The Kev; homepage & personal web page of Kevin Genner from Telford, Shropshire, England, and is also a general Genner family web site.

This is the web site of my particular section of the Genner Clan. My name is Kevin Genner, but for the purposes of "doing the web thing"; I tend to be known "The Kev", For what it is worth; this is the Kevin Genner home page, entitled; "The Kev".

I (for my many & hopefully ongoing sins) am a fully qualified computer engineer who moved to Telford (Shropshire) with my parents (Maxwell Genner & Hazel Genner), brothers (Levison & Mitchell) and sisters (Mandy, Beverley & Hayley) from Brierley Hill sometime around 1966.

My wife (Joanne Genner) & I are now making a living by running my own businesses. We began by working from the dining room in our family home (in Stirchley, Telford) undertaking computer repairs in the Telford & Shrewsbury areas of Shropshire. However, a side-line of this was Genner Sales which supplies Windows Recovery CDs & this side of the business has become very successful. We now run Genner Communications from excellent offices at the e-Innovation Centre at the University of Wolverhampton, Priorslee, Telford.

Basically; this business has exceeded all expectations & we are now Microsoft Partners & work with most major PC manufacturers to source & supply Recovery CDs world wide, we now offer a download facility & we are also about to open agencies in the USA, Canada & Australia.

The business is family orientated. We Employ Phil Walton (my son in law) as Office Manager, my wife (Joanne) is head of Order Processing, my nephew (Luke Walker) is employed as an engineer & my son Matthew works in Order Processing.

When last working for someone else, I was employed by Maztec (parent company; MJC) of Stourport on Severn as a field service engineer travelling the UK fixing PCs for Comet, Micro Direct & a few other companies. Although I really enjoyed the work (real job satisfaction), the travelling was horrendous in that I was travelling approx 2000 miles per week over 110,000 miles in a year & fixed an average of 5 PCs per day.

I eventually came to the conclusion that I was simply far too busy earning a living to make any money, & so needed to take "the gamble" and work for myself. I trained myself to create web sites while my wife (Joanne Genner) returned to work at Iceland. I began developing www.sellthings.net whilst supplementing our income by occasionally fixing PC systems, setting up networks, consultancy work etc.

I have been married to Joanne (also known as "The Jo" or the "wonderful wife type person") for 16 years, & we live with our 3 children (Matthew, Liam & Ryan) in Stirchley in Telford, England. I also have three other children from two previous marriages. We all support Manchester United & go to matches as a family whenever possible.

Matthew Genner (aged 19) is "heavily into" football (soccer) & "juggles" working in the family business & attending college (sports studies). Matty is an exceptionally good footballer & is a good, hard working lad. Matty & his long term girlfriend; Karla (who now also works for us) will probably do well in whatever they choose. Matty now has his own web site "Matty on the Web".

Liam Genner has definately discovered girls, but has no real interests. He was seriously let down by the local schools in that at the age of 13 his writing was illegible & his teachers (rather than teaching him to write) simply kept "marking his work down". This caused resentment & anger which culminated in him rebelling, & being excluded from the Lord Silkin School. Had I not been working "stupid hours", I would have paid more attention to Liam`s problems, & I am ashamed of not having done so sooner. However; since I was now working from home, I also began working with Liam & identified in 15 minutes what the local schools had not recognised during years of schooling. When writing by hand, his letters were all of different sizes & he was not putting lines & tails on letters etc. So; the letters p, o, a, & d all looked like the letter o. There were other issues, but this was the crux of the problem, & because his teachers could not read what he wrote (and rather than tackling the problem); they "marked it down". This meant that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how good he considered his work to be, he could never get good marks. We resolved this problem by simply teaching him how to form his letters, & by getting him to practice for 1 hour per day until the problem is (for the most part) fixed.

Liam returned to the Lord Silkin School, to be faced with continued indifference & he has now been expelled. If I were to be asked to recommend the The Lord Silkin School; I could not. If I were asked to assess their treatment of my son, & mark them out of 10, it would be 1/10. Overall, Liams attitude & work have both improved beyond all recognition. He has "put in the work" and is now reaping the benefits in that he is much happier with life in general outside The Lord Silkin School & helps with the business by packing parcels, burning CDs etc. We continue to proud of how he has turned around an awful situation.

Ryan Genner is the baby of the Genner family. He is a clever boy & although only 11 years old, he is no-ones fool. Ryan was named after Ryan Giggs. He "lives in" his Man Utd & England Football kits & promises to be a very good young player. His main interests are playing, drawing & football (soccer). However, he is now discovering books & delights in reading.

Lisa (my eldest child) most recently worked as a manager at the Malt House Restaurant in Ironbridge. Lisa was married to Philip Walton at Much Wenlock church in April 2004 & now their first child (Noah). Her husband; Phil really is a nice guy who now heads the Genner Sales General Office. Phil is a big Birmingham City fan who plays football (soccer) for Randlay Farmhouse.

My eldest son; Kyle Genner is a "speed freak squaddie" serving in The Royal Logistic Corps of the British Army (currently stationed abroad).

My Passions; Apart from the obvious (I have 6x wonderful children by 3x lovely women), I enjoy lager; Grolsch, Stella, Kronenbourg 1664 & I currently play Pool for three teams; Wrockwardine Wood Football Club (Sunday night), Pheasant Wrockwardine Wood (Monday night) & The Bridge (Wednesday night).

Recent Jobs; In 1996, I worked as a Computer Engineer for Mitac Computers in Telford. Mitac used to build the Compaq Presario Computers. PSM Microcomputer's were looking for someone to run the Compaq maintenance & repair dept` & I got the job.

PSM put me through my Azlan / Compaq accreditations, & treated me very, very well apart from a few bad days (we all have them). They were a great bunch of lads, decent working conditions & I got to repair lots of Compaq servers, laptops & business PCs ( I like Compaq ) & was well paid for it.

However; after a few years PSM`s rating with Compaq had increased to the point where I was head hunted. Arrogance took over & I moved to Dataworld (UK).

Dataworld UK is a local (Telford) company with good products & staff. But my role (Internal IT support, 2nd & 3rd level IT support & new product development) did not suit my temperament as much as the high degree of specialisation at PSM (where I was in charge of Compaq & Mitsubishi systems & all monitor maintenance/repairs).

I left Dataworld to work for Maztec; travelling the country (110,000 miles per year in a Mitsubishi Charisma) repairing and installing computer systems for various insurance companies. Rather than dying in the fast lane of some motorway or losing my driving license, I decided to work for myself & left Maztec in January 2004.

What now? I am a great believer in ensuring that the business foundations are correct & we continue to develop Genner Communications & our relationships with the major manufacturers.

That is about all really; enjoy the rest of the site & do not forget to check out the jokes pages.