About

Kiskin Labs is a Canadian IT support and management shop. We work with clients across the country, mostly remote, over a screen share and email. We write the runbook, and we still deal with the file server in the closet when that is the actual problem.

The name

In nêhiyawêwin (Cree), the stem kiskinwaham- is how teaching and learning are said. A teacher is kiskinwahamâkêw. Teaching, lessons, and education are kiskinwahamâkêwin. A related stem, kiskisi-, is remembering: kiskisiw means "s/he remembers," and kiskisiwin is the act of remembering.

Kiskin Labs is an English company name, not a Cree word, and not a claim of Indigenous ownership. We use it because the work is the same shape: point at the thing, leave a note the next person can follow, and do not make anyone reconstruct it from memory. Spellings here follow common Plains Cree SRO, as in the itwêwina dictionary and the Cree Literacy Network school-term lists. Dialect and orthography vary. This is a note, not a language lesson.

How we work

• One named technician on the account, not a ticket queue.
• Changes written down before they happen. Rollback written down too.
• Canadian data residency called out when a vendor default is not Canada.
• No vague optimization retainer. The monthly note says what moved.