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Possible meets.... Dave Silvester of Qwerty IT Services
This weeks guest has played a big part in helping many locals and small businesses across the area, including ourselves. From sizeable firms to simple fixes, he’s played a key role in advising and improving companies in many industries, helping them pivot and perform, to introduce new tech to their processes or simply find a solution to some weird wonderful problems that he clearly loves to tackle – and we all don’t. We can talk first-hand about his friendly nature and ability to cut through the often bamboozling jargon that comes with his line of work. We can’t compliment him enough on his rapid response in times of a mini-crisis. Perhaps that’s why he feels more at home wearing tracksuit bottoms and a sporty hoody when working away – yes that’s Nike branded clothing he is wearing for his office attire.
As with all good businesses, his clients are at the core, we can vouch for that, and he is incredibly passionate about what he does. By his own admission his favourite place in his home is his office/man-cave – from where so many dreams have been made and nightmares swiftly averted.
This week, Possible meets……… Dave Silvester of Qwerty IT Services.
Can you tell us a bit about your business?
Qwerty IT Services Ltd was set up in April 2015 with the aim of providing a computer support service to both home users and small businesses in Perth and surrounding areas.
The idea of naming the company after the UK standard keyboard layout (Qwerty) came from my father-in-law; I was surprised it had not already been used by a computer company, so I registered it with company’s house and the rest is history.
The ethos behind Qwerty has been to help people get the best out of technology – whether that means setting up a laptop for browsing the Internet at home or deploying a fully cloud based IT system in a small business.
We also take pride in building personal relationships with all of our customers and this remains our key focus, even as we grow in size.
How has the last 12 – 18 months been for you professionally and personally throughout the COVID-19 situation?
In terms of business, the last 2 years has been OK – we had lots of challenges; for example, we were collecting and dropping off computers from people’s doorsteps through the first lockdown.
But on the plus side lots of our clients started to embrace technology far more than they had ever done before the pandemic. Whilst this was driven by necessity at first, we have also seen lots of clients carry those new ways of working on, post lockdown. Zoom meetings are a big case in point; I think lots of companies realised that rather than travelling 60 miles to meet a client in person, they could just as easily do that meeting over zoom instead.
From a personal point of view the biggest challenges were not being able to see family – most of mine live in England so I did not see them for the first 12 months of the pandemic – and of course, the home schooling. To be honest my wife did most of it, but there were definitely times where we all got fed up of each other!
There were good things to come out of it though; we became a lot more friendly with our neighbours, sending each other messages and sharing home shopping deliveries and we also spent much more time together as a family, cooking, playing board games and other activities that we normally don’t have time for.
Tell us about the first time you ever moved out of your family home and rented/bought your first property?
The first time me and Alison moved in together, we rented out a small house in Foots Cray, Kent. Walking into that empty property for the first time was a great feeling – sure it wasn’t the biggest house and it was only a rental, but it felt like our place and the empty rooms were like a blank canvas to us.
The reality of moving into your own house soon dawned on us when we hit the first hurdle – our sofa wouldn’t fit through the door, so we ended up (somehow) taking the front window out and lifting the sofa in that way!
Which parts of Perthshire have you lived in and are there any that you liked the most?
Since moving up to Perth in 2015 we have only lived in one location (Oakbank) as it seemed like the best choice in terms of schools and we also wanted to be near to Alison’s family (Well, you need babysitters, right?).
What’s your favourite room in your home and why?
Hmm, that’s an easy one; I have to say that the home office is my favourite room of the house, although its technically not in the house, but the garage and there in lies the advantage; it provides total peace and tranquillity when the rest of the house 😊
In your opinion, what is it that makes a house a home?
The kids running to greet you when you walk through the door, the smell of a nice home cooked meal being prepared (Normally by Alison seeing as all I can cook is omelette) and of course the dog shredding anything that comes through the letterbox before you get a chance to see what it might have been.
Why do you think Perthshire is such a popular location for buyers from all over parts of Scotland and the UK?
For me personally, the thing that I love about Perthshire is how its such a nice – in one sense its like many other areas with all of the local amenities and its not too far from the big cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow. On the other hand, you only have to drive a couple of miles down the road and you find the most breath-taking landscapes where you could easily feel like you are in the middle of nowhere with only highland cows and the occasional wild grouse to disturb the tranquillity.
If you could have your dream home, anywhere in the world, where would it be and tell us a bit about what it might have in it and look like?
Hmm, my dream home would have to be somewhere hot – maybe Florida – it would definitely have a super-fast broadband connection, it would be fully “smart-enabled” with even the front door being app-controlled.
As for the interior, I personally like as much variety as possible – lots of wild and funky furniture with nothing too matching and definitely nothing symmetrical. It would also have to one of those houses you can actually live in, not one where everything has to be spotless or too tidy.
Find out more about Dave and Qwerty IT Services by visiting:
https://qwertyitservices.co.uk/
Bringing over 20 years local estate agency experience, Possible are Perthshire's only company who are solely dedicated to selling properties. We cover the entire Perthshire area and over the years have helped hundreds of clients in locations such as Perth, Scone, Bridge of Earn, Auchterarder, Crieff, Blairgowrie, Luncarty, Bankfoot, Pitlochry and everywhere else in between.
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