About Me

From my CV; A passionate strategist, technologist, innovator and digital transformation evangelist with 15+ years execution experience.

This is completely true, but doesn’t really tell the story about who I am or what interests me; I’ll try to do a better job here.

Ever since the introduction of the Sinclair ZX81 (which should carbon date me), I discovered a passion for technology. I’m not sure what captivated me, but I’ve been lucky in knowing from an early age what I enjoy.

The birth of the home computer was an interesting, frustrating and community-driven experience. An unexpected sneeze and you could reset the computer that you’d sent the last 2 hours typing in a computer program in from a magazine. Unheard of today, some of you will be shrugging your shoulders, wondering what I’m going on about.

Writing software was a (mostly) relaxing and flow inducing experience for me. The process of breaking down a feature, problem or reducing how a business works into a system of interconnecting modules interested me greatly. I was and still am hugely curious about the systems which underpin the world of business, commerce and, by inference, support mankind by delivering “stuff” to your door or local store with surprising consistency.

After a somewhat insular but nonetheless enjoyable time at home, I left to study Software Engineering at university. I made a conscious decision to be social and put some aspects of my early geekiness in a box. University is a fabulous opportunity to reimagine who you are and to make deep and long-lasting friendships. Aside from the educational payload, I recommend the experience to any young person; it delivers you from, very literally, home comforts and into a place where life skills can be built quickly.

I developed an interest in people, not just systems, and as I started my career wanted to move from writing code to managing people. A transition occurred. From engineer (“on the tools”), to team leader, and finding my stride as a project manager.

Delivering large scale enterprise systems at pace is a real skill and one which cannot be simply explained. The process of breaking down problems needs to be applied to the allocation of those problems to those that can best solve them, given everything else happening simultaneous (might be worth a blog post or two on this topic). The hubris of seeing everything as two dimensional suddenly expands to some kind of 3 or 4, or even 5-dimensional problem domain.

My curiosity got the better of me again, and I decided that I wanted to break out of the box of a job title and set up my own business. There were lots of other motivations. I spent a good chunk of time running a development services business before deciding it was hard to differentiate and extremely challenging. Something new was called for.

Pricing, the price of something, is the deciding factor that determines demand. I’m sure we’d all have a swimming pool and fast car if they cost less than a McDonalds. Auctions and auction theory seemed like an underserved space. Why wasn’t this way of establishing a conversation around price being deployed in the context of business?

There are likely to be numerous articles that relate to this in the works to populate the empty pages of this blog site, so let’s not dwell.

So, there’s my journey and a little bit about myself, but here are some more personal bits.

• I love to play computer games.
• I love to read (Sci-fi, fantasy, thrillers, horrors, fact books, but not romance)
• I like to write a lot, and I’ve been working on a novel for about three years… probably another three years to run on that one before I’m close to … well .. something.
• I enjoy music a lot (jazz, ambient, jungle, drum and bass, techno), and I DJ from time to time.
• I always wanted a dog. I have a dog. It was worth the wait.

I’m always pleased to meet new people, so .. don’t be shy, let’s connect.