About

Lantern Harbor is a one-person technology practice based on the South Shore of Massachusetts. It’s me — William Keough — and the small businesses I work with a few at a time.

I’ve spent the last twelve-plus years in IT, most of that in the healthcare industry. My recent work has been on large, enterprise-wide healthcare IT implementations — the kind of projects where the technology is the easy part, and the hard part is getting it to actually land with the doctors, nurses, and admin staff who have to use it every day. That’s the work that taught me how to do this job: technology is only as useful as the people it’s meant to serve.

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Where the name comes from

My son was born ten weeks early. He spent seventy-three days in the NICU at South Shore Hospital.

During that stretch I started writing a children’s book about his time there — the nurses who learned his name, the alarms in the night, the strange warmth of a place built entirely around tiny, new arrivals. The metaphor that stayed with me was the harbor: the NICU as a safe harbor, the babies as ships coming and going, and the lanterns — the floodlights that burned all night while families waited — as the reason the harbor stayed lit.

When I decided to start this practice, that was the name that stuck. Lantern Harbor is for the small businesses that need a safe place to figure out their technology — a thoughtful person in their corner, lights on, watching out for them.

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How I got here

Lantern Harbor grew out of a season of real reflection — and a larger question about what I wanted my work to look like in the next chapter.

I’ve spent twelve-plus years in enterprise healthcare IT, and I love what that work has taught me: how to get technology to actually land with the people who have to use it. What I wanted to add was a practice of my own — smaller, closer to home, for the business owners on the South Shore who don’t have someone in-house to help them think clearly about technology.

I take on a few engagements at a time, carefully, so when you’re in the schedule you’re getting the attention you’d expect from someone who does fewer things well.