Bret De Young, Supervisory Telecommunications Specialist

Yellowstone is one of the most remote places in the Lower 48, which presents unique challenges for telecommunications systems. Our technology services team provides computer, radio, and phone support for employees, maintains the communication center/dispatch services, and more. Today, Bret De Young gives us a peek into his job and provides tips for those interested in working in the growing telecommunications field for the NPS.

View definitions/links discussed in this episode at go.nps.gov/WhatWeDoPodcast

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Ashton: From Yellowstone National Park. This is what we do. I'm Ashton hooker.

Miles: And I'm Miles Barger.

Ashton: Hi Miles.

Miles: Hey, how's it going?

Ashton: Good. How are you?

Miles: I'm pretty good.

Ashton: Well, thanks for joining. We are joined today by Bret De Young.

Bret: Hello.

Ashton: Thanks, Bret. He is the supervisory telecommunications specialist here in Yellowstone. So to kind of kick us off with this conversation about telecommunications, you know, cell towers, computers, all the, like, techie stuff that can be a little polarizing here in a park like Yellowstone. People like, you know, remote places without any connectivity. We're going to get into all that. But I have a little trivia for you first. So let's see. We're talking about data. This is a big park, a lot of employees, a lot of computers, a lot a lot of storage. How much storage do you think is supported on Yellowstone's network?

Miles: I'll take a wild guess. 100TB.

Ashton: You're actually spot on. Wow that's amazing.

Miles: I remember Mark's emails.

Ashton: Good job. So to put that into perspective, I was like, what does 100TB actually mean? So correct me if I'm wrong. This was just some brief googling. so 300,000 digital photos require one terabyte. So if you multiply that by 100, that is 30 million photos.

Miles: That's a ton. That's a lot of data and storage. One hour of eight K footage. Just kidding.

Ashton: That's probably not too far off. Yeah. But anyway, to get into this topic more, we have Bret De Young. Thanks for joining us, Bret. How are you doing?

Bret: I'm doing good.

Ashton: Good, good. So starting us off. Where did you get your start in the National Park Service?

Bret: In the National Park Service. I started volunteering with the National Park Service. I came to Yellowstone right after graduating from Purdue, and I worked for the concessionaire, and I worked with the Rangers at Ole Faithful doing search and rescue and a number of other different things. the other jobs that I did for the concessionaire and risk management and fire safety, I worked for the fire marshal, and I worked with the safety office. And, so, in an engineering office, I worked with a facility, maintenance division. So I knew most everybody pretty well after the 16 years that I'd worked for the concessionaire. And, then I one day I got a call from someone, and I applied for a job, and I walked across the street, and I asked them where the cafeteria was because the concessionaire, they fed us every day, and they told me I had to bring my own lunch.

Ashton: Oh, man.

Bret: So I'm still. I'm still working through that.

Ashton: Yeah. You're still learning how to tweet yourself every day.

Miles: Why did you first come out and start volunteering? well, are you just an outdoors person before that or.

Bret: Yeah, I was I came out here like most people do because they want to experience outdoors and they want to live in it, and they want to, you know, if rather than taking a vacation, they want to walk out the door and do it on their time off. And, so, yeah, I was just drawn to that. And, it was a really close knit community down at Old Faithful, and we ended up working winters and summers seasonally.