720 Hurricane Milton & TEKnowledge Tech Community

[Uncle Marv]
Test, test. All right. Hello, friends.

Uncle Marv here, and some of you have probably been sitting there wondering what happened. And just as I hit go live, we had a little issue here. As many of you know, the reason we're doing this today is Hurricane Milton is on the way.

And yes, it is already wreaking havoc here in South Florida. Florida man is going crazy, and that's how it goes. So I wanted to just do a quick little update on that.

And I have some guests coming on in just a little bit. And we're going to talk about them. They have an organization that is doing some great and amazing work.

And they're actually going to be doing a big thing in Carolina coming up later this week, where they're helping some of the hurricane victims up there from Helene. So I've got Ray and Ryan sitting in the green room waiting here. Before then, if you are listening, I'm not sure if I'm going to make this an audio podcast or not.

But if you are, this next segment is actually going to be a little video portion here. I'm actually going to show you a little bit of the map because I want people to kind of understand what we're dealing with when it comes to hurricanes and why all of a sudden, people are going berserk over Milton here. So I'm going to bring up my app and share it in the screen here and bring this up here.

And we're going to share Wendy is the app that I'm going to share. And I'll tell you why that is. The biggest reason is it's the easiest app that I can show on the screen here.

Most of the apps that I use, if you were to go back and look at a previous episode where I listed out all the apps, and it was just I think two episodes ago. So what 717? Yes, 717.

Even though the title is the power of saying no, I actually do a talk about the hurricane and I share the apps that I use on my phone. And it is the hurricane tracker app, the windy app in my radar app. And I use all of those.

And I pay for all of the advanced alerts and stuff like that. But you can go to windy.com. And actually, there's probably several sites out there that will show you all of the hurricanes that are out there.

So this is the default view that you can see on the app. And as you can see, down here, you probably can't see my mouse moving. But let me widen this or zoom in here on the screen.

And you can see at the bottom left Milton there. And I actually have a wind layer showing here. So you can see the intensity of the winds and everything going.

And now I'm going to come over and add the hurricane tracker on there. So you can start to see what we're looking at. Excuse me there.

So as you can see, this one is basically going to be a direct hit to Florida. Actually, I've just got a message in the chat here from Steve. If anyone is thinking about evacuating, they got some killer deals on hotels and Panama City Beach.

A lot under $100 a night. Bikini Beach, Florida. Might as well turn it into a mini vacation.

Steve, thank you for that. Yeah, there's probably going to be a lot of places for that. Now, so when Helene hit, it basically went up the west coast of Florida and hit at the Big Bend area.

So if you can see my mouse on the screen here, the Big Bend is basically this area that is between Gainesville, Tallahassee, and Panama City. So even though the storm stayed offshore, a lot of the winds and everything still hit the Tampa area. So if I zoom into Tampa here, you can see that Tampa is a bay.

And so all this water got pushed up into Tampa. So there was some flooding that happened there. And ahead of this storm, we are seeing a lot of rain over here on the east coast of Florida.

So people are kind of going berserk. So if I switch to the radar view here, you can see that there is a lot of rain happening. So much so that we've actually begun flooding even down here as far as Fort Lauderdale, Miami.

Now, going back to the hurricane tracker, you'll see that the path of Milton is not going to be anywhere near South Florida. But remember, we have to keep in mind that if the storm takes this lower part of the track along the cone that they always talk about, the impact then obviously shifts south. So that is why we have to pay attention.

And the governor has already issued a state of emergency for 5050 of our 67 counties. And it's simply because of the fact we don't know where it's going to go. Now, since yesterday, the storm has already made two major changes.

One, it actually started to take a dip to the south, even though it's going to dip back up to the north. That changes a couple of things. One, it slows the storm down, which is why it is now a Category 5.

Originally, it was not intended to be a Category 5. It was just going to be a 4. And then it would be a 3 or a 2 when it hit the west coast of Florida.

When the storm first started, it actually was only going to be a 1 when it hit Florida. So now it is going to come in at probably a low 4, high 3, and it is still going to be a 1 as it exits Florida. So anything along this, what I call the I-4 corridor, so from Tampa to Orlando to Daytona, that's where the Interstate 4 goes east to west, or in west to east across Florida.

That looks like the path of the storm. So we have friends all over the place over there. So if you think about Tampa area, we've got some of our tech vendors there.

CyberFOX is there. CyberQP is there. TechData, which is now part of TDSynnex, their corporate office is in Tampa.

I've got a couple of friends that I know, subcontractors, other partners over there, Showtech, Troy. We had on Justine Anderson last week who was over there, Rayann Buchianico, a friend of ours. There's a bunch of people in that Tampa area.

Our good friend Mike Smith left Tampa area to go to Orlando where he evacuated. The storm is still going to be going up there. If you look at part of the cone over here, my mom lives in this area just between Cocoa and Palm Bay.

Oddly enough, she's not there right now. She is in Louisiana. She went there because her sister is in the hospital.

For those that do not know, my mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma bone cancer a few years ago. So she is compromised doing dialysis. Her sister went into the hospital about a month ago.

She tried to go and she just got clearance to go this past week and she's going be flying back Wednesday if she's allowed. But it's very interesting that it took a lot for us to get her to be able to fly out to Louisiana. She had to get dialysis squared away.

She had to coordinate where she was going to stay because the doctors said she could not stay at people's houses where there are germs and not clean. It was a lot of work. My sisters also both went there because they are very close with our aunt who's in the hospital.

So we're trying to get everybody back. I think my one sister came back yesterday. No, she's coming back tonight.

Her and my nephew and then my other sister is flying back with my mom whenever they get to fly back. So all the things that we have to consider and the fact that Florida is just getting pummeled with rain ahead of the storm could mean significant flooding happening as well as the winds. Milton right now is already it's at 175 miles an hour.

It's packing quite a punch there. So that is what we're dealing with. So technically if you look at everything from the track, I down here in South Florida, I'm not in the path but that doesn't mean that we're not going to feel some of the effects.

But the rest of Florida, at least half of Florida, if not two-thirds of Florida is going to feel this in some form or fashion. And this is going to be very similar to what happened up in North Carolina where they are not prepared for something like this. Even though we are, our water table is so low, we are right at sea level.

So flooding happens all the freaking time. So that is going to be what we're dealing with for the next few days. It's going to be a fast storm.

It'll be over in 24 to 36 hours. Of course, it depends on how much power gets lost. Most of my clients are okay when it comes to power.

We've got a generator at the main office of one of my clients that's in West Palm, even though they've got offices in Orlando and Tampa. But those offices will be closed and people will just work whenever they can, whenever they get power. Tampa area is going to be interesting.

I've got clients in Tampa, Sarasota and Lakeland that I'm monitoring and we see how they go. I've got an office up in Maitland, northeast of Orlando that we're paying attention to. And then of course, all of the other areas in Florida.

So that's what's happening there. And yep, as I mentioned earlier with Steve saying, with the ground being so wet, trees have a better chance of becoming uprooted. Stay safe, everyone.

So that is what we're doing here in Florida. So I want to thank everybody that reached out. Already had several people reach out to me on the BAT line, send me emails and asking if we're going to be affected.

And again, technically no, but I've got to obviously watch out for people and I've become the storm watcher for my clients and that's what we're doing. So let's do this. Let me go ahead and stop sharing this here and let me get ready to bring on Ray and Ryan here from TEKnowledge.

So as we pop up here, guys, how are we?

[Ray Cline]
How are you?

[Uncle Marv]
I'm doing good. Doing good.

[Ray Cline]
Appreciate you bringing us on. And I want to offer our support and our thoughts and prayers are with your family, especially your mother and her sister. Appreciate you sharing that with us.

And I'm really happy that she's not in the path of the storm right now, like so many of your listeners and you are right now. But we wish you well and really appreciate you doing this with us.

[Uncle Marv]
I do. I probably should say this. Everybody, you know, for those that have not been through storms, I mean, yeah, we get made of fun of a lot.

I mean, we deal with this multiple times. This is probably the first time in a long time where we've had two significant hits so close together. I think 2004 was the last time we had major storms hit so close together.

We had four literally in a row. Charlie, Daniel, Evan and Fran, I think it was C, D, E and F, those storms, literally within a month, maybe six weeks, those storms hit us right after the other. So this will be similar to that in effect.

But guys, I've actually been talking with you guys for a while. TEKnowledge is an organization that you guys formed a while back. And I've wanted to get you guys on the show and didn't mean for it to happen in this way.

But I think it works out because you guys are going to be doing some good stuff up in Carolina. So who wants to start and talk about TEKnowledge and what you're doing in Carolina?

[Ray Cline]
Sure. I mean, I can talk about technology. And Ryan, you can talk about text giving if that works for you.

Perfect. So TEKnowledge is a registered 501C3 nonprofit organization. We started about three years ago.

It was started by four MSP business owners that realized there was a giant hole in the industry, right, of just needing to teach others by example, elevate the industry and bring the quality of work up for everyone. We saw that there was this missing link between vendors, distributors, partners, and the end users. And we wanted to find a creative way to bring all of those together.

So we started TEKnowledge worldwide, like I said, about three years ago. And in the last three years, our main focus has been giving back to the community, right, whether that is through education, through charitable organizations, through charitable projects. And I'm happy to say in the last three years of doing these projects that we call text giving, we have donated over $500,000 worth of product and services to communities in need.

And that is actually happening in North Carolina this week. And it's just, you know, it just happened to be that we chose this project probably about three or four months ago and, you know, Helene happened and, you know, it's been devastating, but it's really nice that we're going to be able to go down there. We'd already planned on being down there to go back and, you know, give this amazing school, La Escuelita, this great gift of technology, but also be able to help and try to bring North Carolina back some technology they need to get themselves up and running.

And Ryan, who is spearheading this project, is actually in North Carolina right now in Asheville. And, you know, Ryan has lost some team members due to this storm and, you know, I'm sure he'll talk a little bit about that. So this really hits home for our community, for Ryan specifically.

So we really appreciate you, you know, allowing us to come on and talk a little bit about what we're doing down in North Carolina this week. So Ryan, if you want to share a little bit about TEKSgiving and what's going on down there, we'd love to hear.

[Uncle Marv]
And Ryan, I think you're muted. I sent you a message.

[Ryan Garrity]
Can you hear me now?

[Uncle Marv]
Yes.

[Ray Cline]
Yes.

[Ryan Garrity]
Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Yep. So TEKSgiving is happening in Davidson, North Carolina. It's roughly an hour and a half, two hours probably from where Helene actually hit direct.

But still feeling a little bit of the remnants there. Like Ray was saying, I'm actually up in Asheville helping a couple of our bank clients get actually roll out some ATMs right now so people can get to their funds as they need. But for TEKSgiving, it's La Escuelita.

It's literally called the little school in Spanish. It's a bilingual school that provides Spanish speaking students or foreigners that come into the United States and are looking for that better life. The ability to learn or start learning English to where once they get into kindergarten, first grade and so on, they actually are at a better point of knowing English than the majority of the English speakers at that point.

So that's a big thing that is happening, especially in North Carolina is we get kids that are coming in that speak Spanish and don't know a lot of English. And they at that point, La Escuelita helps teach them at that English and go through that science-based curriculum at that point. And what we're doing is we're going to be providing security network, audio-visual solutions to a school that doesn't have that currently.

[Uncle Marv]
Are you guys there? What happened?

[Ryan Garrity]
Yeah, I'm still here.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I probably hit the wrong button. Yeah. So let me ask this question.

How do you guys go about picking the places you're going to help?

[Ryan Garrity]
So we refer to what we call our techs, which are our board members, basically. And they have to submit in a non-profit or somebody that they think is worthy of that donation. And that company, group, whatever, has to fill out an application.

And then we go in as a board and vote and see. Once we figure out whoever has the most votes, they'll win at that point. We'll reach out to them and let them know and keep going.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So now let's go back and talk about, you mentioned a board. Let's talk about the organization in terms of organization.

How many members, and are you truly worldwide? How do people get involved?

[Ray Cline]
Sure. I'll take that one. So our board consists of, I keep using the word board, we call them techs, technical advisory committee.

And that's what tech stands for. It started out with four people on executive committee, me, the president, Brandon Weber, who is vice president. He runs TSCIT out of Rochester, New York.

You've got Piers Smith, who owns All Green Lights. He is based out of a state college, Pennsylvania. And Marco Chaffiotte, who is in North Jersey right now, a company called Let's Wire It.

And we've brought on Patricia Dixon, who is now pretty much, we call her our backbone. She's our VP of operations now. So that's our executive team.

And then we've got about 10 techs that help run, shape, and form our community and help us. We couldn't have done anything without them the last three years, to be honest with you. We're at about 500 members right now, legitimately across the world.

I think our furthest member right now is in Australia, but we've got quite a few people from Canada, from Mexico. And obviously we are a great majority of our members are across that Northeast corridor in the United States. We have a map in the community that kind of shows you where everybody is.

And it's a big concentration on the East Coast. So that's why we're trying to push further West to get more people involved in the community, more people knowing about who we are. So we can keep doing these great, amazing things that we do each year.

We're growing and it's fun and it's challenging and it's exciting. And I'm just really happy that we're able to, this is now our third project as TKW, our fifth charity project in all before we became TKW. It's pretty impressive to see the number of people that are willing to literally strap on their boots, open their checkbooks and come out and deliver this gift of technology, absolutely free to the recipient.

[Uncle Marv]
Now, when you do it for free, I'm assuming that the members all donate or get vendors to help donate stuff?

[Ray Cline]
Yeah. So we've got vendors and partners in our community. And, you know, I know your show is sponsored, so I don't want to mention a lot of names right here and get anybody in trouble.

[Uncle Marv]
No, you can, you can mention them. It's my show. I do what I want.

[Ray Cline]
Well, no, I appreciate that. But we've got great partners and, you know, Cable & Connections and Vertical Cable, Hammond, Eaton, Ubiquity, ProDataKey. I'm looking right now on all my list of names, just so I don't forget anybody.

Splicer Steve out of New York is donating all the fiber for this project. Trend Networks is coming out and certifying all the cabling that we're bringing in as well as bringing us, you know, hands-on, like we've just, we've got great relationships with our partners that are part of the community. They're the ones that are donating all of the hardware for the most part.

And any hardware that we can't get donated, our members in the community are either donating that equipment, you know, computers, speakers, you know, AV amps, TVs, and anything that we can't get donated by those, you know, members. We did a $10,000 fundraise, and that $10,000 is helping pay for all that additional equipment and things that we just couldn't get donated. So again, this project is wholly donated by members of the community, which is pretty impressive.

[Uncle Marv]
Very nice. Very nice. All right.

So for those watching either live or after the fact, I've got the website up on the screen. I actually should put it in the chat as well. And then I will have a link in the show notes to get to the webpage.

Although, as I was explaining to you guys earlier, the webpage isn't where you guys are most active. You guys have a Slack community that is just booming. Shame on me for not being in there more often, but you guys do a lot through the Slack.

[Ray Cline]
Yeah. So honestly, that's how we communicate. That's how we get the work done.

That's how we are able to plan and build all these projects. This is through Slack. You know, I joke all the time, and I tell people my full-time job is being in Slack, but at the end of the day, that's how we communicate with all of our members across the world.

If I'm on a job or Ryan's on a job and we need help with something, we literally just go, hey, have you ever installed this AP before? I'm putting this new Sonos equipment in. How do I program it?

For whatever it may be, there's always somebody in the community willing and ready to answer those questions for us. It doesn't matter what time of the day. That's how we're all able to be so close.

We're such a close-knit group, and we're able to get things done really quickly because we use the power of the tools that we have. So it's impressive.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. I want to go back real quick to Ryan. So you're in Asheville.

I've got some friends that have come from that area. I know the Davidson area. I know Boone, Black Mountain right around there.

So I'm familiar with all that. The I-40 corridor, which took a little beating and stuff. So when did you get there, and what was your first impression?

[Ryan Garrity]
So I've been up here a couple times now since today. I got here a little bit ago to help a couple of our bank clients get these ATMs going, but it looks like a third world country. It's devastating.

As Ray mentioned, we had two employees based in Asheville. They actually went to go help and never came back. It's terrible.

They're starting to get power in most places, but you can see McDonald's, Denny's, a couple other restaurants are out here with mobile trailers serving meals just because nothing is open. I mean, there's a lot of places where nothing can open for a while. As you mentioned, 40 is closed.

They're mentioning that they might be able to open one lane at a time on 40, but that's a huge impact material-wise, just getting shipments of trucks because 40 is a highly populated highway between North Carolina and Tennessee. Sorry. And I mean, just like we had to send crews from North Carolina to Tennessee for a project, and our normal three-hour, four-hour trip turned into a 12-hour trip because they had to go back roads because all these roads are closed.

Boone is starting to open and get some normalcy, but a lot of Asheville is nowhere close to normalcy, and it'll be that way for a while. Roads are barely roads. I think they're only made into roads right now because people have traveled through them.

I mean, there's no way you can tell where markings on the roads are right now. They're still covered with mud and trees and everything else. There's buildings that will just need to be knocked down at this point because of how screwed up they are.

I know that when I was coming up here, we saw some of the crews redirecting one of the bigger rivers to hopefully get it away from traveling back towards some of the damaged area. I know they got one of the water plants up last week, so that's been a huge help already, but it's still not going to be enough to get them anywhere close to normalcy. The donations, everything, they're helping tremendously.

I know we helped a good bit last week internally at our company just doing donations and getting people up there to help pass out everything that we could, but like I said, it's like a third-world country up there.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, so I did check statistics a little while ago, and it's interesting. So Helene hit as a Category 3 in the Big Bend area. In Florida, there were 20 fatalities, but all of the damage, as you have heard, is up in that Carolina area where, you know, nearly 7,000 federal personnel have been deployed to assist.

There are still about 120,000 customers without power. 6,500 were rescued, evacuated, or assisted by Search and Rescue. More than 4,000 first responders are there, and I'm not even going to get into the death toll because we are in the hundreds, and that doesn't include there are hundreds still missing or not accounted for.

[Ryan Garrity]
Yeah, I think when I overheard some guys talking earlier, I think it was 2,000 to 3,000 still missing or not accounted for at this moment.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, so I want to thank you guys for doing that, and you guys, we go through it down here all the time, so I know what you're going through. I know it looks dim, but it will turn around. Things will get better, and people will appreciate your efforts, so thank you for that.

[Ray Cline]
Thank you.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, so that's pretty much it, folks. This was just a quick update, and I wanted to get these guys on here. If you are listening again, techknowledge.org, and folks, pay attention because tech knowledge is not spelled the way it sounds. It is actually T-E-K-N-O-W-L-E-G-E, so that is the website, and it is .org, so again, the link will be in the show notes, so that'll get you to the right place, and then you can join them, join their Slack. No membership fee, if I'm not mistaken, correct?

[Ray Cline]
No, we are a free community.

[Uncle Marv]
Sweet. All right. Well, guys, thank you very much for coming on.

Ray Klein, Ryan Garrity from TEKnowledge, and thank you all for tuning in here and getting this Hurricane Milton update. Obviously, we got a little bit of a Hurricane Helene update, and you now have heard about TEKnowledge and Teksgiving. I hope you guys will pay attention.

That's going to do it, folks. There was a chance that we were going to cancel Wednesday's live show. The guest that I have planned had offered to reschedule, but it looks like, because of the way that the storm has slowed, we'll probably still go ahead and do that live, so we will be here for our regular show Wednesday, 8 p.m. Eastern, streaming live on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Everything else, head over to idbusinesspodcast.com, and that's going to do it. We'll see you next time, and on behalf of my friends here, Ray and Ryan, thank you much, and we'll see you later. Holla!