Business Owner Blake H. Dowling Authors Book of Insights From 2020 Pandemic
Book Launch at Aug. 19 at 7 p.m. at Midtown Reader
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Blake H. Dowling and his Tallahassee-based company, Aegis Business Technologies spent most of the Spring of 2020 helping transition clients to a rapidly changing virtual working world. For Dowling, who also writes weekly columns on the intersection of business and technology for Florida Politics and the Tallahassee Democrat, it was a critical time in his career. Not only did he and his team help keep their client’s businesses up and running, but he also managed to continue publishing his weekly columns which created a meaningful record of the pandemic. Now, over a year since the onset of the pandemic, those columns are the foundation of Dowling’s debut book, Professionally Distanced.
Blake Dowling (right) discusses his first book with Jay Revell of Revell Media on Biz & Tech podcast
In the 140-page paperback book, published by Rowland Publishing, Inc., Dowling shares a hand selected collection of his columns from the height of the pandemic along with additional reflections on how he and his team handled a year they will surely never forget. Dowling calls the book an “all-access” look into how his business and many others were operating at the time.
“The pandemic brought challenges to every business, but no matter what line of work you are in, technology likely played a major role in your ability to keep at it,” Dowling says. “Our company was on call helping clients find those solutions every day and many of those stories are in this collection.”
Dowling, like many other business leaders, had to bring a creative leadership approach to managing his team during the pandemic. Adapting to the rapid shift toward remote working was no easy task. In many of Dowling’s columns from 2020, he wrote about the ways in which he tried to keep morale and employee performance up even while his team was physically separated. Dowling says, “It was a serious time, but we still had to find ways to make work fun. That’s something I care deeply about. Despite the difficulties, I think the pandemic made us a stronger company and in hindsight, I’m so glad I wrote about those experiences as they were happening.”
Professionally Distanced is more than just a book about business though. Dowling also dives into the how the fabrics of the Tallahassee community became separated during lockdowns and what local companies and other organizations were doing to keep things held together. Dowling adds, “Everything about our lives was impacted during the pandemic. The most amazing thing happened though — people came together to get through it. I saw it both on our team at Aegis and across the community we call home. Those were my favorite stories to tell.”
Dowling is debuting the book as part of the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Conference held August 13-15 in Amelia Island, Florida. Each attendee will receive a copy in their “swag” bag upon arrival.
Readers can purchase a copy of the book at Amazon ($15) and in person at Midtown Reader in Tallahassee, where Dowling will be special guest at his book launch party on August 19 at 7 p.m.
