Employee Spotlight

Hi, I am Stephanie, and I have worked at Red Wing Software for nearly 18 years! I love working at Red Wing Software for many reasons, not the least of which is that we all know each other here, and we always support each other in whatever we may have going on in our lives. I enjoy working in marketing also because there’s always something new to learn, some new technology that can help us get our message out, and it is good to be learning new things constantly. It helps keep me feeling young!
One of the things I love to do outside of work is travel. I went on an exchange in high school and got hooked on traveling to new places! Several years ago, I met a guy who loves travel as much as I do. We got married in 2020 and have been on a mission ever since to see as many places as possible, even while we both still work full-time. In September, we went on a guided tour of Norway and were in constant awe of the country’s beauty. My favorite part of the trip was swimming in an outdoor pool at the Alexandra Spa in Loen while looking around at all the mountains and the beautiful landscape surrounding us. The fjords were absolutely out of this world! There are so many beautiful places in this world, and I love Norway, but my favorite place is still Vienna, Austria.

Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

Usually, working in the technology industry is not a very scary occupation. After all, I’ve never heard of anyone getting seriously injured by a computer or software. However, a few things I’ve experienced or heard over the years are very scary. I want to share a few of these stories and will change the names to protect the guilty.
I will admit this first story is all on me. A long time ago, when we still used the DOS operating system, I was helping a customer clean up their computer and accidentally stepped them through how to delete all the files on their hard drive. As soon as they hit “Enter,” I realized what I had done, told them not to do anything on their computer until I got there, hopped in my car, drove to their location, and recovered everything I had them delete. That was a bit scary.
Here are some other scary things I’ve heard from customers:
“I just got a new computer and am using the old, outdated software. Since I no longer have the original program disks and don’t want to update, I’ll just use the old computer for my accounting.” So, what happens when the old computer dies?
At a January trade show, I heard, “I guess I should start putting in last year’s accounting data.”
“My hard drive crashed. Can you help me get my data back? I don’t have a current backup.” We are happy to help install the program on a new computer and restore data from a recent backup, but we can’t recover data from a destroyed drive.
I hope we didn’t hear these things from anyone reading this, but take a moment to think about what it would take (cost) to reenter months or years of data, and make sure you never put yourself in a position where this is necessary.