tivoli software packages for network management, IBM's High Availability clustering soft-ware, and a variety of 3Com networking hardware. Dan has also taught various corporate and individual training classes covering the areas of Linux Administration and other network technologies.

Dan is a highly active leader for both theCedar Rapids and Iowa City Linux users groups, where he regularly makes technical presentations on both the operating system and new applications. Dan also helps out with the Linux User Group that meets at UNI during their annual install-a-thon, where students, faculty, and staff bring in their personal or work computers to have Linux installed and configured.

Dan studied at the University of Iowa with a concentration in Computer Science.

Douglas Edwards - Vice President/Chief Operating Officer

As chief operating officer, Doug Edwards oversees the day-to-day operation at The Starken Group. His responsibilities include managing the company's client response services, strategic planning and administrative services. As co-founder of The Starken Group, Doug's proactive client and supportive employee empowerment beliefs are core components of The Starken Group philosophy.

Prior to Starken, Doug spent six years as Coe College Computer Network Manager, supporting over 1,600 users and eight network servers, while providing technical strategic planning, research, vendor management and purchasing guidelines for the Office of Computer Services. Other positions/employers included Network and Microcomputer Coordinator for First National Bank, Iowa City , and as a computer maintenance manager for the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command's Underground Command Post, for which he was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal.

In each of these positions, Doug's dedication to duty, experience and performance has been positively recognized by his employer, other employees and outside auditors such as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a Federal Government auditing agency.

Doug is a 1986 graduate of Coe College with a B.A. in Business (Finance), an honor graduate of the U.S. Air Force Computer Systems Repair training program and a past lecturer on small business technology at Kirkwood Community College for the Service Core of Retired Executives (S.C.O.R.E.).

Jason Evans - Senior Desktop Computing Consultant

For over seven years, Jason has performed maybe the most difficult and rewarding job in computing - directly helping people. During this time, Jason's worked with literally thousands of end users, some very experienced and some first time users, helping to keep their computer systems operational and, more important, helping them learn how to best use technology to their advantage.

As a desktop computer technician for Coe College in Cedar Rapids , Jason's primary responsibilities included the acquisition, installation and maintenance of Coe's 60 computer Apple Macintosh network. This included a highly sophisticated Macintosh network lab in support of Graphic design classes as well as Macintosh computers used for teaching and research in a variety of areas such as the Teacher Education, Art and Physics departments.

Jason was a key participant in the development of special Microsoft Windows computer labs that were able to repair themselves. These "self-healing" labs were created to combat the problems created by students of high intelligence, great curiosity and too much free time. Once implemented, these labs were set to repair themselves each evening so that on a typical morning, they were once again ready for student use. Development and implementation of this process saved Coe significant amounts of time and money in support costs.

Each year, Jason helped support over 1,600 faculty, staff and students. With an annual incoming freshman class of over 300 students, Jason held the primary responsibility to make sure that the computers for new students, as well as all returning students were configured properly and able to fully access the campus computing network.

Jason was also previously employed as the Computer Team Lead (Supervisor) for Best Buy in Cedar Rapids, where he provided technical support for end-user computer systems and software sold by the giant computer retailer.

Jason's ability to support both the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows computer system makes him a perfect fit for Starken's multi-platform approach to technology.