Professional Bio

Kelly B. Nunn is the Global Facilities Systems Manager for Dell, Inc. located in Round Rock, Texas and manages an international team primarily located in India. He is specifically in charge of ensuring all associated facilities software and applications are operating accordingly and instep with the corporate agenda. He has a bachelor and masters degree in business with a specialization in business operations. Kelly was part owner of a facilities outsourcing and software development firm in Austin, Texas from 1990 to 2001 named BLADE Technologies, Inc.. He was nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year 4 times and has worked in the Facilities Systems field in central Texas for 18 years. He left the corporate world to be stay at home dad, before joining Dell, Inc. in early 2005. He has lived overseas and is an internationally recognized artist.

Personal Reflections on Working With Kelly

I met Kelly in the first week of my first job out of college in 1996. I was the Curator of the new Texas State Cemetery Visitor Center, which had recently acquired an $8M facelift.  Kelly's company, Blade Technologies Inc., had won the bid to develop an automated system which linked the Cemetery plot map to a database of biographical information and serve the information dynamically on the Internet.

I must confess that, prior to working with Kelly on this project, I had never even seen a database, made a web page, or heard the words "automation" "back-end database" or "CAD." Needless to say, I was the epitome of those dreaded non-techie clients we are reading of in our textbook!  In addition to the stress of applying my recent museum education to my job duties, I was suddently assigned to coordinate a huge hi-tech project that I knew nothing about!  Upon expressing such concerns, Kelly said to me, "I'm here to help you help me help your organization meet their needs. Don't worry, I'll teach you how to help me..."

Over the years, I have kept in touch with Kelly, and we periodically meet to discuss our latest ideas, innovations, or entreprenuerial ventures.  Since then, we have worked together on several other state contracts and personal ventures.  He is one of my closest colleagues, a dependable friend, and undoubtedly the one who has had the greatest impact on my career in educational technology. 

As an IT Consultant, Kelly is creative, innovative, flexible, and straightforward.  I believe his best quality is a keen ability to identify the client's current understanding and comfort level with the technology, then effectively educate and coach them throughout the process.  Although he was my contractor, Kelly took the time to teach me how to write effective proposals, scope a project, and negotiate roles and responsibilities.  Through some of our less friendly meetings, I learned some hard lessons from him about the risks of scope creep, clients missing their deadlines, the never-ending project, and the resulting "hassle fees."

For more than ten years, I have often reflected on how Kelly handled this difficult client (me) with such respectful patience, and how he effectively helped me help him in a very intimidating project. 

It is my pleasure to share with you some of Kelly's consulting experience and vision through this interview.

Past Projects with Kelly

Professional Background

Consulting Skills & Practice

Project Summaries

Expert Advice

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