The person who writes the brief
Tonkin is the fractional CTO practice of Derek Tonkin, based in Waco, Texas. One seat. No catalog. No invented client list.
A seat, not a staff
This is the fractional CTO practice of Derek Tonkin, based in Waco, Texas.
The work is decision-making. Which systems stay. Which vendors earn a renewal. What security is actually required for the way the firm operates. What should not be bought this year. Engagements are remote first, with travel when a closet, a clinic, or a shop floor is part of the problem.
There is no bench of anonymous analysts and no software catalog. You are talking to the person who will write the brief.
What sits behind the practice
Derek works on the practical side of infrastructure: how systems are actually installed, secured, and lived with, not how they look in a slide. He also writes about infrastructure and the places technology lands, including the book *Wired Pastures*, on data centers and rural America.
The practice is not the book. Clients are privately held firms that need a senior technology seat.
What you should not expect
Invented case studies. A promise to cut the technology bill in half. A pitch for a product this practice resells, because there isn’t one. If the right answer is “keep what you have and fix the ownership,” that is the answer that goes in the brief.