'Let's start at the very beginning'....

....'a very good place to start.' Welcome to my blog, and if you followed a link from anywhere on social media, thank you. Now that I've put a Sound of Music earworm in your head (sorry, not sorry) let me forewarn you. This is the obligatory "first blog post." Better content is coming. With some smart work it will turn into something informative with just enough saltiness to make it interesting.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Hi! I am Tamara Copple (rhymes with camera). Friends and colleagues know me as Tam. Strangers know every way under the sun to mispronounce my name.

I like to tell people I was born with asphalt in my toes, because small town life was never, ever going to be for me. I grew up on a family farm during the 1980's US farm crisis (remember Farm Aid?). I know how to load hogs into the trailer to go to market. I've pulled shattercain by walking up and down row after interminable row of soybeans. My zombie apocalypse skill is cutting up freshly butchered chickens. My kind of people just leaned in and got the job done, no matter what it was. I left the farm as soon as I could, but I took a certain friendly but take no guff sort of aesthetic from those days.

I moved to Kansas City in January 1998 with my husband Matt. After 25 years here, I think it's safe to say Kansas City is my hometown. It's has been good to us and for us in more ways than I can count. It's where I became a business analysis professional and where we raised our son.  

I have held a lot of different titles that all boil down to the professional thing I am best at:  

I help people solve problems and take advantage of opportunities by bridging the technological divide between those who want a solution, and the developers who build it.

After 22 years of doing this, I need a place to brain dump everything I am still learning and process all of it. That means, this will be a blog of tidbits - some broad and highly opinionated and some very, very deep in the weeds. 

I hope you'll pop in on my blog now and then and leave me a comment.  I'd especially love it if you'd add on to what I share with your own perspective.